Your Verdict 2.0: Week 10

[trashcanman]

Little known fact about folk legend Joan Baez: she can be a fucking STUNNINGLY good songwriter. Baez made her rep with an amazingly beautiful voice singing classic folk songs so old nobody knew who wrote them and cemented her status as the Queen of Folk covering Bob Dylan's songs before, during, and long after their romance. She has seldom been known to write her own material, and I find it a crying shame that Baez had such powerful insecurities and anxieties (she used to have to leave the stage midsong to bawl her eyes out before returning to finish) that she never fully explored her capacity as a songwriter. Out of her very active career spanning over half a century, she only wrote a couple dozen songs, many of which she buried. This week's song was written by Baez and recorded with members of the Grateful Dead in 1982 but was never released until her 2004 boxed set.

This video with fairly poor sound quality is all I could find to share this obscure gem online, but I think you'll agree with me when I say that Baez was insane to keep this song from us for so long. It's lyrically, musically, and melodically amazing and possibly the single most convincing argument against war ever put to song. It's not angry in tone, it's not righteously indignant, it's not even obvious in it's political intent. It's perfect. Considering that small town folks who don't care about politics yet vote for "cowboys" without fail and somehow celebrate sending their children straight from high school to go kill and die in foreign lands over things they don't understand are usually the ones who pay the price for our wars, this song hits the nail on the fucking head like no other. The accusing and sorrowful chorus sums it all up with elegance and simplicity.

"You won't find me staring down an M-16.
You took my brother from Marriott, and from me"

This is the Joan Baez I wish had come out more often singing "Marriott, USA".


www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO-srqN8AfI

[The Curmudgeon]

Another name I'd heard of but never heard the music of. It would take a couple of proper listens before you could really work out what the song is about, so it's not like some protest songs that ram the meaning down your throat.

Beautiful song, though. She trills her vocals a little like Joni Mitchell, but it's not so high pitched. Really nice to listen to.

I read a few of the Youtube comments, and it said her album was pulled in the 80s for being "too political." Is that true?

[trashcanman]

Baez is one of the most politically-active singers of all time. She's a protest singer by trade and reportedly spent her time during Vietnam getting thrown in jail, and barely taking time to take a shower after being released before heading back out to another protest. The notion that she would allow something to be shelved because it was "too political" is a little bit insane, and so is any record company that wouldn't realize that Baez fans are typically political-minded. It would be like shelving a System of a Down album for that reason. According Wikipedia, she spent some of the 80's without a record label so that might have been the reason this song wasn't released at the time. But to sit on a song like that for 20 years....

Anyways, her older stuff is much more high-pitched vocally, but I very much prefer her more matured voice from the 70's and 80's. And good God, could that girl sing the fuck out some old school country. She probably has my favorite voice for country music ever.