Thanks for the comments. I had forgotten about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Still puzzled though, in spite of Rick's apposite comments: the thing about the early songs was that the people who wrote and sang them seem to know quite well what violence looked like, and the strength of the songs is in their casual brutality and vividness. That seems to go against the idea that it is because we see violence and its consequences that keeps them from being written. Perhaps our take on violence has changed. I did think of a good song on the experience of global violence on television: Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble. Not a ballad, but it certainly gives a feel for the images. Must check out the Laskin song....

yours, Peter T.