Quote:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”--Martin Luther King

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Young Steve Earle

Steve Earle was gifted, twenty, and ready to storm the music world with this magical tale of mercenaries fighting for "greenback dollars or a few pesos down Mexico way."

Some shit never changes.



The footage is from 1975's "Heartworn Highways" (released, 1981), a documentary about songwriter/troubadour Townes Van Zandt and his crew of Austin/Nashville-based contemporaries.

Earle named his son after his mentor Van Zandt. Van Zandt, the writer of the alt-country/Outlaw standard "Poncho and Lefty," died of alcohol and heroin abuse in 1997 at age 53.

The best version of "Mercenary Song" can be found on Earle's masterpiece, "Train A-Comin."


TS

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