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Most of the audience at the Democracy Now fundraiser in Garfield Monday night (4/15) had never heard of David Rovics before, but they were ready for what he had to sing. Rovics opened up his set with a monologue about traveling across America wearing his "Bush: International Terrorist" t-shirt. Plenty of ordinary people along the road had no problem agreeing that Bush is just that. More than that, Rovics seemed to know what to say to the occasional Bush zealot and he shared that message with us when he opened up with "Who would Jesus Bomb?" Rovics knows how to deliver a song. AK Audio Press picked a winner with David Rovics. His songs are everything radical music needs to be – contemporary songs that communicate complex ideas concisely, history lessons, lyrics that anti-war and social justice activists will find easy to repeat - in song and conversation. Wednesday morning at 8 AM I was humming "Operation Iraqi Liberation – What’s it spell – O-I-L" and immediately realized that I could remember half a dozen of the songs I heard for the first time just the night before. Moments later I tuned my radio to WRCT 88.5 FM only to find Amy Goodman interviewing Haiti’s President Aristide on his flight back from the Central African Republic, a news story about real democracy and US imperialism the mainstream media is doing everything it possibly can to ignore. Democracy Now listeners are going to want more of David Rovics. - Kenneth Alan Miller |