LOOKS LIKE JACKSON BROWNE'S NOT DIGGING BUSH'S WAR EITHER- "LIVES IN THE BALANCE"

You might not know this, but John from CROOKS AND LIARS, one of my favorites places on the net, is a musician, a sax player. Just before he started C&L he had gone out on tour with Duran Duran. So his site is more likely than most to break the good news about what happens when culture and politics collide. A couple minutes ago I got an e-mail from him telling me that one of my favorite musicians from college days had a very relevent song and accompanying video and that he had put them on C&L.

I first met Jackson at a Velvet Underground show when we were both teenagers and I invited him and his pals, Steve Noonan and Tim Buckley-- none of whom had any records yet-- to come play at my school on Long Island. They kind of moved in for a while. Jackson even became the lead singer of an early incarnation of the Blue Oyster Cult (Soft White Underbelly), the campus band. Anyway, Jackson has a great new album called SOLO ACOUSTIC, VOL I and John figured people might want to listen to this great new version of "Lives in the Balance."


I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the t.v.
You hear one thing again and again
How the u.s.a. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire