Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?

I was dancing to Nick Lowe's classic "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?" last night, and I realized how much an arrow to the heart a simple rock and roll song can be.

With the Ponzi scheme scandal of major investor Bernard Madoff uncovered this week, along with the laughable graft of an Illinois governor, and the failure of lame duck Republican Senators refusing to bail out a blue collar enterprise after saving thousands of bankers and brokers, in what can only be called class warfare, Lowe's line, which I use as the title to this post, is suddenly right on target.

Lowe wrote the song years before it ever became a "hit" for Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Lowe was in a pub rock band called Brinsley Schwarz, and already had a penchant for writing love songs with his tongue planted firmly in cheek. By the time Costello and Lowe recorded the single for Stiff records, punk musicians in England had firmly rejected all that had become a flaccid vestige of hippie philosophy homogenized into mush by California record companies, and Lowe and Costello's version of the song could have been labeled "ironic." In fact, Costello, Lowe and Stiff conspired to confuse the public by releasing the Costello version as the flip side to Lowe's single, "American Squirm." The confusion worked as Costello is often credited with writing the song, and it has become the anthem with which Costello frequently ends his live shows.

Lowe has always contended that his lyric was written with sincerity, and in the ensuing years, it seems that the song holds a lot more truth than any of our leaders has to offer.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
Theres one thing I wanna know:
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding? ohhhh
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin away, just makes me wanna cry.
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding? ohhhh
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?

So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin away, just makes me wanna cry.
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?
Whats so funny bout peace love & understanding?

So it goes

I haven't been keeping up thoroughly with the songwriters' blog that the New York Times is hosting, but today there was a particularly interesting blog by Roseanne Cash in which she explains the creation of a song, via email, with songwriting partner Joe Henry.

Henry is one of those singer-songwriters who is admired by fellow songwriters, and by critics, but is largely ignored by the listening public. His latest album, Civilians, found its way onto a lot of top 10 lists at the end of last year.



This songwriters' email exchange, and the finished demo (included in the Times blog) demonstrates how talented he is, and how a gifted songwriter like Cash benefits from having a co-writer.

BTW, another Nick Lowe addendum. Lowe wrote a great song titled So It Goes, on his debut solo album, Jesus of Cool, just remastered and re-released.



"So it goes," was a signature phrase of Billy Pilgrim, the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?

I've listened to Elvis Costello's version of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?" hundreds of times, but never with tears in my eyes. That changed Saturday when Lucy and I went to see Morgan Spurlock's new film "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?"

I have mixed feelings about the documentary as a whole. I've never been a huge fan of the filmmaker as intrusive on-camera narrator, and the hip graphics and video-game title segment, and the wise-guy humor, though all of it does bring a sense of humanity to the topic.

The parts of the film which work best are when Spurlock travels to the dangerous nations of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan and meets with the people who live there. These human interactions say more about the condition of the world than any report by any pundit, more than any speech by any politician, more than any governmental public relations report.

The film ends with a series of portraits of these people as Elvis Costello sings. And it made me cry listening to those words and seeing those faces. I guess it says something about me and my state of mind, but it's a musical question for the ages.

BTW, Nick Lowe is playing a solo show in Northampton on Thursday May 1 at the Calvin Theater.