Bricking it: why I can't possibly read 33 Revolutions Per Minute until I've tallied up all the protest songs in the world

It's only been a couple of weeks since I posted (re-posted) my oh-so-interesting 200 best protest songs list. So, blow me down if I don't this week (pretty much accidentally) acquire Dorian Lynskey's monumental 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History Of Protest Songs, all 843 pages of it.

This books kills fascists: 33 Revolutions Per Minute

Well, ain't that a coincidence. Massive though his book is, he's only got 33 protest songs (essays on each), but lots of other stuff as well - including an appendix called "One Hundreds Songs Not Mentioned In This Text". Naturally, I have to see how many of his 33 are on my list. And, ticking them off, it's a grand total of ... 14. Just goes to show how people differ on these things. Even with 200 in my protest record box, I don't overlap with Lynskey's list any more than 14 times. Hmm, did I get it all wrong? In a few cases we chose the same artists (Billy Bragg, the Clash, Crass, Steve Earle) but different songs. Near misses. So with the Clash, I've got Straight To Hell, The Guns Of Brixton and I Fought The Law, and his Clash pick is White Riot (yeah, I kind of see that as well). For the (ahem) record, his 33 are:

Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit; Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land; Pete Seeger, We Shall Overcome; Bob Dylan, Masters Of War; Nina Simone, Mississippi Goddam; Country Joe & The Fish, I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag; James Brown, Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud; John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band, Give Peace A Chance; Edwin Starr, War; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Ohio; Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised; Steve Wonder, Living For The City; Victor Jara, Manifesto; Fela Kuti & Afrika 70, Zombie; Max Romeo & The Upsetters, War Ina Babylon; the Clash, White Riot; Carol Bean, I Was Born This Way; Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sonny's Lettah; Dead Kennedys, Holiday In Cambodia; Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, The Message; Crass, How Does It Feel?; Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Two Tribes; U2, Pride (In The Name Of Love); the Special AKA, Free Nelson Mandela; Billy Bragg, Between The Wars; R.E.M., Exhuming McCarthy; Public Enemy, Fight The Power; Huggy Bear, Her Jazz; the Prodigy, Their Law; Manic Street Preachers, Of Walking Abortion; Rage Against The Machine, Sleep Now In The Fire; Steve Earle, John Walker's Blues; Green Day, American Idiot.

Oh hum. List-making is all very subjective and not necessarily that illuminating. Some of this is just sheer taste. For one thing, this particular grouping includes stuff from artists I've never actually liked: Stevie Wonder, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, U2, Manic Street Preachers - a reminder that, in the end, it's always about the music not the message. In his prologue, Lynskey praises Barack Obama ("the first protest-song president"), noting how in 2008 Obama borrowed Sam Cooke's "change gonna come" line for his triumphant speech after winning the presidential vote. Obama is rated "one of the greatest orators of the day". Here I definitely part company with Lynskey. Yes Obama might have dipped into the protest song repertoire for the odd speechifying cadence (or rather his speech-writers did), but I always found Obama's speaking style strangely wooden and stilted. The way people showered him with praise for his supposedly rhapsodic speeches always mystified me. I guess I'm gonna have to launch a petition. Start a protest ... But no, though we appear to have different outlooks and musical tastes, Lynskey's brick-like book undoubtedly looks interesting. For one thing, it's already caused me to notice that I've mis-spelt Billie Holiday "Billie Holliday" (fool that I am). So, just as soon as I've got through my other far-too-big-to-read-without-a-considerable-investment-of-time music books (not to mention stuff like Chris Harman's ultra-massive A People’s History of the World, also acquired this week), then I'm going to set my mental turntable to 33 RPM and start ploughing through Lynskey's opus magnum. Either that, or I'll take it to my next street protest. A weighty thing like that could be handy if things start kicking off ...