I’m not going to pepper this blog with obituaries, unless like Tim Brooke-Taylor they are of someone who particularly affects me. Anyway I couldn’t touch Americana UK’s coverage of the passing of John Prine. My colleague Clint West has done a fine appraisal of him HERE, and Jim Finnie has produced a pretty much unbeatable Prine playlist.
Todd Rundgren’s last album ‘White Knight’ featured a song called “The Man In The Tin Foil Hat” with Donald Fagen. While this was a blast of anger from the early days of Trump and the video is a bit amateurish and silly in places it seems to me to be worth an airing as there seem to be so many tin foil hats doing the rounds now.
While this feels like an attempt at a bit of Randy Newman style, even including a “Short People” reference in the lyrics, it doesn’t come close. Political Science was released in 1972, doesn’t it sound current?
This NPR piece is worth a read and listen for more on Randy Newman’s satire. He is very American-centric but his songs are good enough to get over the more obscure (for us) references. Newman’s most recent album Dark Matter returns to satire in a big way. If you only think of him as the Toy Story composer get that one and the best of Lonely At The Top for a crash course in Newmanomics.
