Where are all the green & climate songs

Subject: BS: Where are all the green&climate songs
From: Donuel
Date: 05 May 09 - 08:38 PM

I know, There's a hole in ozone der Liza dear Liza...

Does this catagory already exist?

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 May 09 - 02:06 AM

"There's a hole in ozone"
Wonderful idea for a song Donuel - or is there one already?
Certainly could do with a few the way things are going.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 May 09 - 02:14 AM

"Where have all the flowers gone?"

Where were you during the 50's & 60's. Sorry for that stupi question, if you were there (& I know you were) you don't remember them.

Barry

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 May 09 - 04:00 AM

Barry,
Most of the 50s and 60s songs I recall were about nuclear testing - seem to remember 'What Have they Done To The Rain' and 'Strontium 90'
"Flowers" is anti-war rather than ecological, don't you think.
Peggy Seeger's Songbookbook gives
A Wonderful World, Use It Again, Maggie Went Green, Sellafield Child, Polonium 2-1-0, Plutonium Factor, The Invader and Wasteland Lullabye, - mostly about the effects of nuclear power
Ewan's
Nuclear Means Jobs
There are probably a few in New City Songster, but can't find them without clambering into the loft (new hip a problem at preent)
And that's it really - nowhere near enough
Jim Carroll
PS I'm sure there's a good song in the making about the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 May 09 - 04:36 AM

I was just funnin' Jim, sorta play on words. Where'd the flowers go? Green question? Maybe not.
You got serious on me Jim when I was so far from serious, I wasn't even in the same ballpark. Silly I guess, I maybe should've just not posted.

Barry

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 06 May 09 - 04:59 AM

Ecopella save-the-world-music - Ecopella is an environmental choir that sings about the beauty of our world and the struggle to protect it from exploitation and destruction.

Mudcatter Chris Maltby is a member

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: matt milton
Date: 06 May 09 - 05:40 AM

www.myspace.com/bcce

That's a link to the music and songs of The Boycott Coca Cola Experience, otherwise known as one Tim Siddall. He writes very funny and oddly moving blues songs about eco issues, among other things. He also puts on concerts using generators powered by bicycles.

It's very easy to tweak a lot of blues and disaster songs to have a rather alarming contemporary resonance. In fact, you don't even need to tweak a lot of them - think of all of those old-time songs about flooding.

It's also funny how now, because it's something I read about and think about a lot, I'm starting to hear ecological portent in songs even if that wasn't the intention.

For instance, I have no idea if the beautiful song "Last of the Melting Snow" by The Leisure Society is an eco-disaster song or not (I haven't listened to the lyrics properly yet) but I like to think it might be:
http://www.myspace.com/theleisuresociety

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 May 09 - 06:53 AM

"Silly I guess, I maybe should've just not posted."
Sorry Barry - bit po-faced this morning - late night!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: GUEST,donuel
Date: 06 May 09 - 07:14 PM

Jim I haven't heard those radioactive songs.
Certainly I am looking for recent songs. While it is hard to outdo Tom Lehrer I hope I find some.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Pigstrings
Date: 06 May 09 - 07:30 PM

Don't pretend to get within a million miles of Tom Lehrer, but my song The Wind Blows is on the first Pig's Ear album A Silk Purse. It was written in the late 1980s.

In a corner of England an oak tree fell
And we mourned it like a friend
We cried, "See the power of the wind and the rain
Oh, it's strength will never end
When the wind blows."

In a corner of South America,
A forest died in a day
And nobody mourned till it was too late
And the price was left to pay
Where the wind blows

And we ripped out all the hedgerows
And we ploughed the land to death
And the fertile soil blew away in a cloud
When the wind drew in its breath
For the wind blows

And man he built a powerhouse
The wheels of commerce to turn
And the accident that never should happen
Did. And it was too late to learn
How the wind blows

Now we look on this land that is green and good
And we say, "This must always be
We will fight for this land to our very last breath!"
But who's the enemy?
When the wind blows

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 May 09 - 07:35 PM

Donuel
Can't really help with the tunes without an e-mail address, but will be happy to dig out some texts in the morning
Tend to agree about Tom Lehrer - is it true he gave up satire when Kissenger was awarded the Nobel Prize?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: GUEST,Ken Brock
Date: 07 May 09 - 09:35 AM

He made a joke that satire became obsolete when Kissinger won the Nobel Prize. He found that many issues were too complex for satire, such as abortion, though he did write a non-published song about that, too.

Also: Malvina Reynolds' "God Bless the Grass" covered by Pete Seeger circa 1968, and The Ian Campbell Folk Group's "Across the Hills" from circa 1965.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 07 May 09 - 10:24 AM

Some really old trad songs that glory in nature tell their own powerful tale when interspersed with more contemporary protests.

For interdependence of living things I still find it hard to beat 'What's the life of a man any more than a leaf'

And the visionary Blake's 'Jerusalem' is still powerful as long as it isn't done for Jingoistic reasons.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: matt milton
Date: 07 May 09 - 10:28 AM

I wrote this moronic blues for moronic times the other day. It's called "Yesterday morning". You'll have to imagine it being sung to a 12-bar blues:

Yesterday morning...
...was boiling hot.

Yesterday afternoon...
...was boiling hot.

Last night...
...was boiling hot.
Much too hot to sleep.

This morning...
...was boiling hot.

This afternoon...
...was boiling hot.

Tonight...
...it's boiling hot.
Much too hot to sleep.

[perhaps a boiling hot guitar solo around here]

Tomorrow morning...
...will be boiling hot.

Tomorrow afternoon...
...will be boiling hot.

Tomorrow night
will be boiling hot.

Much too hot to sleep.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 07 May 09 - 10:33 AM

"The Last Leviathan" - Sheena Wellington does a great version, I heard her sing it at the Orkney Folk Festival one year, it was unforgettable?:

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=6687#39209

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 07 May 09 - 07:01 PM

Google Evalyn Parry or find her on myspace. Bill Bossin may have some also.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: topical tom
Date: 08 May 09 - 11:55 AM

If It Can't Be Reduced You can download a clip of the song here.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 08 May 09 - 01:00 PM

First, I quote Pogo, the old Walt Kelly cartoon from the 1930's, wherin the title character opines, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Second, we might also consider ice age music. According to a body of evidence from yet another group of earth scientists and including data on sun activity, we may be approaching the beginning of another "little ice age," such as was experienced between 1630 or so and the late 1800's. Perhaps there is existing music treating on that phenomenon.

What we do not presently have, despite all the media hype and hand-wringing, is scientific unanimity on this whole subject of whether or not, and to what extent, man's activity truly affects the global climate. There is enough "bad science" on both sides of the argument to leave one perplexed.

What IS known is that having clean air, water and using resources efficiently and wisely, and treating Mother Earth kindly, just makes good sense. We can certainly celebrate THAT in song.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 May 09 - 06:25 PM

The Digitrad Keyword Search has categories for ecology (2 songs), environment (23), and nature (7).

The above was a voluntary, unpaid testimonial, not paid for by Dick Greenhaus or the Digital Tradition.

Subject: RE: Where are all the green & climate songs
From: matt milton
Date: 08 May 09 - 06:46 PM

"What we do not presently have, despite all the media hype and hand-wringing, is scientific unanimity on this whole subject of whether or not, and to what extent, man's activity truly affects the global climate."

I'll take your word for it. But even if, for the sake of argument, global warming isn't man-made, that doesn't alter the urgency of having to prevent it.