Rock and Soul Lit Class, Week 8
There’s Always Mom
When force and justice are gone: “O Superman” and Art
Art and Protest and Pop have an entwined history, and of course trying to decide on a song that best embodies all three categories is a subjective trek through years and years of history, culture, and pop sensibilities. So many songs, and if you’ve basically lived through the entire rock and soul world to this point, it feels impossible to land on one song.
And yet, as we were reading Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue this week, we came to the following passage, an exchange between the band members — Elf, Griff, Jasper, and Dean — and a journalist, Amy.
Amy: “When I listened to [their album] I kept wondering about politics. We live in revolutionary times. The Cold War. The end of empires. The erosion of authority. Attitudes to sex and drugs. Should music mirror change? Should music try to trigger change? Can it? Does yours?…[One of your songs] is acutely, nakedly personal. These aren’t political.”
Elf: “Where does it say a band can’t be both?”
Dean: “Now ’n’ then yer get a song that’s both great music and makes a statement… ‘For What It’s Worth.’ ‘Mississippi Goddam.’ ‘A Change is Gonna Come.’ But a whole album o’ stuff busting its guts to be Political…
