"'Dad's Gonna Kill Me"

I'm a huge Richard Thompson fan. Here's one of his songs at Fixer & Gordon.

Raw Story

Legendary folk guitarist Richard Thompson recorded an anti-war song which is told from the viewpoint of a US soldier who fears being killed in Iraq.

"Lately at concerts he's been singing a song in protest against the Iraq war titled 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me,'" Goldstein writes. "'Dad,' Thompson explains to audiences, is grunt-speak for 'Baghdad,' much as ''Nam' once meant 'Vietnam.'"

In the song, Thompson sings, "'Dad's in a bad mood, 'Dad's got the blues; It's someone else's mess that I didn't choose; At least we're winning on the Fox evening news; 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me."

An mp3 of "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" can be heard at Thompson's website*, and it will be on his next CD, "Sweet Warrior," slated for release in May.

Protest songs are good. The more the merrier. Forty years ago there were a lot of 'em, rightly so, and it's good to see more and more of them coming out now from modern artists.

Different century, different war, different artists, different audience. Same sensibilities - when something's wrong, it's wrong, and needs to be protested. Bush's War was wrong out of the gate.

*Also at YouTube, amateur concert video from the cheap seats with a fine view of the porta-johns. From the "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival" at Golden Gate Park in EssEff aka "Baghdad By The Bay".