"When God Made Me" Neil Young-Prairie Wind

While it has a beautiful Melody "Imagine" is on my list of most hated songs. Written by a pompous hypocrite who screamed of equality while living in The Dakota above those "average people". Mr. Peace and equality also not only cheated on his first wife but was known for beating her at will. He abused and neglected Julian, would go on violent, drunk benders for periods of a time and also stood in the face of other musicians spouting vile hatred. Such behavior is of course par for the course for some musicians and stars and to be honest it is not that behavior I am condemning but rather the blatant hypocrisy the man portrayed.

The song "Imagine" in my mind is such a polarizing attack at religion and in a way subverts the message he is trying to instill. Because the problem is not religion (and in full disclosure I am not religious in any way) but rather the followers of said religions that hold a viewpoint that cannot be changed. Kinda like John's....It is hard to write a song about acceptance while asking the listener to imagine a world without a method of life that the majority of the planet hold dear to their hearts. But I guess we aren't as smart as John and can't make decisions for ourselves.

Strangely enough Neil Young's politics are on par with Lennon's and 180 out from my own but this song is the song "Imagine" hoped it would be. It is a cry for tolerance without denouncing any particular race, religion or country while asking. Neil's genius is using that deity's, who causes so much strife in the world, viewpoint to question the beliefs that followers of said deity hold so true. He isn't saying that God is a bad thing, nor is the belief and dedication to him. I think Neil is saying that the man himself doesn't care. I think that he presents his questions of religion in simply that, a question and not a demand; and does so in terribly simple, beautiful verse.

Did he give me the gift of love
to say who I could choose?
Did he give me the gift of voice
so some could silence me?
Did he give me the gift of vision
not knowing what I might see?
Did he give me the gift of compassion
to help my fellow man?

It sings like a lullaby. It makes one think right there on the spot the beautiful attributes of man and what we do with them. It makes one think of how fortunate we are and how incomprehensibly intelligent a being would have to be to create us with said attributes. How we can chose who we love instead of being forced by blind genetics. How we can see beauty and more so horrible sights that will certainly change us because we have free will.

In the end my beliefs of what God is like is that of a parent, he puts some ideals into our heads and lets us run wild without restraint hoping that we will act steadfast to those principles. We can or we can't but he isn't going to make us do either. And this is the reason why I love this song and these idea and keep them close to my heart. True tolerance is tolerance. Period. I'd like to imagine a world where this was true. And that means that because I don't think homosexuality is a way I would want to live my life or my children live theirs I am not a bigot. It also means you shouldn't push that life style on me or my children because they are mine. Like God I will instill ideals in their minds and if they chose to live as a homosexual I will be happy for them. It means that because I don't think dogs should be in the house that I hate dogs, nor do I think you should keep them out of yours.

Three days ago I was walking down Worth Street here in Manhattan and a man wearing a Texas Rangers hat and jersey was walking in the other direction. In my mind it is fully acceptable to hit that person on the back of the head with a solid steel pipe and watch him fall to the ground. And the reason why is because he is doing it on purpose, he doesn't like the Rangers that much. What he wants to do is start controversy. That man is not unlike the Gays parading down Fifth Avenue shoving their beliefs in our faces or the Muslims trying to build a Mosque when 80% of the people don't want it there. That is not tolerance. That is not trying to live peacefully with one another and that is exactly what Lennon does in "Imagine"

Neil on the other hand leaves it for us all to decide and he does it more beautifully and with more class than any before. He does it coming from a somewhat radical background of political activism but a background devoid of hypocrisy and hatred. A background of true tolerance, from such a background it is no wonder he is such a beautiful man and artist.

"War" Edwin Starr-June 10th 1970 Single

On January 31, 1968 The United States launched the Tet Offensive. In the course of one year 4,124 American forces were killed, 19,295 were wounded and 604 are still missing till this very day. There were riots over civil rights at The Universities of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Howard, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead with Robert Kennedy. The Zodiac killer was running rampant through the streets of San Francisco, and HIV made its arrival in the United States. That same year Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield penned one of the most famous protest songs of all time and gave it to The Temptations. But it was never released until it after Edwin Starr's version in 1970.

Things were not getting better for the United States at that time. Early in the year Jeffery MacDonald murders his wife and family at Fort Bragg, My Lai takes place, The US invades Cambodia and four students at Kent State were killed by Ohio State National Guardsmen. Jimi Hendrix dies and the US repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. These events changed the face of America, scarred it and left it with wounded pride.

But the music of this era is in my mind the best we ever had to offer. There was The Stones and The Dead, Airplane, Joplin, Motown, Folk, Dylan; while America was losing its footing on the world stage it was solidifying its place as the music center of the world. Whether it be love or hate when we are tuned up we are at our most creative, we are alive and at our most full animalistic selves.

Within four seconds Starr comes in with full Baritone and captures the feeling of the era. There are no if ands or buts about it here, the listener is getting thrown right into the riots and walking through the jungle scared shitless. He's watching a monk burning himself in the streets, watching his friend bleed to death screaming about going home while medics stick needles of morphine into his chest. And if that doesn't put you in the fight from the start when the boots start stomping in at the last minute visions of polished black leather coming for you certainly will.

There's B-52s at 20 thousand carpet bombing while A-4s drop napalm on villages. There's mosquitos on every visible part of your sweat stained body as you walk through the jungles waiting for a booby trap to go off or the man in the black pajamas to jump out from the bush. There's a woman with bushy underarms and saggy breasts burning her bra on a street corner next to a black panther extending a leather glove into the air. Jim Lovell is one hundred miles above the earth trapped in what he deems his final resting place, and a scared Second Lieutenant makes a decision that will change the course of his life. All these events are bottled up in that first four second drum roll until it comes back out with all the venom, spit and hatred that marks the dark side of man.

War itself has existed without stoppage for over four thousand years. As much as we want it to stop it never will. For one decade the effects and affects of war produced some of the most amazing soundtracks ever laid down. It makes me wonder why we are so different today. Maybe it is because we like to say we are concerned about the war but we don't feel it ourselves at home, maybe if your son was over there scared, shaking and wondering if this day will be his last while you sit at home worried sick over him, thinking the same thoughts we would feel it. But instead there's that new reality show on tonight and what the fuck I'll just throw a new plasma on the credit card so I can watch it in style. The moral bankruptcy on all levels is as heartbreaking as the intellectual and artistic dearth in popular culture. From my count the United States has had three Viet Nams since the first one but only one that spurned musical genius. I don't think that says a lot about us or at least it doesn't say anything good. The only thing that war was good for is gone in the present day: Music.