Name: When Julian Met Stella by davidrovics in Songs Related to Wikileaks
Duration: 1 min 58 s
Description: At the beginning of May, 2022, after doing several gigs together and some rehearsing, Kamala Emanuel and I turned Jane and Tony's living room into a recording studio for a few days.

Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been indispensable in so many efforts around the world to bring governments to account for their crimes and corruption.  Here's a selection of songs related to their work.

Songs Related to Wikileaks

All songs from 2020, except for a couple from late 2019. Mostly songs that have appeared in solo guitar form on various other recordings from the past year, plus a few that haven't. All songs being given the band treatment for the first time, and what a band treatment it is. My best effort at distilling 2020 into an album, basically.

06. Behind These Prison Walls

01. They Lied

My friend Keith McHenry is one of many people around the world who has been held in a cage like the one he drew, of the secret black site where the San Francisco police tortures their prisoners, in such a way that leaves no mark.  They kept him in there for days on end, on multiple occasions.

I wrote the lyrics, and the brilliant Olympia folk punk phenomenon known as Virtual Bird set it to music, and that's Jane Reynolds delivering the vocals.

The song goes out to all the victims of torture, everywhere, who have been held in such cages.

There Is A Cage

On the same day journalists received the Nobel Peace Prize, another journalist is one step closer to being extradited to to the US to face 175 years behind bars -- after the CIA has already made their assassination plans clear.  Would the Royal Courts of Justice have extradited Jamal Kashoggi, too?

If His Name Were Jamal Kashoggi

At the beginning of May, 2022, after doing several gigs together and some rehearsing, Kamala Emanuel and I turned Jane and Tony's living room into a recording studio for a few days.

When Julian Met Stella

The danger of ignoring obvious historical parallels to unfolding events is the prospect of repeating them.

Just Like the Nazis Did

Sleep For Weeks

The words "collateral damage" have come to mean dead civilians. This song puts those words in context.


Collateral Damage

you loved your sweet country for all of your life
like your mother and father before you
the land runs deep, so deep in your blood
your flesh and your bone and your sinews
descendants and ancestors, deep as it goes
a relative circle as far as your eye
it can all be undone in the flash of an instant
mechanical thunder that bruises the sky

(chorus)
goodbye to my relatives, all of my life
never again will I see
you won't have a name when they fly the big airplanes
collateral damage is all you will be

from a faraway place where the language is strange
they come with their angry machines
and the clouds rain a metal that hurts when it falls
and it shatters the ground, making everything scream
and the children run crippled, the old people hide
the babies are caught in the rubble debris
but the strangers don’t know you, you are only a number
and how can they respect what they can’t even see

(chorus)

a mother is more than a number to a baby
who now has to grow up on it’s own
and a grandfather blinded and crippled at his age
is more than just a statistical drone
all of these people are human beings
and deserve to be more than a footnote
this cynical language of killing is killing us
caught like a bone in humanity’s throat

(chorus)

so if you see a ghost in the lonely wind blowing
like shrapnel the sound of the rain
and it’s speaking a language you don’t understand
but you know what it means just the same
it’s too late for innocence, all of that’s over now
don’t say that you didn’t know
when they come to collect for the damages owed
the collateral may be your own

(chorus)

Collateral Damage

Hammer

David Rovics 8/11/2008 gig at Beginnings, Briceland, CA produced by Andy Caffrey

This piece was inspired by Conlon Nancarrow; not that I'm very familiar with his work, but his method was enough to inspire me to create a piece in a similar style to his own. It was made using one note, replicating it and dragging it to exactly the right place as many times as I needed, for both piano and harpsichord. That is, until I added in a new sound at the end, giving a lot of distortion to it.

I did not expect it to become as popular as it has, given that it was a rather momentary, on the spur, and random creation, and it is less conventionally accessible than many of my other pieces. My only regret may be that this has overshadowed my other work in terms of popularity.

I've created a sequel, and am currently working on a third Conlon Nancarrow inspired piece, but so far they've not measured up to the original. However, there are some interesting and exciting twists in the second piece, 'The Next Level', and I've put the third piece to the side, 'Piano Madness: The Spirit of Conlon Nancarrow Returns', having been unsatisfied with it, though I may attempt it again at some point.

Conlon Nancarrow Tribute

The San Patricios -- the international brigade you've probably never heard of (half a century before the Spanish Civil War).  This version is from Live in Rostrevor (2016) with Lorna McKinnon on harmonies.

St. Patrick Battalion

Episode 1: Tolpuddle Martyrs Part 1

There are various causes of deadly new novel viruses, as I have recently learned, along with many of you.  One of them is climate change, so we can be sure we'll be seeing more of them.  But whatever the reasons for the fatality rate of Covid-19, we do know why the last global pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu" in 1918 was so extremely deadly.  It was a pandemic caused by the particular conditions of the trenches of World War 1, and the movements of troops around the world at the end of the war.  This war virus ultimately killed more human beings on planet Earth in six months -- in every corner of the globe -- than the carnage of World War 1 caused in four years.

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

The Pandemic of 1918

This trailer has been superseded. Please go to https://soundcloud.com/tayo-aluko/paul-robesons-love-song-by-tayo-aluko-the-trailer/

Paul Robeson's Love Song (trailer)(superceded)

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

When Julian Met Stella

davidrovics

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