Voices - Outlaws and Heroes 2025

By Paul Rootsical

 Voices 2025

Outlaws & Heroes. All-era Folk, blues, country, americana selection with the usual healthy focus on protest songs.

 

^^stream & download^^ CLICK PLAY TWICE

There's a whole load of shite going off in the world right now with levels of ignorance, misinformation, cruelty, inhumanity, surveilance & polarisation not seen in the West in 80 years. With our freedoms, economic security and the living planet itself under serious threat billionaires are running amok, stirring up racial predjudice & class war to cover up their ebezzlement en mass while impoverishing governments (i.e. the people) at previously unseen levels everywhere. Enough is enough! The people must & will prevail over big money and greed eventually due to total unsustainability. It requires a complete overturn of economic & management systems as we know them though and will involve some personal sacrifices and lifestyle changes but it is doable. Right now, while we're on the back foot and common resistance is critical as the left regroups. So let's stay positive in this time of great peril & upheaval. The winds WILL change... 

Short tribute to Bruce 'the Boss' Springsteen, a man who is never afraid to speak his convictions and use his platform to spread progressive ideas. Includes both his own cuts & some great cover versions.

 Spotlight on three more Leon Rosselson & Roy Bailey songs from the 1980s. Voices & Who Reaps The Profits, Who Pays The Price? are as relevant today as ever. Its kinda sad in a way to listen to these lyrics 40 years on in the knowledge that nothing yet's been done or achieved. Martin Simpson takes on Palaces of Gold to good effect, along with two blues instrumentals. Three strong post-millennium tracks from Willie Nelson, including a deep cut of Guy Clark's Immigrant Eyes. Emmylou Harris does an equally great live interpretation of the song also.

The indominable Dick Gaughan is well represented (of course) with the cutting War Outside. Let's face the subject of immigration head on! He also comes with an amazing ode to freedom fighters everywhere called Outlaws & Dreamers (live from the Trades Club, Hebden Bridge). Prisoner 562 conjures up images of Nazi concentration camps - clear parallels with Gaza now - while Song of Choice again bemoans political apathy. Gaughan teamed up with percussionist & activist Ken Hyder in 1985 for a sonic experiment. Political Prisoners is overdubbed here with V.C. Clinton-Baddeley & Pauline Letts' the Unquiet Grave from 1962.

Two leftfield country tracks by Jeffery Shurtleff (of appeared together with Joan Baez at Woodstock 1969 fame) from his one & only album in 1971. Joan Baez is represented with an early rendition of Portland Town (included for obvious reasons) and a powerful late career call for peace; I Wish the Wars were All Over. Rags stringman David Grisman did some superb albums with Jerry Garcia & Tony Rice in the 1990s, three tracks here. The Grateful Dead also chip in with a sad song about the town of Cucamonga in Cali. John Prines's Your Flag Decor Won't Get You Into Heaven lyric is back into action for these unsettled times of ignorance & hatred. While Dylan ain't around this time, his spirit is summoned up for two cover versions; a firey live cut of Chimes of Freedom by Bruce Springsteen & Planxity's I Pity the Poor Immigrant. Thai songs for life artist & social activist Aed Carabao Stood Tall Like Neil Young!

 The biggest salutes are reserved, naturally, for activists & participants everywhere; those who put their own interests & safety on the line in the interests of the greater good: the likes of the Samut Freedom Flotillas, human rights expert Francesca Albanese, Just Stop Oil, Fuel Poverty Action, Greta Thunberg, No Kings, Palestine Solidarity, all the countless protesters, cultural icons & agitators worldwide. The whole world is ANTIFA!

But mostly, let us all remember & pay tribute to the victims of this world order, the lives lost or torn part - in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Sudan, the Congo, Yemen, Burma, Iran, now in Venezuela and there again in the USA. Ultimately, ordinary people everywhere are having to pay for this crap.

Continuous mix 3 hours

download from the above Internet Archives stream link



 

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