More Dream Stuff

Ok, so again last night I dreamt a song, except this time it was very vivid, I mean the words just came pouring into my head, like they'd already been sung somewhere else. I woke up and typed up what I could remember (probably about 1/3 of it) and then filled in the rest as best I could.

Without being able to play a bloody instrument all I can do is stick the lyrics up. Have a look, don't judge... Im not saying they are any good, just that it's incredibly wierd to get something like that coming out of nowhere, especially when most of my dreams arn't particularly vivid. 

It's a homage to Phil Ochs (the man with the skull lol), my favourite folkie who had a very interesting life, one which has produced plenty of great eulogies over the years. The whole mtv thing has a couple of levels to it. He always thought that the best way to make a difference with music was to bring the words of the great thinkers and poets of our time and cross them with the elvis presley style mass pop music. Thats why he went through his gold suit phase and tried to find a way to appeal to the masses. I think a modern parallel might be if a political folkie of today like David Rovics were to play on mtv. Pretty much zero chance of it happening, but the same could be said of Ochs efforts back in the late 60's. The other side of it is that semi-selfish wish that maybe we would have another folk revival, like that of the 60's when the mainstream would embrace political music again...

BTW, he was never actually referred to as the highwayman, it was a song he adapted from the Alfred Noyes poem, but I think he might have liked it. 

Anyway here goes:

He was the man who fought for change,
 But for fortune he might have won,
He was the man who spoke for peace,
 Though Dylan had him shunned,
The movement slowly died,
 Sixty-Seven was history,
But he had no time for LSD,
 He was too busy trying to protect our liberties.

He was the man who told us the war was over,
 Long before the last troops left Vietnam,
He was there in Chicago,
 When the tear gas struck them down,
And it wasn’t just for him,
That the sorrow hit so hard,
In his rehearsals for retirement we let him be,
 Now Phillip David Ochs must rest in peace.

CHORUS:
You’ll march to no more battles,
 There’ll be no more sad refrains,
We all saw your crucifixion,
 You carried all that pain,
I wish I could have known you,
 But one day we all shall see,
The highwayman go marchin’ on mtv,
One day we’ll see Phil Ochs on mtv.

The man who hung in far rockaway,
 Was not the one who sung in Lincoln Park,
Now he’s just one more martyr,
 We’ve got too many of them,
A hero to us all,
 Though we didn’t see,
I still believe one day it just might be,
That the highwayman will go marchin’ on mtv.