[promoted by BooMan. I love the video.]
Update [2007-2-23 11:1:54 by BooMan]: Returned to diaries for better exposure.
During the football season, the one commercial I kept see of was John Mellencamp’s song “Our Country.” I will admit, I was not impressed with it. I not impressed that Mellencamp and Chevy co-opted together to sell one of Chevy’s gas guzzling pickup trucks by using the images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11. I guess I was not the only one who felt this way. In fact, some went so far to call him a sellout.
After seeing the commercial for the un-teenth time, I was going to make my own version of the music video. Funny thing, I had no earthly idea how I was going to do it. So, I put it off for a couple of months, until recently. With all this racism and anti-Brown people talk, I just got inspired and I was on a mission do it.
I realized I did not need any fancy software do it; all I needed were some photos and the song and that I had. I also researched the lyrics to make sure everything would make sense. When I did this, I found this blog, DownWithTyranny! which actually wrote about the song before it was released. It seemed that the song had another purpose than being a flag waving song, like Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.
The blogger writes:
It’s the kind of song that will help bind together that which has been so violently torn asunder by Bush, Cheney, Rove and the vicious partisan and self-serving brutes that make up the bandit Regime that has gotten its hands– through hook and crook– on the levers of power in America.
With that in mind, here is my version of John Mellencamp‘s “Our Country.”
The first three verses of the song:
I can stand beside
Things I think are right
And I can stand beside
The idea of stand and fight
And I do believe
There’s a dream for everyone
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our countryThere’s room enough here
For science to live
And there’s room enough here
For religion to forgive
And try to understand
The other people of this world
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our countryThat poverty could be
Just another ugly thing
And bigotry could be
Seen only as obscene
And the ones that run this land
Will help the poor and common man
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our country
Hoped you enjoyed it.