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Your burger is served.

Alan Cross (2:10)

And this is our finest Pepsi Zero Sugar.

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Its sweet profile perfectly balances the savory notes of your burger.

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That is one perfect combination.

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Burgers deserve Pepsi sometimes, and this happens a lot. People get so pissed off or so inspired by something that they Just have to sing about it. This is the protest song, and it's been with us for centuries. It's music that encourages political and social change. And if done right, and if circumstances are correct, the song can mobilize people to take action, it can lift spirits, and it can annoy or even scare authorities of the establishment. Protest music comes in all forms, classical, folk, reggae, pop, hip hop, and of course, rock. It can rail against war, demand social justice, call out politicians, and petition for greater rights for women, minorities, labor, and the marginalized. The singers and musicians behind this music may be regarded as thought leaders, social influencers, and even prophets, at least for a time. So what I'd like to do is go through the history of protest in song from the world of alt rock, those times when a loud guitar becomes a tool for making things better for everyone. This is the ongoing history of New music podcast with Alan Cross the Dropkick Murphy's in their cover of Fortunate Son, originally done by Credence Clearwater Revival in the fall of 1969. Great anti Vietnam War anthem that takes on the fortunate sons, the offspring of the rich and powerful who were somehow able to escape being drafted. The message was, hey, it's easy to support the war if you never have to pay any of the costs for it. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross, and we're going to take a look at the history of protest song in alt rock. This is a big topic that could stretch over a dozen programs, so we're going to bob and weave through some highlights over the decades, taking a listen to some of the greatest alt rock protest songs of all time. First, though, we need to cover a little bit of wider history. Protest songs can be loud and in your face and obvious, like the one we just heard, or they can be much more subtle, its message lightly or even heavily obscured. Given the times and the context. This was actually a protest song. When Beethoven wrote that in 8, 1824, his inspiration was a poem called Ode to Joy, written by a German named Friedrich Schiller, who had this idea of a universal brotherhood regardless of class, which was really radical stuff at the time. Even today, that last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is often used as a protest anthem. For example, the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square played it right up until the tanks rolled in. People have written satiric poems and songs for centuries. They just had to be careful about who heard them, lest they be declared seditious traitors. Others were targeted as socialists and communists. When we get to the 20th century, we meet Joe Hill, a Swedish born labor activist who traveled about the US Singing songs like There Is Power in a Union and encouraging workers to unionize in an effort to improve their horrible working conditions and awful wages. He ended up being convicted for murder, probably railroaded by powerful interests, and was executed by a firing squad in 1915, making him a legend and a martyr. In the 30s and 40s, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger used folk music to spread messages that had them labeled as communists. Seeger was a member of the American Communist Party, and that's something that caused him all sorts of headaches. Later. The folk movement that came in their wake gave us people like Bob Dylan who had no trouble poking the status quo in the eye. And by the time we got to the middle 60s, rock was steeped in political and social protest, thanks to the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, drug culture, and especially the Vietnam War. And all that went with seemed like virtually every song was a protest song back then. And at the time, people really, really believed that rock and roll could change the world and things move fast. For example, when four protesting students were killed by National Guard troops at Kent State University in May 1970, Neil Young was so outraged that he wrote the song Ohio. And it was on sale and on the radio within a month.

Singer/Musician (performing protest songs) (7:23)

Twin soldiers and Nixon comin' We're finally on our own this summer I hear the Dr. For Dead in Ohio Gotta.

Narrator/Host (7:36)

Get down to it Some bands went all in. The MC5, the proto punk band from Detroit, were essentially a wing of the Marxist Black Panther Party, a militant socialist, black nationalist organization that stirred up a lot of controversy in the middle and late 60s. The band founded an affiliated group called the White Panthers. And this was their biggest song.

Singer/Musician (performing protest songs) (7:59)

Right now, right now, right now it's time to.

Narrator/Host (8:15)

The MC5, a group that eventually tore itself apart thanks to internal politics. But when they were around, they did give a voice to marginalized people in the US let's skip ahead to the punk rock explosion of the middle 1970s in New York, where it all started. Punk was for artsy outsiders. Okay, sure, there were some kicking against the system. But if you looked at the major players like the Ramones and Blondie and the Talking Heads, none of them were very political. But on the other side of the Atlantic, punk was all politics. Mid 70s Britain was a time of high unemployment, especially among young people. The government had basically run out of money after running a welfare state for decades. The value of the pound was sinking. Foreign reserves were drained, Industrial production and manufacturing were in steep decline. And it got so bad in some sectors that three day work weeks were introduced. Everybody was going on strike. Miners, bakers, nurses, garbage collectors, even grave diggers. Adding to the misery were there were rolling blackouts because without coal, because of the striking miners, there was no way to generate electricity and keep the lights on. Meanwhile, the class system continued to be firmly entrenched. Your opportunities were determined at birth. Young people were being crushed. Hopelessness set in. And this is when punk arrived. The music wasn't so much a protest against something as it was a protest against everything. The whole idea of punk was to give society, the government and the economy one big fu. And there were no sacred cows, not even the Queen. British punk took on everything, even beyond the status quo in the establishment. Take the Clash for example. While they railed against the usual suspects, they waded into other choppy waters. Imperialism, political and cultural police brutality, bad corporate behavior, crime, terrorism, rioting, immigration, racism. The Clash had something to say about virtually everything. The Clash with Guns of Brixton Inspired by the actions of police and rioters in recession ridden Britain in the 1970s. Songs like that elevated the Clash to the head of the class when it came to screams of protest from Britain. When we come back, we'll look at another form of punk that came with more flavors of protest. Time to discuss hardcore in just a second.

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Intense times almost always result in intense music. The end of the 70s was one of those times. There was a terrible recession and both the US and the UK had taken hard political turns to the right. In the US it was the beginning of the Reagan era. The 1970s had been a dysfunctional time in America. Nixon and Watergate the inconsequential Gerald Ford, the ineffective Jimmy Carter. So when Republican Ronald Reagan promised to make America great again with his no nonsense conservative policies, it was just what the electorate wanted. There were plenty of young people to the left of Reagan who were not at all fans. And part of the development of hardcore punk was a reaction to the right wing attitude of America during his presidency. Reaganomics was a four letter word for these people. Hardcore was also anti hippie, they were against any sort of commercialism, they were very anti establishment, very anti music industry, and often all in when it came to social, political and environmental subjects. Anti military, anti authority and usually anti violence. And no posers please. If you tried any fake kind of authenticity, you were called out loudly. And the word hardcore seems to have been a Canadian invention. Vancouver's DOA released an album entitled Hardcore 81, which if it didn't invent the term, sure made it popular. And now they're considered to be the godfathers of the genre. Here's a sample from that album. Watch your head, My Old Man's a Bum from Vancouver's doa, an example of early hardcore, a form of music that did not like the establishment. Meanwhile, over in the uk, the right wing policies of Margaret Thatcher were really annoying people. Britain was cozy with Reagan in the midst of some serious austerity measures. If you were on the right, chances are you loved the Iron lady. Not guaranteed because Mrs. Thatcher could be polarizing even on her own side of the political spectrum. But if you were in the center or on the left, you despised her. The 80s were filled with Auntie Thatcher songs. The Specials, Ghost Town blamed the government for letting down the youth of the nation. There were punk songs like Kick out the Tories and Thatcher's Fortress and Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out. Morrissey went even further, writing a song for the Smiths called Margaret on the Guillotine. Elvis Costello sang about Dancing on Her grave and Tramp the Dirt down even after she left office. There were songs like the Day Thatcher Dies and Thatcher Effed the Kids. Then there was Red Wedge, which was a musicians collective that tried very hard to engage young people in UK politics. Their goal was to make a change from a Conservative government to a Labor one in the 1987 election. It featured participation from Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, Jimmy Somerville, the the Madness, Tom Robinson, the Smiths, and it's a really good try, but it didn't work and Mrs. Thatcher won again. This is one of the earlier Auntie Thatcher songs. It's from the English beat from 1980 and it's called stand Down. Margaret let me play another track because it's way too subversive to ignore. It's a tape called Thatchergate by the anarchist musical collective called Crass. In the months following the Falklands War, the band cobbled together speeches from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan into what appeared to be a fake phone call between the two of them. When it first started making the rounds in 1983, the US State Department thought this was the work of the KGB. MI6 wasn't really sure where it came from, although they suspected that it might be an Argentinian intelligence operation. It wasn't until January 1984 that its source was discovered. This wasn't a protest song, but samples from this tape were used in tracks by both Crass and the Dead Kennedys. And it was created by a band, so it kind of counts. Here's a report about Thatchergate. A British punk rock group is claiming they're behind a fake tape recording which fooled the CIA. The American intelligence agency thought it was part of a Soviet disinformation plan. Here's Andrew Parkinson.

Andrew Parkinson (16:40)

The genuine voices of Mrs. Thatcher and President Reagan. Through the crackles, he seems to be saying he'd fire missiles at his allies to keep the Soviets back behind their borders during a war. You mean Germany? Mrs. Thatcher incredulously replies. But it's all a fake, made by punk rock group Crass. Band member Andy Palmer.

Andy Palmer (16:57)

We cut up two speeches, one of Reagan and one of Thatcher, sent the tape anonymously to the continent with a covering note saying that it was a recording of a crossed line.

Andrew Parkinson (17:09)

The tape came into the hands of the CIA, who studied it and then issued a statement saying it was part of an increasingly sophisticated Russian disinformation campaign. Now the CIA is clearly embarrassed by its mistake. But why did Krass do it?

Andy Palmer (17:22)

People know that governments are corrupt. People know that governments are violent. We did the tape to show that they're also small minded, petty and stupid. For the CIA to issue that statement shows just how petty they are.

Andrew Parkinson (17:37)

Now the group's touring the States, giving interviews about how easily they fooled the West's largest intelligence network.

Narrator/Host (17:43)

Crazy hoax by Crass, who caught the attention of two Secret Service agencies at a time when the Cold War was dangerously close to heating up into something truly awful. Still, with Britain, there were always people willing to protest the monarchy, seen by some as an outmoded, entrenched institution of hereditary privilege that had long outlived any usefulness. To them, it consisted of either a inbred German tourists or b lizard people from another planet. Whatever the case, there was no need for Britain to offer any fealty or support to the Queen. I'm not sure who Morrissey hated more, Margaret Thatcher or the Queen, but had he been born a couple of hundred years earlier, somebody would have gone all Game of Thrones on his ass for saying what he did in the title track of the Smith's 1986 album the Queen Is Dead.

Singer/Musician (performing protest songs) (18:32)

I said, charles, don't you ever crave to appear on the front of the Daily Mail arresting your mother's bride and veil.

Narrator/Host (18:48)

The Smiths and the Queen is Dead. There were plenty of alt rock protest songs in the 80s, think War and Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2, songs from the late part of the Clash's career. Apartheid was a very big topic. Peter Gabriel's Biko, about the activist Stephen Biko, who died in police custody. Artists united against Apartheid with their anthem about Sun City, the playground for rich white people of South Africa that was totally off limits to everybody else. Protests against nuclear war were big. Nina's 99 red balloons falls into that category. Two tribes from Frankie Goes to Hollywood blackened from Metallica. Racism was tackled in Mr. Cab Driver by Lenny Kravitz. Midnight Oil's beds are burning. Sinead O' Connor's Black Boys and Mopeds is about racism and Margaret Thatcher. There were a million songs, maybe 2 million songs, inspired by opposition to Ronald Reagan. In a moment, we'll move into the 90s for some sampling of some protest songs from that era. Hang tight.

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There was plenty to protest in the 90s Generation X was not happy. They were hit with a brutal recession just as they were coming into the workplace. There was a real fear that they would not be able to exceed their parents in terms of lifestyle. Something that had happened generation over generation. But they were afraid that they wouldn't even be able to equal it. Even though they were highly educated, they were under engaged and underemployed. Plus the world seemed to be going to hell in the Middle east in the first Gulf War. These were just some of the factors that led to the rise of alternative music in the 90s. Music that expressed the fears and confusion and anger and in some cases hope of this huge group of young people. This was the era of riot girls and their ultra feminism. Others protested discrimination of those with AIDS or those who hated globalization and consumerism and racism, sexism, foreign wars and endless civil wars. But if you had to pick just one song as the epitome of protest songs of the 1990s, it had to be this one, which is an attack on racist cops and politicians and institutional racism. I would love to play you the uncensored version, but even though the song came out in 1992, it is still too intense for the radio. But I think you know how it goes. You can fill in those parts yourself. But you know what? Even without those bits, song still smokes. I don't think I need to explain why that is one of the greatest protest songs of all time, do I? No, I didn't think so. Well, what about the 21st century? What Ronald Reagan was to the 80s, George W. Bush was to the zero zeros. After 911 and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the mess they created, a lot of musicians took up arms in the form of guitars. The most successful of the lot probably came from green day in 2004 with the American Idiot album. The whole thing is basically one big fu with George Bush. The title track is obvious, but I'm gonna pick something a little bit more subtle. If you know the video for Wake Me When September Ends. It's all about a soldier who was torn away from his girlfriend because of the war in Iraq. And when Hurricane Katrina hit late in the summer of 2005, it became the unofficial anthem for the victims of that storm.

Singer/Musician (performing protest songs) (23:22)

But never forgets what I lost. Wake Me up When September Ends.

Narrator/Host (23:35)

Here are some other alt rock protest songs from the 21st century. Mia and Born Free. A very strong anti war song. Just about anything from PJ Harvey's 2011 album Let England Shake. It's about that country's imperialist cruelty over the centuries. There's Radiohead's Idiotique from Kid A in 2000. It's all about global warming. Rise against is a good source of rage. So is Against Me. System of a Down tackles war and the Armenian genocide. Conor Oberst has When the President Talks to God there's been some powerful stuff, but the first half of the second decade of the new millennium has been awfully quiet when it comes to protest songs. Despite the never ending wars in the Middle east, the financial meltdown of 2008, crushing student debt, the attitude of the religious right in the us, Republican presidential candidates, Wall street crooks who weren't sent to jail, the refugee crisis, terrorism, global warming, more globalization. I mean, you would think that there would be all kinds of angry music, right? Well, no. The sound of alt rock has gone very soft, consisting of mid to low tempo melodic songs with very introspective lyrics. I think this is a really interesting phenomenon. Yeah, there's still plenty of angry and loud music that kicks against the pricks, but compared to the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, not a lot of it. Very little, if any, has bubbled up to where it really counts, where it breaks through the public's consciousness. Where are all the songs of protest and activism? Why isn't alt rock, or rock in general for that matter, the vehicle for these opinions and feelings and politics that it once was? This is something that I've been studying closely because it absolutely fascinates me. And I do have a couple of theories. Number one, people now register their protests and conduct their activism through social media. Why write a song when you can just comment on Facebook or Twitter? Number two, rock music just isn't the cultural force that it was. When it comes to this sort of thing, hip hop and rap have taken over. And number three, all rock fans just don't seem to feel that they can make any kind of difference, so why bother? And number four, others will suggest that this is a generation that grew up with any kind of fight in them. Everybody gets a trophy, everybody gets praised. Feel free to take that discussion wherever you want. Whatever the case, there's been a lull in alternative when it comes to expressing strong opinions about the Man. Interesting though, it's legacy artists Radiohead, Springsteen, U2 that continue to push for change through music, while newer artists generally stay away from this area. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, adolescents were all about rebellion and wanting to be carefree. It was up to the adult rockers to be jaded to write songs about the trials of life. Now it's the other way around. Now, of course, that's a sweeping generalization, but it's very much what we're seeing today. I find it fascinating that there's a lack of FU coming from the current alt rock generation. We really haven't seen this before. But to everything there is a season, and I'm sure there will come a time when young people will again raise their voice en masse in songs of protest. And I hope they do it loudly. Thanks for listening. Thanks for all the emails and input too. I really appreciate it. Please keep it coming to AlanLancross CA I read and answer everything myself as soon as I can, and if you have any suggestions for future topics, please send them my way. For this show, I'm indebted to Professor Todd Green at Brock University in St. Catharines. We're both fascinated by the concept of using music for protest and signaling dissent and pushing for social and political change. We will have to revisit this topic in the future because there's so much we can talk about. Meanwhile, check out my website@ajournalofmusicalthings.com I update it every day, sometimes two or three times a day. Lots of music news and comment and opinion and recommendations. And there's a free daily newsletter that goes with it too. You should subscribe. Plus there's always Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google. There is no reason we can't connect Technical Productions by Rob Johnston I'm Alan Cross. You've been listening to the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Subscribe to the podcast through itunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and everywhere you find your favorite podcasts. They come from Survivor. They come from Big Brother. They know what they're doing. These vets wrote the Playbook and they have all had to earn their stripes. How did you win Survivor?

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