“Not caring about things since 1971, so that you don’t have to.”
7. Cops killing American citizens. The recent (and most welcome) advent of dashboard cams and cell phones are only beginning to help prove what’s been happening for over a century.
6. People talk, correctly, about how What’s Going On (the song) captured what was happening (and what wasn’t happening, and what needed to happen, etc.) circa 1970. As it happens, the most abiding and painfully prescient tune turns out to be the album closer. “Trigger happy policing”. Same as it ever was.
5. Our brethren across the pond(s) have puzzled themselves over our uniquely American obsession with firearms. Oh, John Lennon was killed. In America. By a lunatic with a gun.
4. One of the great, unnerving lines in American songwriting history: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Without a gun that line doesn’t happen, and the fictional tale is never told. Almost five decades later, it still happens for real in America. Every. Single. Day.
3. What he said.
2. What he said. Put it on repeat and keep listening until we regain a semblance of our sanity.
1. The song below, “Throw Away Your Gun” is by the great reggae toaster Michael James Williams, aka Prince Far I. He was shot in his home during a robbery, and died in 1983.
