you hold the key to love and fear

“Only pop music can save us now!” – Rick, The Young Ones

I wish that was true. In a pop music utopia, instead of watching Dubya and Condi fiddle while Beirut burns, we could gather all the principal players together…

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Israel (from a 1980 7” single, collected on Once Upon a Time: The Singles, 1981) – I wonder if this was Siouxsie’s way of making up for the swastika armband she used to wear and the anti-Semitic line in the original version of “Love in a Void”?

The Human League – The Lebanon (from Hysteria, 1984) – “Yvonne Burgess had said that about a fella in the army who’d gone off to the Lebanon without telling her. –I hope he’s fuckin’ kilt, said Yvonne. –By an Arab or somethin’ D’yeh know wha’ his ma said when I phoned? He’s gone to the Leb. The Leb! I thought it was the name of a pub or somethin’…” – Roddy Doyle, The Snapper

Specimen – Syria (from a 1983 EP, collected on Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvet Crush, 1997) – Oh, so decadent, oh, so British goth pop.

A Flock of Seagulls – I Ran (from A Flock of Seagulls, 1982) – Phasers set to PUN! Anyone who objects my punnery gets a kick to the shin. Anyone who makes a tired joke about Mike Score’s hairdo gets their eyes gouged.

…and find a better solution than bombs, bullets, and bloodshed.

Bob Marley and the Wailers – War (from Rastaman Vibration, 1976) – I didn’t give a shit about Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live; it was what preceded that ill-conceived gesture, her pretentiously brutal mutilation of this classic song, that really pissed me off.

The Youngbloods – Get Together (from The Youngbloods, aka Get Together, 1967) – I remember hearing this on the local classic rock station on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, during the long, depressing drive out of Boston. Sandwiched in between news updates chronicling the unimaginable horrors unfolding in Lower Manhattan, the song no longer felt like a naïve, dated hippie anthem, but became an earnest plea for compassion and solidarity. Too bad the nation ended up settling for paranoia and vengeance instead.