10th
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Mad Mamma’s Blues: Josie Miles (1924)
This song often acts as a barometer of my state of mind, the musical equivalent of a mood ring. If all is well, I can find it pretty funny, the way one finds slasher films funny. It’s so audacious, too over the top to be real. Josie is a terrorist. She wants to blow up the city; she wants to see everyone lying dead in the street; she wants to stand in a river of their blood; she wants to shoot anybody left standing. Ha!
If I’m not in a good mood, but also not in a bad mood, — a blank slate, my normal state — I’m disturbed by this song. War is real; murder is real; terrorism is real, and I can’t find it funny. This song represents man’s great failing; we’re inexplicably driven to destroy, to undo great doings. It’s tragic, and I wish I could change this, but I can’t. No one can.
And occasionally, very occassionally, if my patience is running especially thin, and I’m confronted with a heavy dose of ignorance, bigotry, racism, anti-intellectualism, overt anti-environmentalism, or general asshole-like behavior, this becomes my theme song. Humans are awful and we simply don’t deserve this big, beautiful planet, I think to myself. However, unlike Josie, I don’t want to set the world on fire; it is only fair, after all, to let the monkeys have their go at it.
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Lyrics:
Wanna set the world on fire
That is my one mad desire
I’m a devil in disguise
Got murder in eye
Now I could see blood running through the street (x2)
Could see everybody laying dead right at my feet
The man invented war sure is my friend (x2)
Don’t believe that I’m sinking, just look what a hole I’m in
Give me gunpowder, give me dynamite (x2)
Yes, I’d wreck the city, wanna blow it up tonight
I took my big Winchester down off the shelf (x2)
When I get through shootin’ there will be nobody left
