Tom Waits --> Rock on,Tommy!

[Mosliima]

Guardian.co.uk

Chris Salmon looks at Tom Waits' first political outing in his new column about the best music on the web

After a 30-year career, Tom Waits' last album, 2004's Real Gone, contained his first explicitly political song, Day After Tomorrow. Written from the perspective of a dispirited young soldier, most took it as a criticism of the Iraq war, although some argued that the protagonist could be fighting in the American civil war. But any doubts about Waits's stance on current US foreign policy are banished by a powerful new song, Road to Peace, currently available to download free from Waits' label (www.anti.com). Taken from his upcoming collection of rarities and originals, Orphans (out on November 20), the doleful seven-minute song tells the story of Abdel Madi Shabneh, a Palestinian high-school student who detonated a bomb on a Jerusalem bus in 2003, killing 17 people ("some had survived world war two").

Waits recounts how Israel responded by sending helicopters to destroy the car of a Hamas militant; "It killed his wife and three-year-old child/Leaving only blackened skeletons," he sings, his voice thick with incredulity. Waits doesn't take sides, merely shaking his head over the futility of it all. "Neither side will ever give up their smallest right," he sighs, "they fill their children full of hate." But Waits does lambast his president's lack of action ("He plays chess at his desk/And he poses for the press") and questions why the US supplies Israel With Arms. It's a stark, thought-provoking and moving listen.

http://www.anti.com/twpromo/
http://dir.salon.com/topics/tom_waits/index.html?ti=1

[Nabeela]

Stop flooting the forum' you piece of shit.

Carab lover.

[Mosliima]

Rock on,Tommy

[Nabeela]

----

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[Mosliima]

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