The Times They Are a-Changin'

Over twenty years ago, as I was starting college, I picked up a stereo set at a yard sale that had an 8-track player. So while my colleagues were building their CD collections, I was plunding Goodwill stores for 8-track cassettes. Today, as the world has moved to MP3 technology to the point of even making CD’s obsolete, I find myself accumulating compact cassettes at an alarming rate, including an eclectic box of about 45 of them that I scored at a flea market last week for the grand total of $1.00.

I’ll keep maybe 6 or 7 of them – I wanted the box more for the cassette racks included therein – but I figured I’d at least listen through them to see if there’s anything worthwhile I might be overlooking.

Working alphabetically (naturally), I come upon two compilations of Joan Baez, including her live set "From Every Stage" produced in 1975. A great voice, certainly, but the lyrics (both hers and the artists she interprets) reflect the pattern of the times, and are what you’d expect from someone in their early 30's with a well-established reputation for social activism. The opening a capella number, for example, contains a reference to "that killer Kissinger" amongst other harmonious diatribes.

Nonetheless, I was struck by her introduction to "Natalia," which is reproduced here verbatim:

[This song is] written about a political prisoner in USSR. And in USSR, when you do something naughty they throw you in the mental hospital and tell you you’re "cuckoo" and try to get everyone else to believe it. The terrible thing is that, eventually, sometimes, you get to believing it, too.

But there is one woman, named Natalia Gorbanevskaja, who never believed it. She was very, very strong. She wrote a poem about the invasion of Czechoslovakia – she thought it was a very poor idea. And when she wrote the poem, the government of the USSR thought she was a very poor idea and they put her in the ol’ bughouse. She was pregnant at the time – she was very strong, and she convinced herself she would be fine, she would have her child, she would go on speaking out – so every time she comes out of the looney bin she writes another poem, and the put her back in. But – it is because of people like Natalia Gorbanevskaja I am convinced that you and I are still alive and walking around on the face of the earth.

>>>>>>READ THE LAST SENTENCE AGAIN!<<<<<<

Ah, for the days when being a liberal meant that you believed in liberty, and not being a syncophant parroting clever bumper-sticker philosophies while blindly following the mass media with sheep-like docility.

Maybe the Dixie Chicks can adapt this idea for their next album and include a song about the human rights violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I mean, when they and their acolytes are finished blaming President Bush for everything...

A footnote -- Joan's Wikipedia biography contains a paragraph about her trip to North Viet Nam with Jane Fonda et al in 1972. Whatever her feelings towards Viet Nam (and every western military action before or since, apparently), Joan at least saw through the charade of the communists. Read the rest of the bio and you'll have no doubt that she was (and is) a firm left-winger, but, to her credit, not a Phoanie.