Jena

Words and music by JOHN MELLENCAMP
From his 2008 album
LIFE, DEATH LOVE AND FREEDOM
And also released as a single

I came to the story of Jena through this song by John Mellencamp, and am confused. The town's mayor appears to have been angered by the lyrics, but one thing I know about Mellencamp is that he doesn't hide from difficult subjects.

An all white jury hides the executioner's face
See how we are, me and you?
Everyone here needs to know their place
Let's keep this blackbird hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down
So what becomes of boys that cannot think straight
Particularly those with paper bag skin
Yes sir, no sir we'll wipe that smile right off your face
We've got our rules here and you must fit in

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down
Some day some way sanity will prevail
But who knows when that day might come
A shot in the dark, well it just might find its way
To the hearts of those that hold the keys to kingdom come

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena

Take those nooses down

Oh oh hey Jena
Oh oh Jena
Oh oh Jena

Take your nooses down
Take those nooses all down

Streets of London

Words and music by RALPH McTELL
From the 1969 album SPIRAL STAIRCASE
And released as a single in 1974

In London, we're about to see the start of a campaign where buses will carry posters stating "there is no God". This powerful song, still relevant, shows many of the real problems that this and other cities still face.

Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
with his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news

So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind

Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She's no time for talking,
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags.

Chorus

In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven,
Same old man is sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his tea-cup,
Each tea last an hour
Then he wanders home alone

Chorus

And have you seen the old man
Outside the seaman's mission
Memory fading with
The medal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city,
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care

Papa don't preach

Words and music by MADONNA
From the album TRUE BLUE(1986)
Also released as a single

This song seems topical right now. There was some controversy at the time that it was glorifying teenage preganancy, but I'd rather glorify teenage pregnancy than teenage abortion.

Papa I know you're going to be upset
'Cause I was always your little girl
But you should know by now
I'm not a baby

You always taught me right from wrong
I need your help, daddy please be strong
I may be young at heart
But I know what I'm saying

The one you warned me all about
The one you said I could do without
We're in an awful mess, and I don't mean maybe - please

(CHORUS)
Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach, I've been losing sleep
But I made up my mind, I'm keeping my baby, oh
I'm gonna keep my baby, mmm...

He says that he's going to marry me
We can raise a little family
Maybe we'll be all right
It's a sacrifice

But my friends keep telling me to give it up
Saying I'm too young, I ought to live it up
What I need right now is some good advice, please

Daddy, daddy if you could only see
Just how good he's been treating me
You'd give us your blessing right now
'Cause we are in love, we are in love, so please


Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach, I've been losing sleep

Oh, I'm gonna keep my baby, ooh
Don't you stop loving me daddy
I know, I'm keeping my baby

labelled with love

Words by CHRIS DIFFORD
Music by GLENN TILLBROOK
From the 1981 SQUEEZE album EAST SIDE STORY
And also released as a single.

I have two favourite Squeeze songs - Up the Junction for music, and this for words. Having heard it again recently, I remembered just how powerful those words were, weaving a picture of a woman who is rejected by those around her, but who, like any human being, had a life worth remembering.

She unscrews the top of a new whiskey bottle
And shuffles about in her candle lit hovel,
Like some kind of witch with blue fingers in mittens
She smells like the cat and the neighbours she sickens,
The black and white t.v. has long seen a picture
The cross on the wall is a permanent fixture,
The postman delivers the final reminders
She sells off her silver and poodles in china.

CHORUS:
Drinks to remember, I me and myself
And winds up the clock
And knocks dust from the shelf
Home is a love that I miss very much
So the past has been bottled and labelled with love.

During the war time an american pilot
Made every air raid a time of excitement,
She moved to his prairie and married the texan
She learnt from a distance how love was a lesson,
He became drinker and she became mother
She knew that one day she’d be one or the other,
He ate himself older, drunk himself dizzy
Proud of her features, she kept herself pretty.

He like a cowboy died drunk in his slumber
Out on the porch in the middle of summer,
She crossed the ocean back home to her family
But they had retired to roads that were sandy,
She moved home alone without friends or relations
Lived in a world full of age reservation,
On moth eaten armchairs she’d say that she’d sod all
The friends who had left her to drink from the bottle.

South Texas Girl

Words and music by LYLE LOVETT
From the 2007 album
IT'S NOT BIG IT'S LARGE

I heard this song recently on Bob Harris' Country show on BBC Radio 2, and thought, "this is perfect".

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

Three in the front seat they sat on each side
That green-and-white 58 Fairlane it would glide
Down farm roads past open fields seeming like no big deal
As it was happening I never felt a thing

But now looking back it seems like it was everything
Singing with mom just so we could hear ourselves sing
Stealing a drink from the cold can in daddy's lap
Protected by only a small thin brown paper sack

And the wind blew the echoes of long-faded voices
And they'd sing me a song that the old cowboys sang
And I didn't know what the words meant or anything
I was just singing because I was supposed to

Sing Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

And with the windows wide open it felt hot to us anyway
Three bound together on a day just like any day
They told me and taught me and showed me and bought me
Whatever I wanted from the corner U-tote-M

They say the name Corpus Christi means the body of Jesus
Pronounce it Refugio city folks they don't know
It looks like Palacios but sounds like
Just listen the next time you're watchin' Sid Lasher

And the wind blew the echoes of long-faded voices
And they would sing me a song that the old cowboys sang
And I didn't know what the words meant or anything
I was just singing

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

And I didn't know what the words meant or anything
I was just singing

And these days with car seats and open container laws
Social correctness leaves no room for Santa Claus
Sitting right next to me she looks like that used to be
Song that they sang for me

And with the windows wide open it feels hot to us anyway
Two bound together on a day just like any day
The wind blows the echoes of long-faded voices
And they sing us a song that the old cowboys sang
And now that I know what the words mean and everything
I am still singing

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we stumble around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

Saint Mother Maria watch over us please
As we wonder around in this dangerous world
Thank Mother Maria there's nothing so sweet
As the undying love of a South Texas girl

Don't Let's be beastly to the Germans

Words and mucic by NOEL COWARD
From the album
NOT TO BE BROADCAST: BANNED BY THE BBC

Two BBC Radio 2 disk-jockeys, Sheridan Morley and Desmond Carrington, have recently featured songs in their shows that were once banned by the BBC. They come from a new CD, This Record Must not be Broadcast: Banned by the BBC - sort of speaks for itself. The lyrics of this song by Noël Coward, featured on the album, display a prescience for the way radicals seem to feel alarmed and even ashamed at the prospect of military victory.

We must be kind
And with an open mind
We must endeavour to find
A way-
To let the Germans know that when the war is over
They are not the ones who'll have to pay.
We must be sweet-
And tactful and discreet
And when they've suffered defeat
We mustn't let
Them feel upset
Or ever get
The feeling that we're cross with them or hate them,
Our future policy must be to reinstate them.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight
And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite
Let's be meek to them-
And turn the other cheek to them
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity-
And treat the rats with charity,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

We must be just-
And win their love and trust
And in additon we must
Be wise
And ask the conquered lands to join our hands to aid them.
That would be a wonderful surprise.
For many years-
They've been in floods of tears
Because the poor little dears
Have been so wronged and only longed
To cheat the world,
Deplete the world
And beat
The world to blazes.
This is the moment when we ought to sing their praises.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When we've definately got them on the run-
Let us treat them very kindly as we would a valued friend
We might send them out some Bishops as a form of lease and lend,
Let's be sweet to them-
And day by day repeat to them
That 'sterilization' simply isn't done.
Let's help the dirty swine again-
To occupy the Rhine again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When the age of peace and plenty has begun.
We must send them steel and oil and coal and everything they need
For their peaceable intentions can be always guaranteed.
Let's employ with them a sort of 'strength through joy' with them,
They're better than us at honest manly fun.
Let's let them feel they're swell again and bomb us all to hell again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
For you can't deprive a ganster of his gun
Though they've been a little naughty to the Czechs and Poles and Dutch
But I don't suppose those countries really minded very much
Let's be free with them and share the B.B.C. with them.
We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun.
Let's soften their defeat again-and build their bloody fleet again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Badge

Words by GEORGE HARRISON
Music by ERIC CLAPTON
From the CREAM album GOODBYE
and released as a single in 1969

I heard this song for the first time in a long time on BBC Radio 2 when they broadcast a concert by Eric Clapton, and realised I'd forgotten how wistful George Harrison's lyrics were. It was interesting to hear the roots of Harrison's middle-8 guitar break in Here Comes the Sun in the coda to the song, and I realised: great art never ages.

Im thinking about the times you drove in my car
Im thinking that I might have drove you too far
Im thinking of the love
That you laid on my table

I told you not to wander round in the dark
I told you bout the swans that they live in the park
Then I told you about our kid
Now hes married to mabel

Yes I told you that the life goes up and down
Notice how the wheel goes round?
And youd better pick yourself up from the ground
Before they bring the curtain down
Yes before they bring the curtain down

Talking about a girl that looks quite like you
She didnt have the time to wait in the queue
She cried away her life since she fell out the cradle