#TrashCatTuesday – Episode 8
The best laid plans…
Am I referencing our inability to learn the America songs we meant to? Or am I referring to the American Experiment itself. In both cases, things didn’t go the way they were meant to.
We had high hopes of wowing you all with Simon & Garfunkle’s America and David Bowie’s This is not America. But those songs are hard and we had limited time because we didn’t think far enough ahead. So in typical Trash Cats fashion we found some America themed songs that had less chords. 4 to be exact. Some say the ideal number of chords in a song. Especially one you have to learn in just a few days.
While our choices came out a bit…down on America it should be noted that we are not anti American. We’re just not super jazzed about where we’re at as a society right now. So we don’t trash America in these songs, but rather point out some of the problems we see, and in the case of a couple of these tunes even offer up some suggestions on how to get pointed in the right direction.
We also played a Violent Femmes song.
The closing number is the only one that doesn’t have America in the title, and therefore eschews the theme a bit. It did seem important though. It’s almost our version of the song before it. It was a direct reaction to an election that we did not approve of and moreover a reflection on what kind of a society would elect a man like Donald Trump to be it’s president. While he alone is not the problem, he certainly is a symptom of the growing divide this country is experiencing and we thought it important to let you all know how we feel. So while the views expressed in the other 4 songs don’t necessarily reflect the views of The Trash Cats, The Rest of Us explains how I feel every time I open social media or turn on the news.
- American Idiot – Green Day
- North American Scum – LCD Soundsystem
- American Music – The Violent Femmes
- Make America Great Again – Frank Turner
- The Rest of Us – The Trash Cats
