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One Innocent Man is an album of topical songs, protests against all the evils in the world—the greed, the lust, the hate, the fear, all of man’s inhumanity to man. Or something like that. In other words, I have always sympathized with the down and out. George Orwell’s book on the subject ought to be required reading, it is my humble opinion.
The album cover is a selection from Pieter Bruegel, the Elder’s 1568 painting, The Magpie on the Gallows. I always thought it was a happy picture, celebrating the triumph over death, or at least the persistence of life, what with its sublime landscape and its dancing people, but experts say the meaning is just the opposite. Oh, well.
One Innocent Man
In this song, I catalog every single reason I can think of why having a system of capital punishment unerringly necessitates killing a few innocents, innocents that get caught up in the machinery like dolphins in tuna nets, here and there, once in a while. Need I add I think killing innocents is wrong? I mean, you execute murderers for murdering innocent people and then you murder innocent people so you can execute more murderers? The logic escapes me. I think opponents of capital punishment ought to emphasize this argument more than they do, before all others, in fact, because this is the argument that gets through to, even converts, the most rabid proponents. Because the answer to “Would you sacrifice one innocent man / to see a hundred murderers fall?” should always be “No.”
Afghan Lullaby
These are the days of the refugee. I don’t have to imagine much to see a mother, on the road in Afghanistan, lying to her child, telling it they are safe, telling it the future is bright, telling it Daddy is coming soon, trying to sing it to sleep, while explosives shake the ground. I would like to translate Afghan Lullaby into an Afghan language, but which one is the question.
Sally and Johnny
This song is about the tragedy of unemployment, how unemployment destroys people, how it is happening all around us, how no-one seems to want to so much as acknowledge it, how a family dreaming of nothing more ambitious than a normal, settled American life falls to pieces when all the mills shut down. Sally and Johnny is written in the quatrains of a traditional ballad, the traditional form for a working person’s tragedy.
Cell Phone Call from Iraq
This song is full of images of life in small-town U.S.A. A soldier, calling home from Iraq, is asking if all the things he loves are still there, still the way they were. Implying a contrast with “what I’ve been through.” Cell Phone Call from Iraq is in an old-fashioned, classic country style. I imagine maybe a Porter Wagoner or a Randy Travis singing it, pedal steel accompanying. I am aware that the average Iraq War veteran listens to more rumbustious stuff. But I had in mind one of those older reservists called up at the beginning of the war, a 50-something non-com, with a wife and young daughter back at home, plenty old enough to appreciate a little classic country and western music.
When I Get Rich
This song is about being in love, being poor, and wishing you were rich. Fantasies of buying stuff, cutting a fine figure, showing up those peasants who used to look down on you, contrasted with realism about the uncertainties of life without money: “When you got no dough / you never know / when they’re comin’ for you.” A bluegrass rendition sets the requisite jaunty tone.
Ted Silar 