The number eight song on this disc when I first released it is now the number 9 song. “Why is that, Michael?” some of you may ask. Well, let me tell you why.
“Strong People”, which, when I first recorded it, I sang in a falsetto voice, was actually written in 1969 in protest to The Vietnam War.
As you know, after losing 58,000 of our citizens and killing over a million of theirs, we lost the war. But, not to worry, Vietnam and The FUSA (The Former United States of America) are great pals these days. We trade with them in this crazy, free trade world.
We even send jobs to their people so that they won’t suffer the kind of unemployment in their country that we’re suffering in The FUSA on account of we’re sending jobs to their people. The FUSA, what a guy.
As far as “Strong People” is concerned all was not lost. Twenty-eight years after our war in Vietnam, which was based a lie told to us by Lyndon Johnson, The Regime, which is better known as the George W. Bush administration, decided that, because Osama bin Laden supposedly had some of his flunkies fly planes into several buildings located within the borders of The FUSA, The FUSA had to invade Iraq, a place in which, if an Al Qaeda operative was ever caught, he would be put to death.
However, the people of The FUSA had to hate someone for what happened on 9/11/2001 and that someone had better look like an Arab. The people of Iraq look a lot like Arabs and they even live in the same part of the world. So, instead of doing some research or even thinking about doing any research, our hungry for revenge population agreed that Iraq would serve as an appropriate whipping boy for a crime that someone else committed.
Now, this was a serious “mistake”, indeed, but it gave me a good reason to revive “Strong People”. As George W. Bush was taking his turn as Queen for a term or two in The White House and he was very well known for having never mastered, or, possibly, even learned, in a formal sort of way, the English language, I not only recorded “Strong People” again, but I had a little fun with it. I sang it in a falsetto voice and I had some of my “pals” making remarks in the background inspired by some of Dubya’s funnier challenges with the language.
Then came this Obama guy. I heard him speak and said to myself, “You can retire “Strong People” forever now. This guy has some intelligence.”
But, alas, Barack has shown us he likes a good war as much as the next guy. So, while he said he was going to take our citizens out of Iraq because that was a bad war (bad, bad war), he was, at the same time, going to place them in Afghanistan, the good war (ah, you’re a good little war aren’t you?).
When I thought that “Strong People” was lost forever, I wrote and took its place on this CD with the song that’s now the eighth song, “Fog”. Hey, I like jazz and blues and I gave it a shot.
But President Obama has kept the embers burning for the song I thought I’d have to retire, “Strong People”. Now War And Other Love Songs has one more song than it had when I first recorded it.
I took all the “funny” stuff out because, considering the intelligence nestled in the brain of Barack Obama, there’s nothing funny about his perpetuating The FUSA’s War Without End.
After all, we are The Former United States of America, a country which never met a war it didn’t like.
