Peace On Earth? Yeah, Right!

Dallas, TX –

It seems I’ve reached that age…

What age would that be?

The age where it seems that about every other week, yet another one of the musicians who contributed to my teenage soundtrack dies.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s always been members of that fraternity who’ve died, even during my teenage years.

But back then, most of them were due to their lifestyle.

Drug overdoses and plane crashes.

Oh, and the occasional gunshot wound.

I’m looking at you, Mark David Chapman. Thanks for giving me one of the worst weeks of my life, having to explain over and over that we’re NOT related…

Same goes for one of my professors at the time who happened to have the same surname. We spent a few minutes in the middle of that week commiserating on the unique form of hell you had subjected us to…

But I digress, back to today.

The thing is, now, most of the deaths are from what are referred to as “natural causes”.

Not that some may be long-term results of their earlier lifestyle, but it’s no longer the lifestyle that’s killing them.

And, one year ago, just days after the release of last year’s Twisted Christmas song, one of those musicians died who had written his own Christmas song.

And not just any Christmas song, one that expressed a cynical view of the way the holiday has been twisted and mutilated until it’s become an over-commercialized shopping frenzy.

I’m looking at you, shopping malls that start playing Christmas music in August, and Black Friday sales that bring out the worst in people.

The Hunger Games for big-screen TVs.

This song also focused its gaze on the empty platitudes that everyone expresses during the holiday season.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The sentiments expressed are laudable, and are goals that we should all be striving for.

Peace on Earth, Good will toward man.

Easy words to say, not so easy to live by.

Especially these days.

What with the war drums beating such a steady beat…

And so many people using religion as a means of separating “us” from “them”…

See, this is something I’ve always has a problem with.

Most of the major religions from around the world claim that there’s only one God.

At the same time, most of the followers of any one of these religions point at the followers of the others and decry that they’re following the “wrong” God.

If there’s only one God, how can anyone be following the wrong God?

It seems more to me that they don’t like the “how” of other’s worship.

“They’re worshiping God in the wrong way.”

Or something like that…

Yet, when you really look at all of the major religions from around the world, they all boil down to the same thing.

The Golden Rule.

Treat everyone else as you want them to treat you.

A simple, but not so easy rule to follow.

Especially when you let emotion get in the way.

Everything else is just personal preference.

Like whether your musical tastes run more toward Country or Free Jazz (just to randomly pick two very different styles).

Yep, peace on earth, easier said than done.

Especially with our national leadership having spent the past sixteen years fomenting fear in our national psyche.

The better to manipulate us…

To bend us to their will…

To generate the enormous profits of the war machine…

But that’s just the cynic in me coming out.

The one that looks at every law or policy proposed by any politician, and asks who stands to profit from it.

Who will be able to leverage it to make a buck.

That’s who must be whispering in the politician’s ear, lining their pockets.

After all, all governments are corrupt, some just hide it better.

And ours is getting worse and worse at hiding it.

Sometimes I question whether they’re even trying to hide the corruption?

Maybe they’ve decided that hiding it is too much work. That they’ve decided to just flaunt it, and say “yes, we’re corrupt. Deal with it.”

Government “for the people, by the people”? How quaint…

But I digress. Back to this year’s Twisted Christmas song.

This one may be a first.

No twisting was done.

No re-harmonizing, no re-writing the lyrics.

Just a straightforward arrangement.

Strip the song down to its lead sheet skeleton, and flesh it out from there.

Oh, and keep it simple.

See, this past year, I haven’t had the time to spend on this that I normally have.

It forced me to focus and keep things relatively simple.

Simple arrangement, simple parts. Don’t require much practice time that I don’t have available…

And so, as a tribute to the late Greg Lake, thanks for helping provide a part of my teenage soundtrack, this year’s Twisted Christmas song is…

For the full archive of Twisted Xmas songs, click here.