Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?

Subject: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 04:55 PM

I'm looking songs about this event. I'd like chords as well. I searched DigiTrad and found nothing. Many thanks, 'catter critters!

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:00 PM

guess not many felt like singing

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: mousethief
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:02 PM

If you look at the reasons "disaster ballads" (for lack of a better term) were made in the past, most of those reasons don't hold nowadays. Most would probably consider it macabre, or worse, to write a song about a great tragedy.

Which is too bad. That's one way they get remembered for generations upon generations to come.

Alex

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:12 PM

I'm hoping that someone felt moved enough to write a song about this terrible tragedy. Even if it was never recorded. I'm hoping that some of you 'catter critters may have written something for yourself that you wouldn't mind sharing. Many thanks again

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Tedham Porterhouse
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:15 PM

Rod MacDonald- Who Built the Bomb

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Shields Folk
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:16 PM

Perhaps now folk in the US can appreciate the lack of enthusiasm for IRA songs by some in the UK.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:25 PM

Yeah, Shields Folk. Seems as if it isn't funny or introspective, no one wants to write it anymore. Thanks Tedham Porterhouse, any idea where I can get my mitts on this tune?

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Dharmabum
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:32 PM

Dan Bern, from his album "DOG BOY VAN" the name of the song is appropriately called "OKLAHOMA".

DB.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Tedham Porterhouse
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 05:43 PM

The full title of Rod MacDonald's song is "Who Built the Bomb (That Blew Oklhaoma City Down)?" It's on his CD "And Then He Woke Up" on Gadfly Records.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Jun 01 - 08:47 PM

There was that period of naive innocence in my childhood where I liked to sing IRA songs because I thought they were romantic, and the "Bomb Song" (All in the anarchist's attic, so lonely and so mean, all amidst the fumes of nitrogycerine) because I thought it was funny; well, maybe that song still is funny. It really takes someone such as Fred Small or Woody Guthrie to figure out how to deal with an Oklahoma. I'm curious about what Rod MacDonald tried to do. Can anyone post the lyrics?

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: InOBU
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 07:57 AM

A Native American singer, who's name I will not mention, a few years ago, had a little song, he'd do while warming up for his performances. He'd sing, while doing an even beat... I... Come ... from Oklahoma, then smash the stick down on the drum. I suppose, though he felt terrible for the innocent victems of the bombing, and felt it was a terrible act, his sympathy for the federal government was mittaged by the trail of tears and other events in the centuries of genocide. There may be a lesson about IRA songs in this, (Indian Reorganization Act songs? ANyone have any?) Well, I hope folks understand the sence of this. I consider the Militia movement to be one of the most dangerous and stupid movenements in this country. However, it is the result of our vilent and uncareing traditions, which we need to address.
All the best
Larry

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: InOBU
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 07:58 AM

PS violent, my spelling gets worce in the morning...

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 10:49 AM

You know, I'm beginning to wonder about other events as well, like the situation between Isreal and Palestine. Are songs being composed about that? I know we hve all sorts of media coverage, but sometimes people learn more from a song than they ever learn from news. Also, tragedies large and small, like floods and train wrecks. It seems as we don't record these in song anymore.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: wdyat12
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 10:56 AM

A new genre of folk tunes a blooming...Songs of Terror.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: InOBU
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 11:45 AM

Well some of us do write songs about this stuff, see the Folk Venues in New York post and Pinewoods - Evil Empire post... we just don't get much work... Larry

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Peter T.
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 12:26 PM

There was a thread about the lack of good train wreck and flood songs anymore (I know, I started it). The only person I can think of who writes (wrote) good ballads about these things any more is Bob Dylan, out of the ballad tradition. He could write a good one about McVeigh, given his propensity to deal in apocalypse. Dylan's remarks about Lee Harvey Oswald at a banquet sometime after the Kennedy assassination where he said he knew how he felt, were typically greeted with horror. Someone should phone him up. "Hey, Bob, how would you like to have the Academy take back your Oscar?" ("It's not dark yet, but it's getting there")

yours, Peter T.

P.S. Dylan wrote a really dreary song about the Israel/Arab struggle called "Neighbourhood Bully" on Infidels.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Shields Folk
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 05:36 PM

I remember early on in the Balkan conflict (the recent one) a TV program on Bosnian Serbs. The program, on the BBC I think, featured Radovan Karadich ( the spellings shite I know but to those in the UK it's the bloke that looks like Dave Allen) where he sang traditional Serb songs on the Serbs long history of conflict. I remember feeling some sympathy for the Serbian cause before eventually seeing him , as everyone else did, as an evil murdering tyrant. The point? Well, songs sometimes seem very insignificant when one looks at the suffering of ordinary folk.

Subject: RE: Any Okla.City Bombing Ballads?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Jun 01 - 05:46 PM

I remember writing "The Persian Gulf Tragedy" back during the night bombing phase of 1990, when the Peace Movement still had some hope of cooling things down. Great lyrics to the tune of "The Spring Hill Disastor." It was obsolete within a week as the ground forces charged in. I always thought it was too bad that the generals couldn't just shoot it out on their own; they know what they're fighting for. I think Malvina Reynolds had the right idea with her "The Bankers & The Diplomats are Going in the Army."