That's Old News Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bob Dylan

Unusually for a protest song, this 1962 release from Bob Dylan takes a humorous approach to make its comment on events from the news. He has said that his inspiration came from a newspaper clipping shown to him by Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary fame) about a planned excursion by boat up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain State Park as a Father's Day picnic outing. Unfortunately, someone got greedy and sold numerous forged tickets, leading to far more people arriving at the planned departure point than the boat hired for the event could accommodate. Fighting broke out, and about twenty people were injured.

Although not as full of raw emotion as many of Dylan's earliest songs, the use of the traditional talking blues satirical form gave him a chance to display his incisive wit. Written from the perspective of a participant, it greatly exaggerated the extent and seriousness of the event, to humorous effect. To remind you, here is the final verse:

"Now, it don't seem to me quite so funny
What some people are gonna do f'r money
There's a bran' new gimmick every day
Just t' take somebody's money away
I think we oughta take some o' these people
And put 'em on a boat, send 'em up to Bear Mountain . . .
For a picnic"

Answer: Bob Dylan

Emmett Till was 14 when he died while visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. Accused of impertinent behavior towards a white woman, he was abducted, beaten and shot in the head before his body was dumped in the river. The two men who did this (as they later confessed in a magazine interview) were acquitted by the jury, composed of all white males. These events were one of the significant catalysts for the stepping up of the Civil Right movement in subsequent years.

Dylan performed the song live for years, but it was not included on any official albums until the 2010 album 'The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 - The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964'. It was included, however, on many bootleg albums - it was quite the done thing in the 1960s to smuggle a tape recorder into a concert, especially in intimate venues such as those in which Dylan performed in Greenwich Village. Once he hit the bigtime, quite a few of those performances were pressed into vinyl, with crude hand-produced covers.

Dylan's lyrics recount the events described above, but then go on to add a dimension of moral outrage. The penultimate verse sums it up:

"If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow
For you to let this human race fall down so God-awful low!"

Answer: Bob Dylan

'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' was released on the 1964 album 'The Times They Are a-Changin''. It starts by describing how a drunken young white man had assaulted a number of people in a night club, one of whom was the 51-year old black barmaid who didn't bring his drink as quickly as he wanted. His defense (that he was too drunk to be responsible for his actions, and that her death was mostly due to her poor health rather than the blow he gave her with his cane) led to a six months sentence. (He received a longer sentence some years later for tax evasion!) The verdict was delivered by the three judges who tried the case, on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech.

While this song was about the death of a black person at the hands of a white man, Dylan's focus was not as explicitly on race as in 'The Death of Emmett Till'. Rather, it focuses on the concept of justice, and the inequities apparent in this case among others. After each of the first three verses describing the sequence of events, the chorus goes:
"And you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears."

After the final verse, about the trial and sentencing, this changes to
"Ah, but you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

Answer: Bob Dylan

Released on 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' in 1964, this song once again focuses on the Civil Rights movement, this time inspired by the death of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, on 12 June 1963. The political stance here is that the poorly educated and struggling white men who have typically been those carrying out this type of violent action are not the real villains of the piece, as they have been manipulated by the powerful forces at the top of the social structure. As such, they should not be remembered as individuals, but as part of the deluded masses who do not understand the political forces at work.

The song was first performed at a voter registration rally a few weeks after Medgar Evers was murdered in his home by Byron De La Beckwith (who was not convicted of the act until 1994, after two all-white juries failed to reach a verdict in 1964). When he performed it at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, the crowd who had assembled to hear Martin Luther King deliver his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech did not respond enthusiastically, as they clearly felt that the murderer could not be relieved of any blame because he was only part of the system that had been oppressing black people for so long. Dylan stopped performing the song after the 1964 hung jury trials, but it had already been recorded.

Answer: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan co-wrote 'Hurricane' with Jacques Levy, as a condemnation of the racial profiling and overt racism that led to the 1967 conviction of Rubin Carter, a boxer known as Hurricane Carter, on charges of murder. The song was released as a single (divided into two shorter pieces, one on each side) in 1975 and included on the 1976 album 'Desire'.

The song and its performances led to increased support for Carter and the man who had been convicted with him; they were granted a retrial, and convicted again. The conviction was overturned in 1985, on the grounds that it had been "based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure". Following his release, Carter moved to Canada (and became a Canadian citizen) and became the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) in 1993.

Dylan's lyrics are powerful, although looking at Rubin Carter's fight record, his prowess as a boxer seems to have been somewhat overestimated.

"Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world".

Answer: Someone Else

Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics for this song, inspired by the news coverage of the plane wreck in the title, which occurred in January 1948. The news reports did not name the 28 migrant farm workers who were being sent back to Mexico who died in the crash, simply calling them deportees. This combined with Guthrie's feeling that the deportation itself was uncalled for to produce a protest song that has been covered by many others through the years. He initially wrote a poem which he sort of recited with minimal chord backing on his guitar; it was ten years later that Martin Hoffman provided the haunting tune that has become familiar through the performance of his friend Pete Seeger and numerous recordings.

The lyrics outline the callous way that migrant workers were treated, with the opening lines indicating that they had been allowed to stay in the country as long as there were crops that needed to be harvested, then sent home to wait until the next harvest season to return to the US. The lyrics then go on to personalise their lives, treating them as individuals rather than just a nameless bunch (although, ironically, he invented their names) before returning to a diatribe against their exploitation. If you haven't heard it, find a recording and listen.

"Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be 'deportees'".

Answer: Someone Else

On 4 May 1970 members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a student protest (against the expansion of the war in Vietnam) on the campus of Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine more. The incident triggered massive student reactions across the country. Eight of the shooters were charged with violation of civil rights of the protesters, but were acquitted.

Neil Young wrote 'Ohio' in response, and it was recorded a few weeks later by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The single made it to the top 20 in both the US and Canada, with the flip side containing the Stephen Stills tribute to those who had died in the war, 'Find the Cost of Freedom'. It became a counterculture anthem, considered heroic for its stance of blaming the troops when the popular perception blamed the students and for including the name of President Nixon in the lyrics of the chorus.

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio".

Answer: Someone Else

Peter Gabriel wrote 'Biko' after hearing about the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in a South African prison in September 1977, including it on his 1980 album 'Peter Gabriel (Melt)'. Biko was arrested for breaking a banning order (a type of extra-judicial decree used by the South African government to restrict political activism) by traveling to Cape Town; he was arrested as he was returning to his home in King William's Town and taken to Port Elizabeth where he was detained and subjected to intensive interrogation, the details of which may never be known, as doctors who saw him at intervals reported no signs of ill health, despite the fact that he subsequently died from extensive brain injuries.

Peter Gabriel was exploring African musical styles at the time, and incorporated some of these sounds in his song, along with phrases in Xhosa. The proceeds of sales were donated to the Black Consciousness Movement, the anti-apartheid group of which Biko had been the leader. It was banned in South Africa, but received widespread exposure in other countries around the world.

"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
- The man is dead".

Answer: Someone Else

The first track of U2's 1983 album 'War' was generally inspired by the long-running conflict (1960s through 1990s) in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. The title refers to the events of 30 January 1972 when British troops shot and killed unarmed civil rights protesters in Derry, an event referred to as Bloody Sunday. There was another Bloody Sunday, in 1920, when more than 30 people died in fighting between the IRA and British forces, that was part of the Irish War of Independence. This ambiguity of reference is intentional, as the song's ultimate message is the futility of sectarian violence, not specifically apportioning blame to, or support of, either side of the conflict.

The original basis for the song came from the Edge (David Howell Evans, the band's lead guitarist), with Bono (Paul David Hewson, the lead singer) reworking the lyrics and the whole band workshopping the music during recording.

"I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long? How long?"

Answer: Someone Else

The Australian band Midnight Oil were known for their strongly political material, of which this had the most success internationally. Unlike many of the songs in this quiz, it was not so much inspired by events in the news as by the fact that events were NOT in the news. A tour in 1986 playing in remote Aboriginal communities gave them a chance to see up close how the removal of the people from their ancestral lands had led to immense problems with both physical and mental health; the gap between their standard of living and that of the average non-indigenous populace was not something of which most people were aware, and which governments seemed to be either unwilling or unable to address. Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst wrote 'Beds Are Burning' to bring the situation to public attention. They also used the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney as a chance to perform it for an international audience, making the point that the issues remained.

The song was released as a single from the 1987 album 'Diesel and Dust' and became an international hit, reaching Number One in New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, making the top ten in a number of European countries, and the top 20 in the USA. In Australia, it only made it to Number Six. In 2001 APRA (the Australasian Performing Rights Association) named it as the third greatest Australian song of all time, behind the much easier to listen to 'Friday on My Mind' from the Easybeats and 'Eagle Rock' by Daddy Cool.

"The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share

The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to them
Let's give it back

How can we dance
When our earth is turning?
How do we sleep
While our beds are burning?"