Revenge of the Sixth

It's the sixth of July. What better day to post about my favorite Fourth of July song?

So, I'm a few days late. It's one of those crazy holiday weeks where everything is thrown off by the day off in the middle of the week. Monday and Tuesday were like Thursday and Friday. Then we had a mini-weekend with Wednesday playing both Saturday and Sunday. And Thursday and Friday were like Monday and Tuesday. Yet now it's the weekend again. I'm just going to crawl into a shell until we get this all straightened out.*

Regardless, it's like the entire country took Thursday and Friday off this week. So technically most of you are still in a holiday weekend mode. Which makes this post completely legit by timecop standards.

Earlier this week, people with a better sense of timeliness posted about the best July 4th songs. Many of the lists are more traditional. But there's also a list for your folky Uncle Bob. And here's one for the shitkickers (more another time about how I really don't hate country music). I like this one from The Denver Post's local music site, Reverb.

However, they're all missing one song that should be (have been) part of every Independence Day celebration this year.



"Franklin's Tower" is one of the greatest and most uniquely American bands celebrating the birth of America.  Dead lyricist Robert Hunter explained it this way:

note that this song appeared in 1975, the year after my son was born and the year before the American Bicentennial. Both facts are entirely relevant. The allusion to the Liberty Bell and the situation of the Philadelphia Congress in the hometown of Ben Franklin has not gone unnoticed by other commentators.This song is a birthday wish both for my son and for my country, each young and subject to the winds of vicissitude. Individual and collective freedom, liberty, conscience, all that is conjured by those concepts, is suggested in the image of the tolling bell.

The live version from The Great American Music Hall (08/13/75) is one of my favorites. You're got Bill Graham introducing each band member as they build into the recently recorded Help On The Way>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower suite. There's a clarity and live urgency to this performance that makes it better than that on Blues for Allah. The Dead could often take their time getting warmed up for a show, sometimes not even hitting a good stride until the second set. Not this show - the entire band burns from the start.


OK - it's a few days late. And you can't put it on and light any fireworks (because if you do in my home state of Colorado, you deserve to have all your fingers blown off, you effin' bastard). But I'd argue this is better than just about any other ode to American Independence you can find. 


*And considering the storm raging in Conifer right now, that shell may be the only dry spot around. Can I express to you my absolute joy to not be at Red Rocks right now for String Cheese Incident? I really like the band and of course I love Red Rocks. And I hope all my friends there have a great time. But I decided to pass up this run. And as I watch the torrent of rain coming down right now, I'm amazingly OK with sitting on a couch, writing a bit, and listening to Twin Shadow.