He may be the closest thing we have to a modern-day Phil Ochs (forget about Bob Dylan — he’s too busy leering at Victoria’s Secret models), but with his floral decal blouse and ill-fitting girl’s bell-bottoms, Evan Greer looks more like an awkward middle-schooler than would-be revolutionary. Unlike most thirteen-year-old girls, however, the mop-topped Greer has a penchant for earnestness that far outweighs his vanity. Standing in a pool of fluorescent light a couple of Tuesdays ago, Greer strummed his guitar idly and delivered self-deprecating witticisms as he prepared to launch into what is arguably his most well-known (and, certainly, his most requested) song: an updated version of Och’s satirical broadside, “Love Me, I’m a Liberal.” Although the lyrics condemn about half of Wesleyan’s student population and almost all of their parents (try this verse on for size: “Well I’ve signed about a thousand petitions, / And my golf score is six under par. / I keep myself up on the issues / By listening to N.P.R., / And you know that I’m changing the world / With these stickers all over my car! / So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal!”), Greer invites the smallish crowd to join in on the ditty. “Even if you’re a liberal, you can still sing along,” he offered, adding, “There are programs for that kind of thing.”
Even at leftist enclaves like Wesleyan, radical politics are arguably losing ground to mainstream liberalism under the Obama banner for change. Still, on the evening of Oct. 21, a small but enthusiastic crowd gathered in Westco Café for a night of old-school protest songs demanding social justice and railing against everything from police brutality to prescription drugs. Greer, a friend and activist cohort of show organizer Jon Booth ’12, co-headlined with indie-rock/hip-hop group Broadcast Live.
The evening kicked off with Fundamentally Sound, a genre-bending Wesleyan band comprised of Randyl Wilkerson ’12 on vocals, Kenny Feder ’12 on guitar, Matt Buckley ’12 on bass and Nate Mondschein ’12 on drums. The relatively young group (formed only a couple months ago, during freshman orientation) delivered an impressively developed set of experimental music that blended jazz, rock, soul and spoken word. Michael Nelson ’12 did guest vocals for a swoon-inducing spoken word romantic ode.
Greer took spoken word in a different direction in his first of two sets. (In true horizontalist fashion, Greer and hip-hop/indie rock quartet Broadcast Live, who are also tourmates, decided to alternate their sets to eliminate the hierarchy of openers vs. headliners.) In contrast to Nelson’s almost musical poetic delivery, Greer’s spoken word was a blistering protest against oppression, the government’s response to Katrina, the 1985 MOVE bombings in
Philadelphia, specific intrusions on Boston activist spaces, and a host of other familiar preoccupations among American leftist radicals. Greer toned it down with a few of his protest classics, including the rousing “Ya Basta!”, and a couple new songs that revolved around the familiar themes in his work of social justice and resistance. In his second set, Greer relied more heavily on tried-and-true favorites like “The Adderall Song” (which is not what all you ADD wastoids think it is) and “Love Me, I’m a Liberal.”
For those looking for a reprieve from such heavy preoccupations, the next band was the highlight of the evening. The crowd more than doubled for the spirited, danceable set delivered by last-minute fill-ins, appropriately titled the Last Minutes. Featuring Ryan Rodger ’11 on guitar and vocals, Ben Block ’11 on bass, Katherine McDonald ’11 on vocals and Bella Loggins ’10 on drums, the Last Minutes dissolved — if only for a moment — the serious mood with their soulful brand of groove rock, which integrated a popping funk bass line with lively scatting and swinging electric guitar solos.
Bookending Greer’s second set and the Last Minutes was Albany-based Broadcast Live, made up of Victorio Reyes on vocals and conga, Jory Leanza-Carey on drums, guitar and vocals, Gaetano Vaccaro on guitar, bass and drums and Seantel Chamberlain on drums, bass and guitar. Amid a number of instrument switches, the group performed an eclectic collection of protest songs against violence, oppression and especially police brutality. One impassioned dirge was dedicated to Amadou Diallo, a black Bronx resident allegedly murdered by police with a hailstorm of 41 bullets.
“The police in the United States of America have the right to kill,” Broadcast Live’s vocalist intoned before the song. “And they have the right to kill even if you’re not guilty of a crime. That’s some pretty heavy shit.”
Broadcast Live finished on a lighter note, however, with an ebullient cover of Dead Prez’s “Hip Hop.” The enthused crowd pogo-ed wildly, with Greer gleefully jumping the highest — proving that trite spoken word poems and Bank of America ATM graffiti aside, even activists know how to have fun.
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