BILLY BRAGG - WAITING FOR THE GREAT LEAP FORWARDS

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Hugo Chavez highway filling up with gasoline
Little Donald Rumsfeld spies a rich lady who’s crying
Over luxury’s disappointment
So he walks over and he’s trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
To prepare to be bombed back into the Stone Age

In the former Soviet Union the citizens demand
to know why they’re still the target of Strategic Air Command
And they shake their fists in anger and respectfully suggest
We take money from our missiles and spend it on our hospitals instead

The Cold War is now over but the stakes are getting higher
I’m frightened of collateral damage
And of friendly fire
And I don’t believe we can defeat no Axis of Evil
By putting smart bombs into the hands of dumb people

Mixing Pop and Politics they ask me what the use is
I offer them my acupuncturist, my masseuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where my ego is waiting
I’m looking for the New World Order

Jumble sales are organised, all my mates got fat
Even after all this time you can still me a fax
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the media
While you’re waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will YouTube give MTV the sack?
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

Here comes the future and you can’t run from it
If you’ve got a t-shirt I want to be on it

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

In a perfect world we’d all sing in tune
But this is reality not American Idol

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just an ethical haircut away when you’re
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

Here’s what’s currently in heavy rotation in iTunes for me. Give me some suggestions of what else I might enjoy:

• Alkaline Trio
• Augie March
• Be Good Tanyas
• Belly
• Billy Bragg
• The Clash
• Descendents
• Eddie Spaghetti
• Flogging Molly
• Gillian Welch
• Hank Williams III
• Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
• John Lurie
• Jolie Holland
• Kelly Hogan
• Kristen Hersh
• The Lawrence Arms
• Lisa Marr Experiment
• Lori McKenna
• Mike Ness
• Neko Case
• New Pornographers
• NOFX
• Pennywise
• Rancid
• Regina Spektor
• Supersuckers
• Tanya Donelly
• Throwing Muses
• Tom Waits
• The Weakerthans

More, more, more … give me more. Especially if it’s available on eMusic.com.

BILLY BRAGG - THERE IS POWER IN A UNION

There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don’t stand
There is power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers’ blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses’ way, sir

The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and out sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union

Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us
But who’ll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackies out to cheat us?

Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a Union

The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and out sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union.