What can I do today to make the world a better place?
I've been reworking our song
We Live
for universal since they asked to have one of their mixers take a shot at it.
While I was doing the prep work and listening to the track elements over and
over, it reminded me of an old skool hip hop track I used to love. Back in the
CoR days, Eric Sarafin mixed my first big budget record and he introduced me to
some music he was working on, giving me a copy of spearhead, which was michael
franti's project. I really did love that record as well as the first Paula Cole
record which was given to me by someone who had worked on that too, but sadly
both those records were lost when Christine and I broke up, since she had them
with her and I imagine she burned them. (Sorry Christine, I know I was a
jerk.)
Anyways, Spearhead was everything
I used to love about old skool hip hop.. rootsy, real and a voice calling out
for change. The hip hop movement of the late 80s and early 90s crackled with
political and social gadflies. It was radical and honest and it still lives on
in hip hop, it's just buried in all the commercial
stuff.
You can still get spearhead on
itunes, People in the
middle is one of my top 10 tunes ever. Here's
some lyrics that I love from the
song:
and if I don't have enemies
I'm not doing my job
I might throw
out a curve ball but I never throw a
lob
and people criticize me but I
know it's not the end
I try to kick
the truth not just to make
friends.
each one, should
teach one and share with one
another
Wow. What a charge for
songwriters. As songwriters and artists I've always felt we have a
responsibility to reflect the world around us. Our position is one of social
responsibility. Even as a beginning songwriter we must always ask, what are we
saying? Who can I speak for that does not have a voice? What injustice can I
right? What questions can I ask that will make people think? Tricia told me
recently of a woman who can't listen to We
Live and turns the radio down when it comes on
because she has 3 young sons and the first verse is too hard for her to think
about. But they have a new rule at her house now because of the song; her kids
can't leave the house without telling her that they love her. And you see, in a
way that's exactly what the song was meant to do. Years ago a school bus near
here got hit by a train and a lot of kids were hurt and several killed. Out of
that accident came a book of poetry from the people affected by it and I read
one by a mom whose last words to her son was yelling at him to clean up his
room. In a way, I tried to tell her story because her truth is so powerful.
We don't know what's going to happen. We don't have all the time in the world
to fix things with people, so before our hopes become regrets, we need to act.
And out of the suffering from that accident comes a sobering lesson for us all.
In a way, we honor that woman's loss when we don't take our families and our
loved ones and our health for granted.
I
think the spearhead song isn't just for songwriters though, I think we all have
areas of influence and we all have a social responsibility to make the world a
better place. To reflect more light than dark. So much of what we hear is
"it's all about me, what do I want today?" My question is, what can I do today
that makes this world a better place?
Posted: Mon - January 16, 2006 at 11:57 AM
