Here are 6 John Prine songs to capture the spirit of being locked down with nothing to do and nowhere to go

When you are subjected to a lockdown, as Sydney is now, what you want, if you are like me, is entertainment that takes the ennui, anxiety, alienation from others and just general all-persuasive sense of melancholy and massively amplifies it. That's what I call living.

That is why it was a tragic irony that COVID-19 killed the great US country singer-songwriter John Prine, coz his whole output seems designed to be a humanist, compassionate and empathetic summing up the strange emptiness and background sense of unease that comes with very limited options.

So here are the 6 songs that seem to capture all that and SURE these songs are generally about other things, whatever the similarities, but that's coz a lockdown is just the reality for many people in the "rich world" under late monopoly capitalism just exaggerated a bit. 

Anyway, and I'm sure I don't have to say this but just in case, this is "whiskey-drinking" music. By all means substitute with your intoxicant of choice (as per the final song on this list) but for god's sake do not attempt sobriety at a time like this. Just don't. 

You can listen to all 6 as a playlist or I lst them below coz that's the kinda shit I do. I'm thoughtful.

Clocks and Spoons

Clocks and spoons and empty rooms
It's raining out tonight
What a way to end a day
By turnin' out the light...

Shoot the moon right between the eyes
I'm screaming
Take me back to sunny countryside

Angel from Montogomerry

There's flies in the kitchen
I can hear 'em there buzzin'
And I ain't done nothing
Since I woke up today

Hello In There

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if he asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do"

Crooked Piece of Time

Things got rough
Things got tough
Things got harder than hard
We were just trying to make a livin'
In our back yard

We were born too late died to soon
Anxiety's a terrible crime
If you don't come now don't come at all
'Cause it's a crooked piece of time.

It's a crooked piece of time that we live in...

Yesterday morning an ill wind came
Blew your picture
Right out of the picture frame
Even blew the candle out
From underneath the flame
Yesterday morning an ill wind came.

Me, Myself and I

Well, tonight I'll throw a party
And I know who I'll invite
There's a strange and lonely person
With whom I'll spend this night
There'll be no old sad memories
To haunt me till I die
In that room there'll be a bottle
And me, myself and I...

Illegal Smile

When I woke up this morning, things were lookin' bad
Seem like total silence was the only friend I had
Bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down, and won
And it was twelve o'clock before I realized
I was havin' no fun
Ah, but fortunately I have the key to escape reality...

Look, I don't know, but maybe we should have overthrown this entire fucking system before now

I think we can safely say that 2020 is going exactly as well as you'd imagine 2020 would go if you hadn't, in advance of 2020, overthrown the psychopathic, self-destructive monster that is capitalism with a rational system that seeks to put the needs of people first.

A lot of people are doing it really tough right now, in so many places. Personally I'm lucky, I got great odds at the start of the year on Nick Kyrgios doing something sensible, so I'm sorted. 

Some may say "you can't blame COVID on capitalism", except that you sort of can. I mean obviously this is an entirely unpredictable event, except for the fact it was predicted. Naturally, this being an entirely rational system, the predictions were ignored and the wealthiest nation on Earth slashed funding for pandemic preparations.

There is no question the world has been turned upside down. Things are so wild and crazy that the Australian Coalition government even started paying unemployed above the poverty line. It's really that nuts.

Imagine saying that would happen at the start of the year. They'd have given you a kindly look and said "please come with us, we have a place where you'll be safe" then injected you full of Lithium and locked you away for your own good.

Naturally, they are trying to take it away. They say higher unemployment benefits are "putting people off" from seeking work.

There's a slight issue with this, with there being 12 unemployed people for every job vacancy. And that's without even taking into consideration the fact the official stats are blatantly wrong and the reality is worse. (I know, I can't believe they'd lie either.)

Why stop at "finding non-existent jobs" as impossible things the unemployed aren't doing? I also blame the current JobSeeker rate for unemployed people not flying to Pluto, running a marathon in 60 seconds or inventing a COVID-19 vaccine two months ago and stopping this madness that's threatening to restrict my God-given right to destroy my liver in pubs and not just at home, the goddamn lazy bludgers.

Anyway, I have it from a reliable source these dole bludgers just spend all day on their phones anyway. My mate's the guy at Centrelink who monitors its call waiting times and he has the hard data to back it up.

At time of writing, Melbourne has gone back into level 3 lockdown. Possibly the worst thing about this is all the jokes us Sydneysiders want to make about Melbourne, but are way too nervous to coz our return to lockdown is just one bureaucratic fuck up away.

Meanwhile as Australian governments continue their deep and unabiding commitment to detaining brown people, some rich people win exemptions from quarantine. Proving that, a seemingly endless stream of irritating TV ads nothingstanding, we are not all in this together except in the sense we all share the misfortune of inhabiting this planet at the exact moment as the fucking Arctic is being ravaged what the scientists are calling "zombie fires". 

I'd never heard of a "zombie fire" before either. And while I've no idea exactly what it means, an undead brain-eating fire is not exactly a very reassuring image, even if it was ravaging a place well known for bushfires, like all of Australia, and not, like... THE FUCKING ARCTIC. Which is where we keep most of our ice. Or we did, until the Rise of the Zombie Fires.

It's in this context that news cam that Australia had won a new award: we are now the world's largest exporters of fossil fuels. It just goes to show, with some vision, drive and a bit of gumption, you can achieve anything, even the end of the world.

It is this kind of thing that allows us to keep a sense of perspective about the COVID-19 pandemic. As bad as it seems now, things are going to get so much worse as the consequences runaway climate change increasingly hit. It's gonna make Mad Max look Utopian.

I dunno. Maybe not overthrowing this system and installing an entirely new one was a mistake. 

Anyway, here's a song. I was going to choose something Apocalyptic by Tom Waits, like "Earth Died Screaming", but I don't know if it will exactly help anyone sleep so I've gone for "I think You Outta Try Whiskey" duet by Canadian country singers Cob Lund and Jaida Dreyer. It is off Corb's new album Agricultural Tragic and it's a lot of fun. It's got a great "Johnny and June" vibe to it. 

"I think you outta try whiskey, babe"

"Well I think you outta try gin!"

No need to fight, you are both right.

Wash Your Hands To This Townes Van Zandt Song That Is Still Far Less Depressing Than Reality

The late Texas country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt knew how to write a depressing song. Few fit the bill better than his classic "Waitin' Round To Die", which despite laying bare a life of pain and suffering with no point or direction before "finding a friend at last" in Opioid dependence, is STILL heaps cheerier than the actual reality around you as major Western governments appear to happily sacrifice vulnerable sections of their populations instead of mobilising the huge resources required to confront an unprecedented crisis.

And that's just the climate situation.

So as you wash your hands in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus so we can enjoy the last handful of years left before climate change causing civioisation to collapse once and for all, why not cheer yourself up by humming this ditty that is `000 times happier than the real world. Oh to have an empty future of alienation and pain instad of... what is happening and will get worse.

Listen on YouTube / Spotify

7 Jason Isbell Songs To Wash Your Hands To. Song 6 Might Be Too Dark But What Do You Expect, It's Jason Isbell

It seems these days have to care about personal hygeine, which comes as a shock to a 42-year-old man. But apparently we must do crazy shit like wash our hands thoroughly, and to help sections of various songs have been suggested to sing.

Well we might as well use this terrifying global crisis of uncertain danger to civilisation to highlight the really good lyric writers out there, the highest quality story tellers operating in the singer/songwriter world.

With the help of the auto-generated washyourlyrics.com, I produced my first with the greatest of them all with my post, The 7 Tom Waits Songs To Wash Your Hands To So We Don't All Die In An Apocalypse Like In Song Number 6. It was wildly succesful and is now being used in health promotion right across the globe.

Now it is the turn of Jason Isbell, the greatest lyricsts so far in the 21st century and the way this century is going there might be much time for him to be beaten. (Unless I get too bored with this, next up will be Lucinda Williams.)

The list starts with the first song of Isbell's that was recorded, which was released with the Drive By Truckers. "Decoration Day" is the ultimate song about a surprisingly recent bloody fued in Alabama that is also a true story to which the songwriter has some family connections. It's a tough field to top but Isbell manages it easily with a truly insane, tragic andcomplicated story. Then there's song 6 which is maybe too dark given the potentially deadly virus causing havock around the world, but it is Jason Isbell so what do you expect.

I've included links to listen to the songs so you can pick up the melody. You can buy his music and merch here. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer sometime, maybe when the Apocalypse has passed.

Listen

Listen

Listen

Listen

Listen

Listen

Listen

The 7 Tom Waits Songs To Wash Your Hands To So We Don't All Die In An Apocalypse Like In Song Number 6

This COVID-19 thing is serious. The stakes are so high, if major sporting events keep getting cancelled, the world's men are going to be left with nothing to talk about but their feelings.

No one is safe, not even leading politicians. Australia's home affairs minister and renowned Dath Vader enthusiast Peter Dutton has tested positive. This has prompted widespread mocking and uncontrollable laughter, so I want to make it absolutely clear that, personally, I would NEVER say anything about Peter Dutton that I wouldn't ALSO say about Adolf Hitler.

Some people have suggested this shows Dutton doesn't wash his hands, which is true is extra unhygenic given all that blood on them from innocent refugees. In his defence, there is just isn't the hand sanitser in the world required to get them clean.

To make things worse, and I hope I am wrong but the signs are worrying, it appears, and this might be alarmist... but it appears that the president of the wealtiest nation on Earth where the virus is spreading rapidly and whose action will help determine the fate of the world ...  and look I could be biased as he isn't in the top 10 of my favourite politicians or even supervillains... but it appears... he might be a bit of a dickhead.

(That at least doesn't appear to be the case with Australia's prime minister, as we already know without a doubt from painful experience that he's a dickhead you'd not want anywhere near anything vaguely resembling power during a crisis.)

Unlike climate change, where you can recycle forever and turn off lights in your overpriced apartment and catch public transport on the rare days it runs properly but we'd still be in the midst of a rapidly evolving ecoholocaust, at least with a virus there is something everyone can do to... if not help at least not actively make things worse.

You can wash your hands.

Now many children and men aren't known for being the best hand cleaners. Many men right now are  just waiting impatiently for the crisis to pass so they can go back to vaguely flicking their hands at a basin after spraying them with urine in the toilets of an unsanitary pub.

That's why there is a great educational poster that offers a guide to washing your hands that comes with suggested song lyrics to sing to yourself to make sure you take 30 seconds.

And if there is a man for apocalyptic times, it's Tom Waits. The greatest living songwriter has been about this shit since forever PLUS he has the best lyrics so it is appropriate to take that "put the song of your choice in and a handwashing poster will be automatically generated with its opening lines" site and some Tom Waits lyrics to it.

Here are 7 great Tom Waits songs to sing while washing your hands, with links to the song so if you don't know the tune. If we all wash our hands we might avoid the total Apocalypse that wipes out humanity depicted in Song 6 until the next bushfire season at least!

The list starts with a happy, upbeat track about new love and features a super catchy melody and running all the way through to "forget it, we are all going to die" at the end. Happy washing!

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

Youtube / Spotify

Youtube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify