Call it 'Love' or call it 'Reason'

Recently Foolish Owl posted the lyrics to Love Me I'm a Liberal. It's a great song. If you haven't read the lyrics you should go do that now.

Reading the lyrics to 'Love Me I'm a Liberal' made me sad. There was a time in my life I loved Phil Ochs. When I'm Gone was on the short-list of songs I wanted played at my funeral. I still have his live album and it's wonderful.

But I don't listen to his music any more, not since I read a biography of his life. Phil Ochs was a great lyricist, but he was also violent and abusive.

Like most music genres political folk is male dominated, and there's a lot of sexism in it. When the lock-out ended it took me a while to clean out the sexism of Talking Union Blues so I felt comfortable posting it on my blog. The original third verse of Union Maid, is so offensive that it makes me giggle. That doesn't bother me that much. I either listen to the music in its original form, or (more likely) a recent re-recording that has lyrics I like better. The nice things about folk music is that everyone changes the lyrics up sometimes.

It is regrettable, but understandable, that such sexism was acceptable in political movements in the past. But I can overlook that in a way I can't overlook men like Phil Ochs sang for freedom and abused the women around them.

It's particularly political folk music that I have this reaction to. Other forms of art I'm generally less fussy about. I'm not going to stop loving In My Life, because 50% is a conservative estimate of the number of men in the Beatles who were violent and abusive.

But political folk music, at least the stuff I listen to, is music about liberation. Abusing the power society gives you is fundamental incompatible with anyone's liberation. Just like I wouldn't be interested in a brilliant interpretation of When I'm Gone, from someone who didn't mean it. I lost interest in Phil Och's interpretation of 'When I'm Gone' to the extent that he didn't mean it.

I want to emphasise that my reaction is not one of political purity, but my emotional reaction to the disconnect between the song and what I know of the person who wrote it. I'd be interested in how other people feel.