Some of the songs in this playlist are the original recordings I made in my living room with a USB mic and the refrigerator humming in the background, while others were recorded in a studio.  For playlist liner notes, check out davidrovics.com/2020music.

2020 Musical Timeline

When I write a new song, especially if it's about current events, I usually make a primitive recording of it and put it up here in this playlist.  (Eventually the song will usually get recorded better, and put out on an album.)

Broadsides

A song about current events or one related to this date in history, with a little bit of context.  Available on all the usual podcasting platforms if you look for This Week with David Rovics.

Song For Today

These are all songs I haven't yet recorded in a studio.  All but two of them were written since my last album recording project in Ireland in October, 2019.  I re-recorded most of these songs on February 16th, 2020, with the aim of getting a better recording quality than I had gotten originally for most of them.  Then I boosted the signal by 4 or 5 db for most of the tracks.  The only one of these songs that I didn't record with a single USB mic plugged into my laptop is "Behind These Prison Doors."  That song is the audio from the video we made in front of Belmarsh Prison in London, England.

I can barely afford the rent in my apartment at the moment, and I just put out an album recently, so I'm not thinking much about another studio recording project, except that it would be good, for a lot of different reasons, to record these songs in a studio, with other musicians, and make a real album of high enough quality to fit in on the streaming platforms and get listened to.  If these songs are going to have their optimal impact, they need to be recorded in a studio, and some of them, like songs about 2020 electoral campaigns, for example, really would be best off recorded very soon.  When I reach 100 patrons at www.patreon.com/davidrovics, I'll make studio plans for this album.  Working title, Here In The Matrix.

Here In The Matrix

A little background to the refugee crisis on the US/Mexico border.  These refugees were "made in the USA."  The least we could do is let them in to the country that destroyed theirs.  Also international law is on their side, but the Constitutional law professor in the White House and most members of both parties of Congress don't seem to care about that.

From the album, When I'm Elected President:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Lyrics:

US Embassy

There was a coup in Guatemala, the CIA sent planes
To assist the Guatemalan generals in tightening the chains
Two hundred thousand Indians killed in thirty years
As butchers of their people, the generals have no peers
Where did they get their guns up to this very day
From the men of the CIA

There was a coup in Chile 'cause the US couldn't stand
A democratic government that might give a helping hand
So the generals took over after they had made a pact
With their friends in Washington, and that's a simple fact
This is what we look like when you scratch away the fuzz
This is what America does

But there's never been a coup in Washington, DC
Because they don't have a US embassy

There was a coup in Haiti that overthrew the priest
Who was representing those who had the very least
They were almost self-sufficient, standing on their feet
When the generals insisted on democracy's defeat
The CIA headed south and the lifeboats sallied forth
This is why the refugees go north

There was a coup in Tegucigalpa, I promise I'm not lying
As a consequence of this people are leaving and dying
Gunning down democracy is the USA's MO
It could be called Hypocrisy if it were a TV show
But this is not a fiction, these are bodies full of lead
And thousands and thousands of refugees on the border dead

US Embassy

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

It's a pattern, ever present in the places that don't strictly regulate the abilities of the rich to make more money at the expense of everybody else.  Currently one of many cities that the wealthy developers are trying to destroy is my latest home town of Portland, Oregon.

Lyrics:

Gentrification Town

I've moved out of three cities 'cause I couldn't pay the rent
Folks like me weren't welcome so I packed it up and went
It's always the same story, I find a place I wanna be
And soon enough I'm joined by all the other refugees
Then watch the websites warble, this is the hippest place to hang
Hey check out Division, it's the sweetest thing since Tang
Then watch the millionaires come in and build a luxury hotel
Sipping coffee on the sidewalk, saying isn't this place swell

Rents are going up and the neighborhood's going down
Here in Gentrification Town

See the families leave the city, watch how they accept their fate
Except the ones who had the timing right and bought some real estate
The ones who had the timing and the ones who had the credit
The ones who paid attention to whoever it was who said it
This is a nation that won't suffer utopians or fools
He who has the gold rules
He who has the gold, he who bought the stock
He who is the landlord who owns your block

They say you can't blame the yuppies, they're just responding to the will
Of the market and the strength of the US dollar bill
But the dollar's only strong if you have some to your name
Otherwise you're on the business end of the game
The end that just stays home 'cause they can't afford the show
The end that has to pack their things and find a place to go
The new hip place to be, for a little while, then
The wrecking balls move in and chase us out again

Gentrification Town

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Turning away refugees is unfortunately a long tradition in the US.  But the propaganda represented by the Statue of Liberty is really lovely stuff.  If only it were much more real.

Lyrics:

Statue in the Harbor

Give us your huddled masses yearning to be free
That's what it says on the Statue of Liberty
And here they come, from the other side
Across the southern border, across the great divide

And now they're told that they should go away
But the statue in the harbor says "stay"

Give us your cold and hungry, let them come by land or sea
Let them all find solace in this land of refugees
Escaping persecution, just trying to survive
And they worked as hard as Guatemalans as soon as their ships arrived

Give us your persecuted, but only if they're white
It doesn't say that on the statue that holds aloft the light
What did you think would happen in the lands you overthrew
Where should all the children go after the coup

Statue in the Harbor

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

Although I wrote it during the current (July 2014) Israeli invasion of Gaza, this is a song about how life in Gaza is under "peacetime."

Lyrics:

Gaza

One point eight million people surrounded on all sides
Refugees since '48, since '67, occupied
The only reason they're not starving is down to the UN
Most have never left there, stuck in the lion's den
The most crowded place on Earth, and there they'll stay
They can't visit friends or cousins a half hour's drive away
Drones overhead constantly
Who will die tomorrow, a daily mystery
In Gaza

The settlers moved out, fighter jets moved in
In Gaza there's just no way you can win
You can't take out a copter with an antiquated gun
You're just a target sitting in the sun
Waiting for your death to come raining from the sky
Where the end really is nigh
You can hear a sonic boom and see a flashing light
Every hour of the day, every hour of the night
In Gaza

There are no shelters, nowhere you can hide
Life is nothing like it is on the other side
There's nothing post about the traumatic stress
There's never more, usually less
And still some people wonder, they insist on asking why
Anyone would be so mad as to reply
So mad as to think that it might make sense
To lob some missiles over the fence
From Gaza

Gaza

A high-quality studio version of this song can be found on this album:
https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/when-im-elected-president-wayfaring-stranger-double-album

RIP Michael Brown.  Unarmed teen executed in broad daylight by racist cop.

Lyrics:

His Hands Were In The Air

The town is mostly black, almost all the cops are white
You can see it right away, something isn't right
There's no funding for the schools and they're being shut down
The powers that be don't give a shit about the town

They were walking in the street, it's the safest place to be
In case someone comes shooting, you got a better view to see
They were walking in the street, they weren't hurting anyone
Then came a white man with a badge and a gun

His hands were in the air (4x)

“Get the fuck off the sidewalk,” that's what the cop said
He cut them off in his car, fat face, blood red
The cop says he was attacked, and from a cursory check
It seems his fingers were assaulted by Michael Brown's neck

There were witnesses who saw it, it was recorded on a phone
But the police couldn't handle the light that would've shone
She was forced to hand it over so they could try to hide away
A racist execution in the middle of the day

He had just finished high school and was off to college next
Instead he was shot and killed with no pretext
The media joined in, called the community a mob
A cop called them animals while Michael's mother sobbed

His Hands Were in the Air

On April 18th, 2012, Khader Adnan was released from an Israeli prison after being on hunger strike for 66 days. He was objecting, among other things, to Israel’s policy of indefinite detention without trial, which still continues — but only for Palestinians.

Khader Adnan

On April 19th, 1943, what might be accurately described as the greatest urban rebellion in the history of civilization began.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

On April 20th, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing eleven workers and causing the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Deepwater Horizon

On April 22nd, 1991, a young Palestinian named Saed Bannoura was shot 6 times by IDF soldiers — but he refused to die.

The First Intifada

On April 23rd, 1971, veterans of the war in Vietnam carried out a series of operations in Washington, DC, actions involving thousands of recently-returned soldiers, one of which involved the depositing on the White House lawn of 700 medals veterans had received for their service in the military.

Throwing of Medals

Free Julian Assange.  This version is from my 2021 album, Rebel Songs.

Behind These Prison Walls

One of the lesser-known details about the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War is how badly the Republican refugees were treated in France, after they fled over the border, running for their lives.  The Vichy authorities, after the Nazi occupation, were worse.  But for 2,200 of the refugees in France, the fate of their comrades would be avoided, as Pablo Neruda and the government of Chile at the time had arranged for a cargo ship, the SS Winnipeg.

Recorded live as part of the Viral Solidarity Concert project at Big Red Studio on April 2nd, 2020.

Across The Ocean Wide (When The Winnipeg Set Sail)

If Bernie Sanders has any chance of getting into the White House, it will only be because he was propelled there by a massive popular movement.  His own party's leadership would rather have fascism than socialism, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Bernie 2020

BREAKING NEWS:  There are no cross-Canada trains running, because the tracks are blocked by Mohawks and others participating in blockades across the colonized nation.  Thousands of travelers and billions of dollars worth of freight is currently not moving.

Wet'suwet'en

Among the most eloquent of America's political prisoners is from Texas.  He is serving a fifty-year sentence for nothing more than a blatantly obvious act of self-defense against a murder attempt by a racist cop.  The cop even admitted as much -- an admission which later mysteriously changed, of course.  Alvaro is up for parole, at least potentially, in 2021.  From my 2020 album, Notes From A Failed State.  #FreeAlvaro

Ballad of Alvaro Luna Hernandez

In preparation for the next Democratic presidential candidate debates, here are some musical thoughts on the Democratic party establishment apologists for plutocracy and empire who will be ganging up on the insurgent front-runner, Bernie Sanders, in the coming weeks and months.

To Agree With The DNC

A number of striking graduate student teachers in California requested a song for the picket lines.  Here's one musical offering.  I'm very much looking forward to visiting California in late March to sing on the picket lines in person!

Spread The Strike

Particularly in countries with governments as bought-off and incompetent as ours in the US, how society copes with the current moment will depend primarily on our ability to support each other -- mutual aid.

Viral Solidarity

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), libertarian socialist, dad, lover of life.