The Fried Chicken Band's song Haunted

Here's a song I heard just recently and it quickly became my favourite tune partly due to its folksy American feeling and the way it aligns with the current zeitgeist in the United States.  In fact it could've been a theme song for the Trump campaign. For this reason I wrote up all the lyrics as well as I could below so you can read them.

You can hear it on youtube or alternatively just play it down here:






1.

Wandered by the old mines early one night
as the last pile of salt was being dragged out
went by the boat to the opposite shore
cuz they don't like strangers lookin' about
and security might (?) show on the dust and the gravel--
as the last truck was pullin' away
I heard a man sob and sittin' out on the porch
where the men always come to be paid--

with a pint by his side and his head in his hands, 
he looked up and he called me:
"why'd you come round here; you're wanted out here
you came to stare at my misery?
so you see how it is for thirty years in this place 
a man just gives you the news:
he says here's your final check and a pretty gold watch
cuz we're through payin' all of your dues--

"and I will be haunted-- by the thundering blast--
that rocked the earth-- each day at noon--
If someone has the courage to tear the whole place down--
it won't be too soon"

2.

"Know if I could I would leave this town but
I got a wife and kids to look after
and I don't go back to have a drink with the boys
couldn't stand the sympathy and the laughter
they would say when I was gone he gotta talk right (?) that's all 
but he's too old to push the people around
in life there's work for the young and the strong
but I'll soon be layin' deep in the ground

"Don't know how the hell I got talkin' to you
but there's got to be someone who understands
worked all my life like a son of a bitch
usin' nuthin' but a pair of good hands
all society gives me the shame I can't handle
strugglin' anyway that I can:
changing as they want me from a strong old guy
to a snivellin' second class man

"and I will be haunted-- by the thundering blast--
that rocked the earth-- each day at noon--
If someone has the courage to tear the whole place down--
it won't be too soon..."


Pure American poetry.  Worthy of a Nobel too, according to senile Swede seniors?  Yeah, who isn't?  At the same time, the hint of violence-- that classic American crime of going postal at a workplace-- is so chilling too.

Having become haunted by this song, what I'd like to know is, who wrote it?  Is it a cover version of a previous folk song, or, unbelievably, did this utterly unknown German group from the late seventies actually pen it?  Someone out there knows something, as they say on America's Most Wanted...

Iskander remainder: Ouverture (1980), Mental Touch (1987) and Another Life (1990)

All their covers really were beautiful, I particularly love the Bacon / de Chirico-like last one.  The first album, credited to keyboardist Peter Tassius and the band, is the most rare, while all the remainder I believe were released back to CD.

They all have their moments, even surprisingly the last one, but only Mental Touch approaches the aforeposted Boheme 2000 in its inventiveness and compositional skills.

Iskander's Best album, Boheme, from 1982 [brief posting only]

From discogs:

German complex symphonic rock band, mainly instrumental with rich keyboards, fluid guitar, elements of Camel, Streetmark, Anyone's Daughter, Novalis, even spacious Ashra.

They also remind me a great deal of Odyssee's White Swan, which is the masterpiece symphonic German album from that time, for me.  

It appears they made four albums in total, quite widely spread out from early eighties to 1990, but this one called Boheme 2000 is by far the best progressive composition.  The first, Peter Tassius's Ouverture, is mostly piano.

Easily the track Eltneg Tnaig (turn it backwards to understand) tells their prog credentials in full:

I can up all the others if there is any interest at all.

Manfred Schoof's Timebreaker from 1990 [brief posting only!]

I talked about this album in connection with the last Schoof post here and based on the strength of Power Station eventually I couldn't resist hearing it, although we are getting uncomfortably close to what we humans call the present for lack of a better physical or metaphysical description of that point in the unusual dimension of time.


Sadly this did not turn out to be another Power Station, being the equivalent in that regard to a small Punjabi wood-burning oven. It's replete with those annoying drum machines and the dramatic echoey chords, usually A minor, that remind me so much of my first cheap casio keyboard I bought in the late eighties, when it was a hallmark of all pop music.

Track 7:

Back with Jazz Cellula and "Cellula International's" 1982 Jazzissimo

Compared to the previous, and predictably, this record will be a bit too jazzy for tastes including but not limited to mine.  I thought that in the year 1982 fusion wasn't quite defunct and vulture-eaten yet but I was wrong.  Likely I won't be back with more from them.

The best track is old Sam's story: Starý Sam - Old Sam (by Laco Deczi)