From ANDRAS JONES: GEOFF BERNER invited his friend BRIGA (aka Brigitte Dajczer) to consult The Pop Oracle from Dachau where she was serving as an artist in residence. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to those of us in the studio at the time, this session is being released the day reports are coming in that Israeli snipers killed over 50 unarmed protesters and wounded over a thousand during protests against the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem. It’s tempting, unavoidable even, to draw the parallels between the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians and the treatment of Jews by the Nazis at places like Dachau. As it is here in America, the government of Israel is not an expression of the will of its people or Jews the world over, anymore than Jared Kuschner and Steven Mnuchin are representative of the attitudes of most American Jews, or the anti-semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-gay pastror Robert Jeffress who presided over the opening of the embassy represents the attitudes of most American Christians. Amidst all this cognitive dissonance we come back to Briga’s question about the specific date of the end of the world and the answer from Geoff Berner’s song “Rule of The Road”, inspired by Country Dick Montana of The Beat Farmers. There’s so much to draw from this answer. We’ve got the idea of patriarchal nationalism encoded in the name “Country Dick”. And of course, all the James Joyce fans in the audience will recognize a hidden “cunt” in Dick’s name as well. Then there’s the literal interpretation and all the laws (rules of the road) restricting the movement of Palestinians in Israel, and Mexicans and Muslims in the US, and immigrants the world over. And the brutal fact that a lot of worlds ended yesterday from sniper bullets fired into crowds of protesters. I could keep going (and I encourage you to) but I’ll leave it with this; consider the song an echo of the Mosaic wisdom that those who have been raised in slavery can never know freedom. Whether we learn mental slavery in the death camps of Dachau, or the squalor of Gaza, or the for-profit prisons of the US, every injustice is encoded into the collective consciousness of all and pushes our liberation back a generation.

Everything we take on this trip is gonna be broken by the time we get back.

Rule of the Road (With Apologies To Country Dick Montana)

Pack up the gear,

Pack it up all nice and tightly.

Let it tamp down the fear–

Fear that follows you day and nightly:

How could all this delicate circuitry

Survive all the way,

The rumbling from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay–

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Now you know,

You can’t say I didn’t tell you so,

There’s only one rule of the road.

You’ve got a dream,

Give you any chance, you’ll take it,

You’ve assembled a team.

How could you not possibly make it?

Well look out, kid, cause it’s a long long list,

Starting with Roger’s Pass, pregnancy,

Feldman and Asscociates–

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Now you know,

You can’t say I didn’t tell you so,

There’s only one rule of the road.

I used to say

It was important to travel lightly,

But even at that age,

I knew it wasn’t bloody likely.

But if you’re a True Believer,

You’ll believe me when I say,

I drove from Montreal to Sackville,

And was grateful just to play,

That very same day,

And I forgot to get paid–

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Everything that you take on this trip

Is gonna be broken by the time you get back,

Now you know,

You can’t say I didn’t tell you so,

There’s only one rule of the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzOn46mkGBM

Here’s something fun. The Beat Farmers with Dave Alvin who is going to be taping his question for The Pop Oracle tonight on our Don Heffington episode.