There’s still three more months left in the year, but the rediscovery of Rodriguez and his modest debut masterpiece may just be the most pleasant surprise of 2008.
With its release, baby boomers will scratch their heads and ask themselves why they had never heard his name before, while their kids might finally be able to connect with the anti-establishment and anti-war themes that defined the hippie generation and seem just as relevant today.
So after decades of semi-stardom in the eastern hemisphere, it’s only now that Rodriguez’s debut album is being given a much-deserved second chance in the US via Light in the Attic. Somehow his debut album Cold Fact became a cult success in Australia and, more prominently, in apartheid-era South Africa, where he was revered to the same degree as Jimi Hendrix. When neither of his two proper albums found an audience in the US, he went back to factory work to essentially “keep the blood circulatin'”.Īnd this is where his story really begins. His lyrics, which read like some drug-riddled street manifesto, are grittier than the poetic tales spun by Dylan, Donovan, or Croce. Far from being an observer in some Greenwich Village coffee shop, he actually lived in the streets among the pushers, the peddlers, and all the other shadowy figures that inhabit his songs. The actions of James Connolly and other rebel leaders played a significant role in public awareness, gathering a great deal of support for the movement that they had died fighting for.Ĭovers: Christy Moore (featured), Ronnie Drew, The Dubliners, Mark'S Men, Paddy Reilly.Born to working-class Mexican parents and raised in the once-flourishing industrial center of Detroit, Michigan, Sixto (“Sees-toe”) Rodriguez does not fit the mold of most 1960s singer-songwriters. He was the driving force behind the 1916 Easter Rising launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic. Although the actions of the movement were unsuccessful in achieving better conditions and pay for its workers, it did have an influencing effect, with the principles of union action and workers' solidarity being firmly established.Īfter he left James Connolly, an Irish republican and socialist leader defended the workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Writer: Donagh MacDonagh (1912 - 1968) - poet, playwright, judge, presenter, broadcaster and balladeerīrief: The song is about James Larkin, an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist best known for his role in the 1913 Dublin Lockout which eventually concluded in early 1914 when calls by Connolly and Larkin for a sympathetic strike in Britain were rejected by the British Trades Union Congress.
Ballad of jane lyrics meaning free#
Who gave his life that men might be free Print They shot McDermott and Pearse and Plunkettįrom bleak Kilmanham they took their bodies They shelled the buildings and shot our leaders The English soldiers, they burnt our town They broke our hearts and we could not winīut on came Connolly with new hope and counsel
We stood by Larkin through thick and thinīut foodless homes and the crying children, In the month of August the boss man told usĮight months we fought and eight months we starved He raised the worker and gave him courage The workmen cringed when the boss man thundered
The women working and the children hungry The boss was rich and the poor were slaves
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