Protest songs have been pretty
common fare in popular music over the past century. While I think it’s fair to
note that there are ‘levels’ of protest songs in terms of power—i.e. Bob Dylan’s “The Time They
Are A-Changin’” doesn’t have quite the political oomph of Neil Young’s
“Ohio”—they all have one feature in common: their functionality. Protest songs
are designed to instigate change or at least call into question cultural and
political practices and norms. “Ohio” might be the best example of a protest
song; Young crafts a simple, striking rock song about the 1970 Kent State
shootings of students by the Ohio National Guard.
Released only weeks after the May
4 shootings, the song peaked at #14 on the Billboard 100—a peak that might be
attributed to the ban on many AM radio stations due to the controversial usage
of President Nixon’s name in the lyrics. The song became emblematic of the
counterculture movement that was still burgeoning in the early 1970s and
Young—along with Crosby, Stills, and Nash—all became defacto spokesmen for the
anti-war movement.
However, I’m not really
interested in talking about protest songs; I’m more interested in the potential
of a song to set out and attain a certain goal. I think “Ohio” is certainly a
song that had a large-scale social impact upon its release; young people around
the U.S. immediately identified with the rage and vitriol in the song. However,
the goal of the song isn't exactly explicit within its exposition; it's somewhat vague. If the ‘goal’ of Young’s song was to express
anger about the shootings and have the listener do the same, then there is only a
loose political implication.
~
However, that’s not so much a
definite goal as the goal espoused by John K. Samson through his song
“Petition”—or, as the album titles it “www.ipetitions.com/petition/rivertonrifle/.”
That URL links to an actual online petition created by Samson in order to have
former NHL player Reggie Leach, or “The Riverton Rifle,” voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. In some sense, the tune might then be taken
as a protest song; Leach has not yet been voted into the Hall, so it protests
that unfairness.
However, the direct URL link and
the emphatic lyrics (“We, the undersigned, put forth his name / to the Hockey
Hall of Fame”) literally point to the fact that the goal of this song is not
semi-‘vague’ in the manner of the aforementioned CSNY hit. The song literally
functions as the petition itself; indeed, Samson has the song’s lyrics up on
the ipetition.com website. Has the song worked so far?
Since the inception of Samson’s
web-based petition on June 19, 2010, 1,024 people have signed it. (For reasons
I can’t explain—I’m not a hockey fan, but a Samson fan—I number among them.) In
the 22 days since the release of Samson’s album Provincial (on January 24), the petition has been signed by 511
people, as compared with the 513 who signed over the previous year and a half.
The site was previously working around one person a day…so I think (obviously!)
that there’s something to be said for the effect of the song on listeners.
~
But what does it mean for a
song—I’m going to just put it out there: a ‘work of art’—to have a definite
goal like that? What if the goal is reached? Does the song becomes just…I don’t
know…a footnote in the annals of hockey history? “Ohio” has a broad historical
premise that it works around; in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
it still provides the modern listener with tremors of disquiet. But if Leach
were to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the petition would be redundant. The
song would be…at peace?
I haven’t yet acknowledged a
larger problem: most people have no idea who Reggie Leach is. (I can say this because my hockey-playing girlfriend shrugged when I offered the name. "Brian Leetch?" she asked. "He played for the Rangers.") Even then, I think it’s safe
to say that many people interested in the ‘indie’ music world (of which Samson
is a part) don’t know enough about hockey to recognize the subject of this
curious ‘petition song.’
But what if the song doesn’t
actually have that goal?
~
If the lyrics indeed form a
petition, Samson has set up them up as a kind of puzzle. None of the
verses—besides the clause dealing with Leach holding the Stanley Cup—have
anything to do with his accomplishments in the NHL. Instead, Samson provides a
glancing portrait of a man who overcame racism as a child (verse 2), a man whose
talent could provoke a father into buying a new television and then enlisting
the youngest child to hold the antenna by the window so that he can watch a
hockey game (verse 3), and a man whose photograph would adorn bedroom walls for
years (verse 4).
Samson makes little reference to
actual career highlights and hard numbers. The only hockey statistic even
hinted at is the detail that “the Rifle fired his first 500 here [in Riverton],
then slapped his way into the NHL” (verse 1), but that detail is a number that could
apply to oodles of hockey players out there. I would offer that the lack of
hard statistics is the point of the song. Samson isn’t simply offering a
petition for the induction of Leach into a hall of fame; he’s offering a new
method of appreciation. Why should the hall of fame matter if it caters to hard
career facts and statistics? What matters to most people who watch sports is
not just the facts and figures, but the personalities at work out on the
ice/field/court/etc. (Hence Bennett Miller’s film Moneyball is so depressing…players are reduced to numbers on
paper.) While Samson doesn’t offer evidence and I can’t offer any either, I
think it’s safe to say that Leach’s success out on the ice motivated a few
First Nations members to play hockey.
In that way, Samson’s song ‘petition
song’ is maybe a more significant tribute to Leach’s memory than an induction
to the hall of fame could ever be. How many sports players have been validated through
a great pop song? If you’ve got examples, leave them in the comments!
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