Does anyone do good protest music anymore?

Todd Snider's new album is a good one. Also, second the Steve Earl.

Springsteen. He writes protest songs all the time. "Born in the USA" was a protest song about Vietnam , but everybody thought that it was a patriotic song. Reagan even used it as a campaign song until Springsteen made him stop using it. "41 Shots" is a protest song dealing with the police shooting of that poor guy with his wallet in his hand. The song got the name because the police shot the guy 41 times. "Galveston Bay" is a song about the terrible treatment of the Vietnamese fishermen that settled in Galveston after they were forced to flee Vietnam for helping the USA during the war. On his newest album "Devils and Dust" the title song is about a soldier comimg home from Iraq. He wrote a great song about a Vietnam vet who was a tunnel rat in "Shut out the Light". The vet came home afraid of the dark. He also writes protests against the conditions of the poor and hopeless. "My hometown" is a protest against the harshness of Reaganism and big business. I don't know of a more active protest song writer. He even received boxes of broken records and CDs from conservatives because he campaigned for Kerry last year. Jim

Whoops, correct that last suggestion: it's John McCutcheon (my nominee for best candidate to fill Pete Seeger's shoes) when the time comes. On second thought John McGlaughlin's guitar playing could inspire a listener to go out and change the world.
Joe

Nrchy,

How about that old tune, "Da Speakers Hit Me In Da head, Da Turkey Stole My Wallet?"

As noted above Rage Against the Machine was 100% protest material, it's a real shame they broke up (Audioslave is not even close to what RATM was). I woulda loved to have seen RATM live *sigh*

Although I can't tolerate most rap music it should be considered protest material, rallying against inner-city issues such as poverty, gang warfare, etc. There's also the infamous "cross-over" bands e.g. Limp Bizkit (but it's easy to doubt their sincerity). Oh, Green Day's American Idiot takes a stance albeit it their issues seem to be primarily with GWB.

In my mind the big difference between protest music in the 60's and the stuff that has come out since is primarily in how it's delivered. The 1960's was peace & end the war, for the most part delivered in a folk song meant to appeal to your intellect and compassion. Bruce Cockburn kick-started a new generation of protests with more in-your-face lyrics ("Call it Democracy", "If I Had a Rocket Launcher", "People See Through You", "The Trouble With Normal", etc...) but added a little harder edge to the tunes. If you get a chance read Cockburn's lyrics, he's a brilliant song writer. Midnight Oil followed a similar vein, Peter Garrett was very much in tune with world issues and made a point of speaking his mind. Treatment of Aboriginals, corporations abusing the land for profit, superpowers acting as the world's conscience... Midnight Oil covered it all. In fact Peter is now "walking the walk" as a member of Parliament in Australia, doing his part to effect change. Midnight Oil was an awesome band live, gonna miss Pete and his antics.

To sum it all up protest tunes have been delivered a LOT more forecfully in the last 20 years than ever before (and cover a wider range of issues), there's a lot of anger out there folks.