WORLD SAYS: ALRIGHT.

So I should get a post down on the U.S. election, for sure. I know I’ve managed to put pop music aside for a few minutes each time there's been a US or UK election over the past five years to chip in with a bunch of hand-wringing, cursing and venomous cynicism. So to ignore the one where, suddenly, against all the odds, something unexpectedly good happens, would make me out to be an inveterate humbugger of the highest order.

But you see, given the ceaseless nightmare of corruption, greed, vote-theft, lies and horrifying stupidity that we’ve all got used to politics in America (and elsewhere) being over the past decade or so (not that it was any great shakes before that), it’s almost EERIE to have something good to say the day after an election; it’s not something my young mind is used to. My standard litany of Reagan-era punk bands and Hunter S. Thompson quotes will not help me to find anything well-balanced and original to say here, in this stunningly uncynical circumstance.

Such is my political pessimism, I spent the first few days of November just *waiting* for some contrived "turning of the tables", for some colossal unforeseen (OR WAS IT?) fuckup or unexpected shift in the voting, for The Ugly American to raise his head and say "what, you didn't REALLY think we were gonna let the black guy win did you?"

But no; I checked once, I checked twice – and whilst I fear the ‘rat-bastards’ of HST’s comic book worldview are still out there planning something nasty, for the moment it looks like he actually made it.

I mean, politically-speaking Obama's obviously no utopian anticorporate revolutionary or anything, but having a vaguely left-leaning Democrat in charge after near a decade of neocon chuckleheads still feels like a huge relief from at least some of the madness and chaos hanging over the world, and it'll be great just to be able to hear things like 'Secretary Of State' and 'Whitehouse Spokesperson' and not have to hate yourself slightly for immediately wanting to launch a psychic axe at the face of whoever appears on the TV screen. But, as has already been repeated a million times over, in purely symbolic terms, Obama's election is MASSIVE.

Just to think that a man who looks like - as my Dad might put it - "the guy who'd always die first in all the war movies" is now in charge, insofar as anyone can be, of the system that made those movies (and the wars for that matter)…? As a dude I’m going to get onto in a minute once put it: ain’t that good news!

And, whilst Obama's words thus far have stuck closely to the accepted 'I want to win an election' school of vague, optimistic rhetoric, that acceptance speech was sounding pretty good. Yeah, the ‘equality for all’ style of blather may be well played out in American political vocab, but an incoming president explicitly pledging his support for Americans “male and female, black and white, gay and straight”? – THAT’S not something I remember hearing before. And I don’t recall any previous president-elect paraphrasing Sam Cooke either. If he’d just taken the trouble to get photographed in a Ramones shirt too, I’d be 100% sure me and Barack were gonna get along.

Stupid I know, but it’s the Sam Cooke thing that really blows my mind.

I mean, even if you find the overly sentimental approach to politics a little cringeworthy, just check this out from a music fan’s point of view:

“I was born by the river, in a little tent
and just like the river, I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long time coming, but I know
A change is gonna come”
- Sam Cooke, 1964

“It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, a change has come to America.”
- Barack Obama, 2008

....

So you've got this great, unspeakably beautiful, noble yet desperate song of hope for the future that everybody loves. And everybody listens to it, and they think “ah yeah, one day....”. And yesterday morning, this dude got on stage in front of millions and effectively said “HEY – IT’S TODAY”.

Obviously I know that at heart the whole thing's as cynical as any other political 'victory', and he's only there thanks to the fact he raised shitloads of money, had a few good lines, deliberately avoided raising any divisive issues and was lucky enough to face an opposing team who were an even bigger bunch of clowns than usual, and I know that the grim economic/social reality of race relations in America probably isn't going to change very much, but still..... how often in a lifetime do you get the chance to take the message of a famous, rhetorical hope-for-the-future song and, for a moment at least, declare it DONE?

It’s like if an international panel of experts announced that a man only has to walk down one road to be called a man, or if somebody started issuing certificates of land ownership signed by God and Woody Guthrie’s grandson, or if the silver spaceships started flying in the yellow haze of the sun.

Crazy, and wonderful.

Now of course, I’m duty bound to post the song. I guess I should have had some smart-alec obscure cover version lined up really, and well, I hear Baby Huey’s version is a blast, and The Wave Pictures recent rendition is beautifully executed and reassuringly heartfelt, but…. if you’re up against Sam Cooke, Sam Cooke wins, y’know?

I don't know if I've mentioned it as often as I should have done on Stereo Sanctity in the past, but man, I love Sam Cooke SO MUCH. If you've ever had a party where this guy's recorded works weren't close at hand: well, you could have had a better party. Enjoy.

Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
Sam Cooke – Ain’t That Good News

Oh, and hey, let’s remember:

Sam Cooke – Rome (Wasn’t Built In A Day)

Labels: political shit, rambling, Sam Cooke, soul