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Not much time this week, which doesn’t explain why I chose a song that would need a lot of exposition to make it even come close to being a valid geoMp3 of The Week. So here are some fragments and you can piece it together if you want. If you care.

Obama elected despite old-timey shouts of “socialism” and “red” from opponent. Real socialist Che Guevara celebrated in song written for WNYC’s Soundcheck radio show songwriting contest. Song is a clever alternative scenario where Guevara pulls up lame, well short of any real revolutionary action. Song is beautifully, languidly performed by One Ring Zero (Want proof? Witness the song performed by its original author and you’ll see a big difference between a band that crafts songs and a guy who overenthusiastically mimics acoustic pop riffs.) Song being placed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, where the cool demeanor of the song itself reflects much more the demeanor of the new president than the rabid, aggressive, reactionary demeanor of the last one. Want proof? Ask those confused, dumb fuckers at Guantanimo or those dead, dead fuckers who used to be at La Cabaña Fortress before they got squelched by Guevara. Ask them how much they think Obama resembles a dangerous, socialist terrorist. If Obama is really a dangerous Guevarian maniac, it sure looks like he’s been waking up on Che Guevara Mondays lately. (Convincing?)

“Che Guevara Monday,” from the Soundcheck songwriting contest.

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.

Turns out I’m a cynical gloomist. This week saw a momentous rebuttal of the great rightward veer of the last eight years and the still inexplicable approval of that track in 2004. Kerry was no prize pig, of course. That was easy to see. But to vote for Bush in 2004 meant you either A) hated gay people so much you just had to have somebody in the White House who would stack the Supreme Court and hopefully disallow even the proclamation of gayness, or B) really, really wanted the U.S. to be renowned internationally as a fundamentalist Christian army involved in a global pseudo-holy war. Oh, wait, C) would be that you were one of the no-bid contractors that made out like a bandit in Iraq as soldiers in Afghanistan looked around and wondered what the fuck they had done to anger their commander-in-chief so much that he abandoned the only potentially just military effort in the Middle East.

But, oh, we’re still embarrassingly right, it turns out. So this week’s track is going to be a song that in 2006 expressed a very specific kind of anger — about why the fuck our government officials were worrying about rolling up their shirtsleeves without actually rolling up their shirtsleeves following Katrina. So let’s presume we’re not going to see a gaggle of white dudes laughing at the plight of poor black people in New Orleans, and let’s instead keep this song around and transfer its anger to another injustice that apparently even black people don’t mind participating in — the approval of Prop 8 in California and similar measures in Florida and Arizona.

The song itself is a protest, obviously, and originally written by Blind Alfred Reed. This performance is Springsteen’s, who obviously likes to dress up like Woodie Guthrie for Halloween, but it’s really good. But in terms of its relationship with place: the song’s uprising spirit goes in Grant Park, because of the information that scene should put into George Bush’s dark little brain (and my crush on Michelle Obama). But the anger that once belonged in the lower 9th Ward or some other disaster scene in Louisiana should now go out West (well, all over, really). And you bastards in your bloodless and uneven marriages should ask yourselves why your precious, divine overlord will ordain a black man as president (What? Palin herself told James Dobson [who else?] that God would make the right decision on election day) but why that son of a bitch doesn’t want two loving adults to be able to marry.

“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?,” from a Sold on Song show broadcast on May 13, 2006.

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.

Well, I couldn’t care less about baseball, but I’m very busy and need to phone this one in. It’s Woodie Guthrie giving it to a “Philadelphia Lawyer” who made a little love to a cowboy’s “Hollywood maid.” There’s actually a lot going on here that I could get into if I had the time — not least of which is that I think I could pretty easily tie this to the anti-intellectualism that has taken deep root in the modern socio-political scene and the complicated mythos of westward expansion, frontierism, and…wait for it…maverickism (seriously) — but I ain’t got no time (is that better? Does that make me seem more patriotic?)

Anyway, because Philadelphia’s been in the news, because I’m swamped, because it at least mentions places, and because it always helps to have Woodie Guthrie around, feel free to do with Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer” what you please. But I’m dropping it wherever TeleAtlas tells me “Philadelphia” is (also because I’m too lazy to research the story that supposedly inspired this song).

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.

Say what you will about the ACLU, they…know about GIS. Their “Constitution-Free Zone of the United States” would be a good primer for GIS newbs, for what it’s worth. That is, if you weren’t afraid of introducing social politics into the classroom.

Oh, apparently GeoServer isn’t the dog everybody thinks when it comes to raster data. Benchmarking at FOSS4G puts GeoServer right up there. And who serves up shapefiles anymore? (I’m not sure that’s a joke or not. Of course people do, but less and less, right?)

Ordinarily, heavy-handedness ain’t my bag. In any sphere, but especially in music. So, yeah, I would like to have seen a little more subtlety from Warrant with “Cherry Pie.” But Roger Waters is one who almost always gets a pass from me. Something about his anger appeals to me. So bulky metaphors like “the wall” in the old days and those obnoxious backup singers and saxaphones he tours with these days — all of which are usually wont to disqualify an artist from my library and, by extension, the geoMp3 of The Week — are given the go-ahead because they’re in service of a bad-ass flood of vitriol and frustration.

So this week’s track is a live cut from Waters’ recent Dark Side of the Moon tour, specifically from the stop in Santiago, Chile. It’s a song I had never heard before (I’m not a great follower of Waters’ is the truth), but I love it for all the reasons we should all hate Warrant’s…well, everything from Warrant and all of Warrant’s kin. The song is bold, not in any real way innovative, and in no way whatsoever nuanced. It will be placed in Beirut, Lebanon, the site of the song’s nominal story arc, which centers on a family that once took in a young, wandering Waters and showed great hospitality. Waters, now singing this song many years later, wonders aloud about the fate of that gracious family of — gasp! foreigners — who showed a shaggy Englishman real, genuine, old-timey (do I go against everything I know and say “Biblical”?) hospitality back in 1961 in “that cauldron that was Lebanon.”

Anyway, this performance (I’ve never heard the studio version) starts out strong with “But now an Englishman abroad is just a US stooge.” Okay, so the scene is decently-set: we’re outside of the U.S., post-9/11, taking in some of what the Bush Doctrine has begotten. If you can let your ears bleed out during the synth parts, you’ll eventually be treated to a rousing condemnation:

Are these the people that we should bomb?
Are we so sure they mean us harm?
Is this our pleasure, punishment or crime?
Is this a mountain that we really want to climb?
The road is hard, hard and long
Put down that two by four
This man would never turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small

I warned you about the instrument. Don’t blame the player. But that part I can take or leave. Bush himself is an easy target. It’s the part that addresses the U.S. itself and the promise we’ve drawn a big scar over this last decade that makes me choose this one. As vicious the condemnation, the plea (to us, Americans) is more intense still:

Is gentleness too much for us?
Should gentleness be filed along with empathy?
We feel for someone else’s child
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
Someone else’s child dies and equities in defence rise
America, America, please hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and bustle
You got Atticus Finch
You got Jane Russell
You got freedom of speech
You got great beaches, wildernesses and malls
Don’t let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the rest of the world

It’s a protest song at a time when nobody seems to give a shit about protest songs. But you’re not likely to hear a more direct, honest, deserved request than that one verse. Except for maybe “Cherry Pie,” second stanza.

“Leaving Beirut,” from the 50,000 Lunatics on the Grass bootleg (Santiago de Chile, March 14, 2007.

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.

Edit for an important reminder:
Vote and prove you’re not anti-American.
(It wouldn’t hurt if you also vote for a ticket that doesn’t support anti-intellectualism and jingoism.)

Pete at Ickmusic.com has posted a quick thing about Greg Brown’s “Eugene.” I have some Greg Brown entries in the geoMp3 of The Week archives, but no “Eugene.” Truth is, I don’t really like it that much (I prefer the emotionally drained, long-walk-home Greg Brown to the hippie Luddite). But nonetheless, I of course applaud bloggers who include the natural mystique of place as a criterion in their choice of music.

Dylan could get a little heavy-handed in the old days. When he wasn’t being intentionally obfuscational and impressionist, I mean (shot a fire full of holes, did he?). But for all of “Hollis’” plot, it still has exactly what you want Dylan to do. For every “You spent your last lone dollar on seven shotgun shells” you have one of these to offset it:

There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean’s pounding roar

Any emo treading into blues territory (are there many of those?) could easily drop a gunshot into a stanza, but I guarantee they wouldn’t have seven breezes blowing around the door.

And then comes the punchline, so to speak:
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There’s seven new people born

…which Lyle Lofgren wrote “is probably the coldest piece of poetry I’ve ever heard.” (Nevermind that ten new people were probably born, but this track has enough going for it without the looming spectre of overpopulation and fresh water shortages and such).

So you’re getting “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”, but guess what: it’s a Nina Simone performance instead of Dylan. Why? Because Nina Simone is a kick-ass mama. And recently my own kick-ass mama thanked me for putting some Nina Simone on a playlist for her, which means Nina Simone is here for good in the geoLibro household.

And although there are some ideas about the origin of the song being paired to either true crime events or older folk songs, I’m putting this one down right where it says — rural South Dakota.

So it’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” performed by Nina Simone on Let it All Out (1966).

Google Maps Mania posted about a mashup that puts Anton Corbijn music videos in their earthly places. Anton Corbijn as Music Video Director does just what it sounds like, and it’s of note here for obvious reasons. (No, it will not substitute as the geoMp3 of the Week, even though I’m already late on this week’s post).

So “Me and Paul” will always be a Willie Nelson song. And appropriately so given the looseness of the story (”well I guess Buffalo ain’t geared…”) is always perfectly matched by Nelson and family’s loose live style (in particular Nelson’s very loose guitar).

But the version that makes it to geoMp3 of The Week this week is by Doug Sahm, he of the very long career and perhaps most famously for his Sir Douglas Quintent (or maybe most famously for his participation, with Flaco Jimenez, Augie Meyers and Freddy Fender, in the Texas Tornadoes?). Why not use a superior Willie Nelson performance? Because it’s more compelling to think of the “Me” in “Me and Paul” as someone other than Nelson. Willie and Paul (”Paul” in the song is drummer Paul English) may indeed have been coldly greeted in Milwaukee and Buffalo, but it’s sort of hard to imagine these days that Nelson would be treated with anything other than respect anywhere he goes. If you take the song out of Nelson’s hands, then, and have it played by a more ethnically ambiguous San Antonian — one who spent most of his life celebrating the combination of Tex+Mex, both in culture and practice — it means a little more. Buffalo ain’t geared for Willie and Paul, maybe, but imagine Doug and Flaco Jimenez having trouble boarding a plane in Milwaukee. There’s a little more there, no? And if you don’t think so, you’re living in a dreamland. A white, snowy dreamland, if you get my drift.

Anyway, while it’s a more interesting listen if you imagine a band of Tex-Mexers (or Mex-Texers, depending on whether you came to San Antonio from the north or south), you’re crazy if you think I won’t put this one down in Laredo. Dear, dear Laredo. Nelson warns against leaving anything in your clothes if you stay there, which is probably wise, but if you are ever busted in Laredo you’ll no doubt have made friends there who will come bail you out. The wife and I met some great people when we lived down there and that dusty border town will always carry a certain romance with it. But seriously: don’t go leaving anything in your clothes — the joint is crawling with police, feds, military, and…um, para military (that’s a euphemism).

“Me and Paul,” from 1973’s Doug Sahm and Band

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.