I have written what I would consider "edgy" songs that deal with politics and the problem
we face today in our country. My songs have not been easily accepted. The content is
"hard hitting" as it was in the time when Woody Guthrie wrote his. In the Fifties, Woody
was considered to be too controversial and was not popular with many. Today, there is
a tendency for people to reject "uncomfortable" subject matter in songs although writers
such as Steve Earle (who in my opinion is close to Woody's tradition) do well.

Topical music today is receiving a resistance by a wearied public who would prefer
excursions into navel-gazing songs or a kind of quasi-pop-folk with acoustic guitar backup. I refer to this as "acoustic drivel".

One of the things that I liked about the old Sing Out! magazine format is that it didn't
try to squelch songs that criticized controversy. Often it was considered to be "didactic"
or "opinionated" from a Left perspective but in my view it made the magazine exciting
and thought-provoking. It wasn't a fanzine for folk. Ideas were presented which engendered disagreement. Commercialism in folk was questioned. Racism was addressed and anti-war songs with teeth found their way into the old Sing Out!

Today, songs need to be written about the oppression and torture of Guantanamo,
the needless deaths of military service people, the robbing of the American public
by greedy corporate interests, the stealing of elections, and the oppression of the
fundamentalist religious. Not all songs need to be about these issues but there is not
an abundance of good material today coming out.

There has been a precedence for this kind of writing in the past with Tom Paxton,
Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and now Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. We see this
in the songs of Steve Earle, today.

I think that Dylan turned his back on this kind of writing if he ever really did it.
He wanted to be more "mainstream" and didn't continue along these lines because
it was not commercially viable. I think he wanted to be accepted more as an Elvis Presley.

The real oppression is coming from the music industry, today, which found a way to
make a formula for the music of the Sixties and sell it. The music corporation is analogous to the corporate takeover of our media and government.

Frank Hamilton