Today I wish to pay a tribute to one of the first bands that paved the path for me to discover alternative music. I digged through some old records and found some gems on YouTube that I think deserve a mention and a place in the spotlight. This is one for Brighton's "folk punk" icons The Levellers.
I was 15 years old when I was still a school boy in my native Belgium, but dreaming of emigrating and with a very strong interest for Ireland. Ironically, I would realise that dream and even that particular version of the dream, as 7 years later I moved to Dublin and spent 3 years on the Emerald Isle, but that is just a sidenote here. I studied in my native city Ghent and spent a lot of hours after school and during weekends in the local Irish pub. I had discovered the taste for Ireland and was going through a phase of looking up a lot of Irish traditional music. It was actually a teacher of mine that told me I should not stick to traditional stuff like The Dubliners and (a favourite of mine) Clannad, but to also check out the more Irish-orientated rock. He recommended me The Levellers. Sometimes you do learn something useful at school indeed. I checked them out and fell in love with the band straight away. The band may best be described as punk but with a lot heavier guitars than the average punk, and with celtic influences such as the violin and the fiddle. The sound can best be described as celtic punk maybe, or celtic rock, with especially the violin creating a very destinctive Irish touch to what is quality punk music. Lyrically the music is typical punk, with anarchy being a core theme in many Levellers songs. But mind, as Irish as it may sound sometimes, the band is British and not originating from Ireland at all. The band have their cradle in Brighton, south coast of England.
The first Levellers song I heard happened to be (purely a coincidence) their most epic tune, "One way", describing the struggles of working class people and their longing to be free and escape from their gloomy existance and underpaid hopelessness. The chorus "There's only one way of life, and that's your own" became the signature line of the band. The same topic would re-appear on their excellent album Levelling The Land in another classic of the band, "Liberty Song" (featuring the line "This means nothing to me, the way we were is the way I'm gonna be").
Another song immediately sticking with me was "Fifteen years", tackling the topic of alcoholism, describing a person sitting at the bar looking back on how life went wrong while spending his unemployment dotations on his escapism in alcohol. The song has a very strong Irish touch with its violins throughout the song.
Another classic: "The Boatman", a calmer song which tackles the issue of slavery. In the first paragraphs the storyteller describes of how he dreamt of a life in freedom as a rover or a boatman: "My only law is the river breeze that takes me to the open seas, and when I live the life I please then I will be a boatman". Then when the song goes on, the person appears to be a slave who is bound to an unfree existance but still maintains his hope for a better life in freedom someday: "I know someday I will be everything that I dreamt I'd be... And when I live the life I please then I will be a free man"
One more song I need to specially mention is the song "What a beautiful day", another Levellers fan favourite. The song pays tribute to the power of dreams in life and how everything is possible as long as you believe in it. The song uses the idea of social revolution and anarchy as example of those dreams to chase. The message of the song is that nothing is impossible as long as you believe in it and that having your hope and your dreams in itself can make a difference in life: "What a beautiful day, I'm the king of all time... And nothing is impossible in my all powerful mind".
The song that inspired me to write this piece however is a song from the Zeitgeist album and a personal favourite of mine: "Hope Street". I never knew the song had a promo video, and today after all those years I found this little gem on YouTube that brought back all those memories. The song describes a theme often recurring in the Levellers' songs: the working class struggles in a misery-struck little town. The song describes the lives of the unemployed gambling and alcohol addicts spending their money on beer and bets, wasting their time in a local pub in the hopeless decor of a street ironically called Hope Street. If you grew up in the average big city with the classic suburb, I am sure you all know some places that perfectly match the image created in the song. The pub, the riots in the street, the betting office, ... I guess we all know a Hope Street of our own, no matter how it is called in our own towns.
The song also forms a very nice contradiction to the other songs such as One Way that take that same suburban miseryness as starting point but revolt against the gloom and look towards the future with hope for a change. But I will close this entry with the lyrics of the song whose video inspired me to write this, Hope St.
I will post the videos in this message to share this little goodness with you all. Keep on levelling the land!
There's a young boy in the queue, there's not much else for him to do
He's had a trick, he's had a view... down the pub on Hope Street
Dear old lady, you're looking thin, got a shopping bag with your life in
Your old man's going through the bins, and so it goes on Hope Street
Rain on me, come pouring down, clear the dirt of this old town
Tell the sun to come around and show its face on Hope Street
There's a fight right down the street, the betting shop has got him beat
He blew his money for the week on a horse called Hope Street...
No more faces out today, someone took them all away
Cleaning up or so they say... the dirty face of Hope Street
Rain on me, come pouring down, clean the dirt of this old town
Tell the sun to come around and show its face on Hope Street
Every day I look at you, dressed up in your ties all blue
Saying there's not much that you can do to help the kids of Hope Street
You don't seem to even care that it was you who put them there
You seem to think they like it there, hanging out on Hope Street
Liberty Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzCiOQyuObk
What a Beautiful Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36gW-IPV0aA
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