We revered the musicians because they spoke the truth when nobody else would.\u00c2\u00a0 In an election cycle where candidates feel lies will fly, live on on the Web for the biased and uninformed to pick up on and spread, where is the picker telling the truth, for us to rally around?<\/p>\n
Nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
You’ve got to sell out, you’ve got to be a whore to make it in music today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a business controlled by fat cats.\u00c2\u00a0 Get up in the a.m. to call the station, get the hair and makeup charged to your royalty account, that’s the only way to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not.<\/p>\n
"We Can’t Make It Here" was written for the 2004 election cycle.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s just as relevant today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the third most played track in my iTunes Library.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be number one if I hadn’t switched\u00c2\u00a0 computers in the 2006 election cycle and sacrificed my play counts from my old machine.<\/p>\n
And when I’ve got more questions than answers, I dial up the built-in playlist and shuffle my 100 most played iTunes tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 And, in the other room, reading the newspaper, I started hearing a familiar track.\u00c2\u00a0 Mr. McMurtry’s "We Can’t Make It Here".\u00c2\u00a0 It felt so right I was motivated to come to the computer and write.\u00c2\u00a0 I put it on endless repeat.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve listened to it a dozen times already.<\/p>\n
And then, when I’m referencing Bristol Palin, I hear these immortal words:<\/p>\n
High school girl with a bourgeois dream<\/span> Bristol Palin’s mother might become VP. But what about the seventeen year old who makes a mistake and gets pregnant in a land where you can get no abortion.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, even if she chooses to have her baby.\u00c2\u00a0 Shouldn’t she have been exposed to birth control advice?\u00c2\u00a0 Free condoms?\u00c2\u00a0 Or are she and her baby going to be a drag on society forever?\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus might help your attitude, but he’s not going to pay your bills.\u00c2\u00a0 We live in an uneducated country losing steps to India and the rest of Asia as we debate moral issues.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, are we supposed to believe the Rapture is imminent and it’s all irrelevant?<\/p>\n The billionaires get to pay less tax<\/span> Hedge funders get their guaranteed income taxed at capital gains rates, even though there’s only risk on the upside.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve just got a better lobby than the poor.\u00c2\u00a0 Bear Stearns collapses, but the rich don’t suffer, they’ve already got their millions.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re working for a salary, schlepping boxes, and men who dreamed up derivatives backed on sub-prime mortgages, who were in denial of their firms’ financial condition, are being rescued by the government, which won’t give you a handout.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.\u00c2\u00a0 While you go to an inferior school and the scions of Wall Street go to prep schools with every advantage.\u00c2\u00a0 Taxes must be lowered on the rich just in case you might become so, even though upward mobility is better in Europe than it is in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 The American Dream?\u00c2\u00a0 A PIPE DREAM!<\/p>\n Some have maxed out all their credit cards<\/span> The record business is not immune. The CEO makes millions, his coterie lives high on the hog and the worker bee gets laid off.\u00c2\u00a0 We end up with a brain drain in the music industry as a result.\u00c2\u00a0 Fault the consumer?\u00c2\u00a0 Fault the CEOs driving this business towards a cliff.\u00c2\u00a0 But the fundamentals are sound?\u00c2\u00a0 Tell that to someone paying $4.00 a gallon for gas, paying fees to credit card companies they couldn’t foresee and can barely comprehend.\u00c2\u00a0 Our country has got problems but neither candidate will speak English.\u00c2\u00a0 McCain is living in an alternative universe and Obama is speaking in platitudes, waiting for the country to wake up and see the fallacy of his opponent.<\/p>\n It takes just one surgical strike.\u00c2\u00a0 Just one hit record to make all the difference.<\/p>\n We’ve got a radio industry that only knows how to say no.\u00c2\u00a0 TV too.\u00c2\u00a0 Cowered by the candidates, they’re afraid to speak English, afraid to play "We Can’t Make It Here", as relevant today, as fresh today as the day it was cut.<\/p>\n Country radio plays platitudes about home and church, but no amount of praying is going to solve the credit crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s our country, focus on the irrelevant as the robber barons rip us off behind the curtain.<\/p>\n It may be four years old, but it’s time for radio stations to play James McMurtry’s "We Can’t Make It Here".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s today’s "Eve Of Destruction".<\/p>\n
Just like the pictures in the magazine<\/span>
She found on the floor of the laundromat<\/span>
A woman with kids can forget all that<\/span>
If she comes up pregnant what’ll she do<\/span>
Forget the career, forget about school<\/span>
Can she live on faith? Live on hope?<\/span>
High on Jesus or hooked on dope<\/span>
When it’s way too late to just say no<\/span>
You can’t make it here anymore<\/span><\/p>\n
The working poor get to fall through the cracks<\/span><\/p>\n
Some are working two jobs and living in cars<\/span>
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof, won’t pay for a drink<\/span>
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO<\/span>
See how far $5.15 an hour will go<\/span>
Take a part time job at one of your stores<\/span>
Bet you can’t make it here anymore<\/span><\/p>\n\n