Get all 29 David Rovics releases available on Bandcamp and save 70%.
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1. |
There Is A Cage
03:20
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There Is A Cage
You can listen to our leaders talk on TV
Imagine you know your democracy
Where people have rights, in a nation of laws
A right to a trial, just cause
Do something illegal, you might be detained
This is part of the way the system's maintained
But there's a special place where they take
Certain people whose spirits they want to break
There is a cage about three feet square
They hang it from the ceiling and put a person in there
Wherever you find them, it's a tell-tale sign
Of a society's precipitous decline
When the people in power feel they must resort
To conditions too confined to be sanctioned by the court
They keep prisoners in them for hours, days, weeks
As long as required for the end they seek
No marks left on the victim, what a perfect crime
No evidence of torture after all that time
Chorus
At the bombed prison of Khiam, in Holman Square
How many, how long, tortured in there
In Abu Ghraib, in Bagram
After all the mortars and bombs
You can hear about them and marvel at the plight
Of those souls disappeared into the Black Sites
It's where Turkey keeps the Kurds, and it's where you just might go
If you feed people in a park in San Francisco
Chorus
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2. |
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When Jesus Came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus walking through one night
With the thorns around his head, he seemed taller than his height
It was a crescent moon, a couple hours after dark
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus there by the turning lane
He looked distraught, walking in the rain
Past the service station on Chavez and Stark
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus walking down the street
When he hit 37th, he stopped to meet
The people in their tents, with all the scars that bore the mark
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus as he flew into a rage
Two thousand years after the Roman Age
He said “I wouldn't have bothered dying if I knew this would be the arc”
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus, he yelled “let's go downtown
Let's bring lots of petrol bombs and burn the banks all down”
He said “this shithole country is run by fucking oligarchs”
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
I saw Jesus, he said “if you be human
Grab your goddamn pitchforks,” and we all yelled “amen”
He said God will not be happy til we loot all of the loan sharks
When Jesus came to Laurelhurst Park
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3. |
It's Been A Year
02:59
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It's Been A Year
It's been a year since the virus arrived
A year since in this country half a million died
A year since all the borders were starting to be sealed
A year since the hospitals were sprouting in the fields
No question for anyone living around here
It's been a year
It's been a year since the cafes all closed
Since the dates on the calendars froze
As the windows turned to plywood, and the plywood turned to art
And unless you were essential or worked in a food cart
Then you just had to cope with the anxiety and fear
It's been a year
It's been a year since the wheels in motion
Led to an uprising on each side of the ocean
Exposed by the pandemic, by inequality
8 46 of the neck beneath the knee
A time of counter-demos, for a while a coup seemed near
It's been a year
It's been a year since canceling the rent
A year since the last of the money was spent
Since so many saw we're all vectors for disease
And there is such a thing as society
Since the words “mutual aid” became ones you'll commonly hear
Along with “grim milestone” – yes, it's been a year
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4. |
Dying on the Sidewalk
04:40
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Dying On The Sidewalk
Just down the road from here someone was shot
Thirty-one years, all the time he got
On Thirty-third Avenue, next to Cleveland High
Beside the street as I pass by
He was living in a tent – was that why
Someone decided he had to die?
In the halls of power, politicians talk
While their citizens are dying on the sidewalk
They declared a housing crisis years ago
What that means, no one seems to know
They'll pay for a few condos, complain about the bubble
Ignoring the fact that the rent just doubled
While paying close attention to the money men
Who they hope will get them elected again
Chorus
It's like they're talking about dirt, sweep them out of here
With people dying all around us every year
Over a hundred gone in 2019 alone
Those who don't get shot, get frozen to the bone
Because the wind never blew and the sky never cried
Like it did for all of those living outside
Chorus
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5. |
Kelly Butte
04:26
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Kelly Butte
In the first half of the 20th, if you lived around here
Certain words could make you shudder with fear
Especially those who found they often saw
The short end of the stick, the long arm of the law
The itinerant, the indigent, caught in the wrong place
Arrested and shipped eastward, gone without a trace
Sent to Kelly Butte, to split rocks at the quarry
To be just another convict who paved this city
The streets aren't paved with gold, they're paved with gravel
The sound of splitting rocks, preceded by the gavel
Sentenced to hard labor, to swing and swing again
Because if you work the poor to death, you'll make them better men
And anyway, the City Fathers needed people to pave
The streets, and if they die, they can dig each other's graves
Chorus
For over forty years that's how this stolen town was made
By convict labor – by workers never paid
They say it's history forgotten, behind a rusted door
How the scions of this city got rich from the poor
But where are the descendants of those buried in these graves?
They're living on the streets that their ancestors paved
Chorus
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6. |
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In the Hills of Forest Grove
In the hills of Forest Grove, there's not a whole lot going down
It's a mostly residential kind of quiet town
Further toward the coast, to the west of Hillsboro
If you want to have a family it's the kind of place you go
In the hills of Forest Grove, in the middle of the night
If the car alarm goes off, you figure that it might
Be a wandering raccoon, not an off-duty cop
Ignoring all your pleas and your children's cries as you beg him to stop
Seven minutes of terror that went on and on and on
There's a policeman on your lawn
In the hills of Forest Grove, on one side of a locked door
One little family wondered when it might hit the floor
And what would happen then, with no barrier between
Them and their attacker, in this terrifying scene
In the hills of Forest Grove, as his fists continued to pound
Who knew if this might end with bodies on the ground
The man was dangerous and armed, you could hear the glasses shatter
And what it was that set him off said “Black Lives Matter”
In the hills of Forest Grove, there was nary a dry eye
When the dispatch only asked, would you recognize the guy
Would you recognize him – because otherwise we could
Just pretend it didn't happen, like we normally would
In the hills of Forest Grove, no one's body cam was on
No consequences – now five months gone
They gave the officer a desk job – the indoor beat
In another five months you'll find him somewhere on the street
In the hills of Forest Grove
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7. |
A Song for Laurel
03:19
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A Song for Laurel
As you're heading back to the UN
Hoping to see the time when
The state might admit the guns in the troops' hands
Were following an officer's commands
Who fired on the crowd
Who were afraid to die but still unbowed
Standing up against a war of genocide
Compelled to take a side
How many lives destroyed or lost forever since that day
When they gunned your sister down on the 4th of May
As you make your journey with Allison's ghost
From your home that she brought you to, on the west coast
What if the soldiers were not sent
For the rest of us, what would that have meant
What victories might we have won
Were it not for all those cops and soldiers with their guns
If we hadn't just come so far
That now they either shoot us or run us over with a car
Chorus
As you go to issue your report
Speaking to the judges of the world's courts
I know you'll be telling them how
So little has changed til now
The mayors of Portland, Kenosha, Chicago
Call us the same things as fifty years ago
Proud Boys are encouraged to run us down all the while
It's the anarchists they say they want in jail, on trial
Chorus
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8. |
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American Dream Ponzi Scheme
It is we who built this city, and all the buildings where they trade
It is we who were the reasons for the money that they made
We moved to this place, made it worth a damn
I may be a dropout, but I can smell a scam
They sold us on the American Dream
But it was just a con man's Ponzi scheme
You say this place is so absolutely hip
You can sit on your veranda and take a little sip
Of the finest wine, as you look down
At one of several hundred tent encampments in this town
Chorus
You spent a million dollars to sit in the front row
As society collapses you can watch the show
You who have a mortgage can count your lucky stars
As you watch your neighbors move into their cars
Chorus
It is we who built this city, and all the buildings where they trade
It is we who were the reasons for the money that they made
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9. |
Woke
01:38
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Woke
If you want to change the world, that's good
If you give a shit, you should
You can organize, but you better be sure
All your motives are moral and your words are pure
Say the wrong thing and the PC police
Will hound you from Oregon to Greece
They'll picket at your concerts, harass everyone you meet
Who's driving in your neighborhood or sharing your tweets
We're so woke, this ain't no joke, before the day is through
Step out of line, that's the sign – we'll cancel you
Whatever it is you're doing, cancel culture doesn't care
Because it's not about where you're going, but what you say before you get there
Make sure to get your pronouns right, don't fuck up any verb
Otherwise you might just end up lying on the curb
Chorus
If you have the wrong opinion on the matters of the week
We'll make sure to attack you every time you speak
It's our favorite form of activism, you can do it all alone
You can feel so righteous just sitting with your phone
Chorus
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10. |
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Shoplifting at Whole Foods
The economy is crashed but the landlord wants the rent
That's where all the Pandemic Unemployment money went
Along with medicine and food, but now the aid is gone
And we can't eat those nice “we're in it together” signs on your lawn
So the ranks of the evicted are growing every day
More and more tent cities, moving in to stay
Hungry parents stealing just to feed their broods
And the most discerning ones shoplift at Whole Foods
'Cause it's owned by the world's biggest corporation
You can call it petty crime or you can call it liberation
If you do it by yourself, it might not go so well
But if you call a flash mob and watch your numbers swell
Bring the kids and have a picnic – use a fork, don't be rude
And make sure to wear a mask when you shoplift at Whole Foods
Chorus
All of Bezos' billions has made society unstable
He's so rich, while so many can't put food upon the table
They can hope we'll just die quietly, but I'm not in the mood
I'd rather gather friends up and go shoplift at Whole Foods
Chorus
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David Rovics Portland, Oregon
Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), anarchist, dad, lover of life.
David Rovics recommends:
A Hand Full Of Songs
by Jim Page
Seattle's Jim Page is one of the very best songwriters in the English language (and just as oriented towards what we might call the world around him as I am).
go to album
Ryan Harvey of Baltimore is another of my favorite songwriters, writers and organizers on the planet.
go to album
Heart First Aid Kit
by Grace Petrie & the PC Brigade
Moving across the pond, here's one more of my favorite rabble-rousing songwriters -- Grace Petrie.
go to albumIf you like It's Been A Year, you may also like:
G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!
by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
supported by 5 fans who also own “It's Been A Year”
haha, they said pee *ascends the staircase of holy light*
go to album
Father and daughter team up to make pretty folk music inspired by the day she was born and the day she'll leave home.
go to album
