Jefferson Pepper

Christmas In Fallujah, American Fallout

Not a Christmas album, although several songs allude to that particular time of year, rather another album that looks at America today and comments on the absurdity of it all. M-16 talks about the toy version that sets boys up to be soldiers, while noting that the company that makes the toys also makes the real guns. This is done to a roots rock electric guitar backing. The instruments adding flavour to this are pedal steel, fiddle, mandolin, Dobro and banjo. Pepper has a nasal voice and delivers the song with restraint, as he does with Bethlehem, PA or with grit and determination on the punk styled This Land Is Your Land. Other songs sit in a more mid-tempo setting but all are well handled with some strong guitar intertwined as on Deceived. The traditional Soldier’s Joy an old-time style instrumental adds to the variety of tone and mood on the album. The sad song Why? deals with loss and conveys this both in the lyric and in the musical mood. Other than the traditional song and his pointed cover of Woody Guthrie’s song, Pepper has written all the songs and he is, in many ways, a modern day protest singer in the mould of Steve Earle. There is a hidden track that again picks up the seasonal theme, Plastic Illuminated Snowman, which closes the album as it began with strident guitars and a protesting voice.

You don't hear many protest songs on the radio anymore.

I'm not sure if a song like Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" (1965), or Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" (1967), or, God forbid, "Ohio (1970), by Neil Young, would even come up for air today in an American radio world choking under the grasp of corporate radio monsters like ClearChannel and Cumulus Media. Back then, radio station D.J.'s could often decide or at least influence what they played on their shows, as I did when I spun the disks at the Hope College radio station, WTAS.

So if you never heard a great protest song like "Christmas in Fallujah" recorded by Jefferson Pepper in 2005 on his own American Fallout label, you are forgiven. But if you confuse it with the song with the same title by Billy Joel and budding corporate rock star Cass Dillon that just came out--it is completely different--you're headed straight for that special Hell where the only music you'll hear all day long is "Precious and Few" (1972) by Climax, a sappy ballad that presaged the worst of corporate rock.

But I digress.

Pepper lives in Newberry Township, Pa., south of Harrisburg, and is married to the writer Lauri Lebo. He recently put a video of his original "Christmas in Fallujah" up on YouTube as a response to the Joel-Dillon video on YouTube. The songs and videos are as different as two songs with the same title can be. Pepper's is a true protest song, a tribute to a neighbor, 22-year-old Army medic David Maples, who spent a year in bloody Fallujah. It is also a larger tribute to American troops who are in a hellhole for George W. Bush and must deal with the severe mental wounds from the collateral damage they inflict on Iraqi civilians in the name of something or other.

The Joel-Dillon song, on the other hand, is support-the-troops propaganda that will be popular at Young Republican rallies and evangelical church youth group meetings. It says nothing against the war in Iraq, nothing at all. It has the unmitigated gall to imply that Osama bin Laden is actually living in Iraq and directly responsible for the carnage in that sad and dying country. In other words, it could have been penned by the Republican National Committee. Imagine if a singer in Germany during World War II had released a song called, "Christmas in Stalingrad" about the brave and valiant German troops fighting the beastly Russians under horrible conditions and you'll get what I mean. George W. Bush will be humming along to it on the Stairmaster.

Pepper sings his own "Christmas in Fallujah" over photos and words of David Maples. It is a mournful portrait of young Americans caught up in a beastly conflict they don't understand and only barely support. When it is done, you feel relief that Maples came home safely and you hope against hope that his fellow soldiers will soon follow. It is very patriotic, unless your patriotism has no room to admit that George W. Bush led America down the road to disaster.

December 11, 2007

YOUTUBE VIDEO: Aside from an introduction from the songwriting legend himself and the bizarre stage presence of a company of soldiers in desert camoflauge chanting a disturbing “hoo-rah” or some such nonsense, mostly forgettable.

IKE SAYS: “Badass. This hombre is one batshit crazy motherfucker. Not to be messed with in any condition, especially stay clear after he throws down a fifth of potato vodka. More dangerous than Ray Lewis with a machete. Get this, my bitches: J-Pep bitch-slaps Billy-J and reigns as Dead Ike’s new and indisputed Christmas in Fallujah champion.”