Thursday, October 04, 2007

John Fogerty's Revival

Late Tuesday evening, in front of the TV, semi-conscious, supposedly watching Letterman's chat show just ending, through the sleepy blur I suddenly heard someone singing "I can't stand any more of your dirty little war......" The singer really did sound pissed off. I opened my allergy-ridden eyes wide, poked HeWhoKnows in the side and demanded "Who's that?"

"John Fogerty...I've been trying to wake you!"

"Who's he?"

"Creedence Clearwater Revival" - remember - "Proud Mary", "Bad Moon Rising", "Lodi"? He wrote 'em and lots more."

"Ahhh!" I sat up and took notice.

HeWhoKnows had noted that John Fogerty had been singing a different song, then right at the end of his performance discarded his harmonica and ripped into the song I'd heard... gritty, bitter voice rasping the words of a very brief snip from that song. We wondered if perhaps it had been slipped in - not been part of the approved script/schedule. We watched as Letterman walked across to greet Fogerty to note his reaction - but the camera moved away, and that part wasn't shown. Odd!

On further investigation, yesterday morning I discovered that John has just released a new CD "Revival", which contains the songs he sang on Letterman, and other songs of protest against the current US administration.

John Fogerty earned gold stars from me for this performance. I've been looking at his chart. He was born 28 May 1945, Berkeley, California, at (according to Astrotheme) 7.28pm.



Sun at 7 Gemini, Uranus at 12 Gemini - there's more than a hint of rebellion there, with Uranus flavouring his communicative Gemini Sun. Neptune (planet of imagination) and Sun are in harmonious trine, that has to be good for a songwriter. Venus and Mars conjoin in Aries bringing strength and a little aggressive edge to his nature. Mercury in sensible but stubborn Taurus trines Jupiter (publishing planet) in critical Virgo, squaring that Sun/Uranus combination - perhaps he struggles with himself at times, wondering whether his rebellious side goes a little too far?

Natal Moon in sensible, business-like Capricorn widely opposes Saturn in Cancer - not sure exactly how that manifests. We can only know as much as his publicity exposes.

A quick look at current transits shows that transiting rebellious Uranus at 15 Pisces is opposing John's natal Jupiter, and Jupiter, as mentioned above, links into a pattern in his natal chart.

From a good review of his latest CD"Revival" HERE

"And if you really want anger, and want to hear what John Fogerty would sound like auditioning for the Ramones, give a listen to "I Can't Take It No More." It's your basic scream of rage at George Bush, telling him that he (the singer) can't take any more of his lies, and calling him on how his daddy bought him his deferment from the Vietnam war and he's just another spoiled brat."

and

""Long Dark Night" on the other hand is a hard rock song, more reminiscent of Neil Young and Crazy Horse than anything that came out of the swamp. It's all about Georgie who wants your children so he can have a war, with all his little buddies taking what they can while the taking is good."

In a recent issue of Rocky Mountain News, Mark Brown interviews John. Here's an illuminating extract regarding his previous political songs on a CD released in 2004:

"When "Déjà Vu" was just out and was fresh and I was on tour, basically, in many places I would play that song and I would be booed. There would be quite a healthy group of people booing. A lot of noise and controversy going on.

I will tell you I was supposed to be on one of the morning network shows. At the last minute, the afternoon before we were going to go on ? the show called my management and said 'We don't want John to sing that "Déjà Vu" song.' (laughs). But they'd already invited me to be on this show. Just for a minute, just for an eye-blink, I looked at that. I thought 'That's not what were going to do. We're either doing the song or we're not doing the show.' As we all kind of discussed it we're sort of sitting in a pretty good spot here. If I don't do a show and it becomes known that they didn't want me to do "Déjà Vu" it's going to look pretty bad on them, not me.

As the afternoon wore on and phone calls went back and forth I just stood by my guns. It was very clear. All of these broadcasting companies are owned by big corporate monolith corporations. They make most of their profits from a war in one way or another. They're very conservative by nature. Certainly most of these corporations give very hefty sizable donations to the Republican party. I was suddenly a persona non grata or whatever. I realized OK, we're not going to go on the show and by the way we're going to let everybody know why. That kinda made them say 'Oh well, never mind, everything's OK.'"


Go get 'em, John!!

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