From the city of Bristol’s vibrant music scene comes an unequivocal call for revolution from a guitar rock trio steeped in rage: “We don’t have to accept what our democracy’s become,” shouts frontman and bassist Joe Spurrell of Second Hand Arms Dealer. “Let’s Revolt now, before we’re smouldering ashes / The 1% cannot stand up to the masses”.
Bob Andy and Marcia Griffith’s joyful ska version of this powerful civil rights anthem was brought to the world by the hugely influential British-based Jamaican record label Trojan – an offshoot of Island Records – reaching No.5 in the UK charts in 1970 at a time when Jamaican music was just beginning to make its irrevocable mark on British culture.
Generations before us have laid down their lives to protect it and now we’re giving it away in return for “likes”. Freedom is an essential ingredient of justice and democracy, but those of us lucky enough to live in a free country risk squandering it in return for free access to social media. In their gently funky blues song Freedom, Montreal rock band Rival remind us to be alert to the danger: “How could we ever have a right to complain / when we’re the ones that said it’s okay / to take our freedom away?”
If a shot did ring out in the Memphis sky early on the morning of April 4th 1968, it wasn’t because Martin Luther King Jr was being shot dead – that didn’t happen until past 6pm. There are those who would forgive Bono for his slapdash recollection of one of the saddest days in the history of civil rights (he was, after all, only seven years old at the time)…