Ehresman remembers: "The day after watching the yahoo riot/coup attempt on January 6, 2021, I was still so angry about it that I felt I had to write something, and so this is it.......Wrote it that Thursday, spent Friday and Saturday recording it, then mixed it down Sunday.........I can't say the process made me feel any less angry about the whole ugly situation (and the attitudes that led to it), but I did feel some sense of release in letting those feelings out."
No stranger to creating spoken word pieces backed by music, Ehresman says he's been a big Gil-Scott Heron fan since first coming across his work back in the late '80s. And there's no doubt that the influence can be heard in "Behold the American Yahoo." This is an unflinching, razor-sharp analysis and condemnation of a long-standing rotten underbelly that has now come to dominate the mindset of nearly half the United States. No punches are pulled, and the anger and heartbreak and despair seep into your ear throughout this 14 minute epic.
In the instrumental sections, you can hear the influence of Norwegian cutting-edge trumpeter and sound designer Nils Petter Molvær, who has been an Ehresman favorite for many years. Although it's also hard to deny the latter-period Miles Davis influence here as well.
--Violent, childish and small, but oh so many of them;
--Dressing up in soldier costumes, storming over halfhearted Capitol Police (no heavy equipment out today, man, since there’s no black folks in the crowd);
--proudly wearing willful ignorance on their sleeves, red hats and t-shirt slogans……”I’m right because…….Fuck you!!!”.
Behold the American Yahoo.
Behold the American Yahoo:
--a toddler in camo, holding its breath until its trigger finger turns blue;
--the ultimate hyperbole……..the sacred word” freedom” reduced to a mere whim;
--“No social contract for me, by God!………I aspire to nothing more than what that orange-headed gentleman over there has—the ability to do anything at any time to anybody with no consequences……That’s what I want!.......And when I get there, that bastard who lives next door will surely be sorry, I mean to tell ya……………....Payback time.”
Behold the American Yahoo.
Behold the American Yahoo:
--Cognitive dissonance stretches that rubber band tighter…….tighter!........TIGHTER!!!...........more than you could ever believe…………’til people spit in the eye of objective reality to their literal dying breath……”Fuck you, doctor…..I ain’t dyin’ of COVID!....(gasp)….....It don’t exist!!....... (choke)……(wheeze)……. [flatline]”;
--Kissing the whip that comes from the right (always from the right)…….”Lash me again, master, and tell me how it’s that other fella that’s actually doin’ it”;
--So mentally compromised they can’t even fight for their own self-interest……Much less allow empathy to make the list.
Behold the American Yahoo.
Behold the American Yahoo:
--finally breaking out the gun horde for reals, people……stroking it, rubbing it, whispering to it……”Gonna get that power back, baby…….gonna get it..…….Get it”…..even though you’ve been hunkered down in the Bootheel, man, your whole damn life, jacking meth and not so much, you know……workin’…….per se;
--Chuckle-headed nights on the town…….Headers on your ’94 third-hand Honda wakin’ the neighbors, crankin’ the Kid Rock and poundin’ Coors Light, and howling the cry of the Whoo People…….”Whooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”;
--Confederate flag bumper stickers, baby, because……….well, you don’t know exactly why “because,” but “it sure do trigger them Libs don’ it!?!.......Whoooooooooooooooooooo!!!.”
Behold the American Yahoo.
And so when finally, inevitably, you and your friends dig out all the quarters from the couch and car seats and pile into that rust-bucket Honda to limp on over to Washington DC for that fateful January 6th, you see your tribe……a sea of chuckleheads, meatheads, meth-heads, skinheads and militia cos-play bearded fuckwits …..even a Libertarian pseudo-intellectual over there, talking in circles and making up statistics with a petulant condescension……….
So many more now at the end than were here for the inauguration……could it have been just four years ago? …….(seems like a lifetime)…….The stench of testosterone poisoning hanging like a sewer fog over the White House lawn…..so thick you can taste it…….It tastes like a coiled spring…….like a zoo in a heat wave……..like a lynch mob………like a cross soaked in kerosene………like whiskey breath breathing heavy over a beaten woman……..But most of all, it tastes like desperation. You don’t really know what you want, do you?.........You just know it’s got to be SOMETHING……something different than what you got now……something where you don’t feel so small…….something where you’re treated with the automatic respect that a white man should get, right?......no need to earn it…….no need to share anything……no need to work or listen to a damn boss or to anybody about anything at all, right?..........You just say what you want and someone does it for you…….hell, they FIGHT for the chance to do it for ya!.......That’s what HE has……”That Trump doesn’t give a shit what ANYBODY thinks……he just wants things, and then they happen……An’ if someone pisses him off, well then, he just buries ‘em…….That’s power…..That’s the perfect life…….that’s the life I want…..Hell, that’s the life I DESERVE……..And I’m gonna get it, boy……and it starts today. We’re marching now, we’re climbing up the walls, we’re hanging off the balconies, hell, we’re sittin’ in Pelosi’s fuckin’ chair and leavin’ her dirty notes tellin’ her what we’re gonna do to her next time…..and I can feel it……something new comin’……”
“I got my gun. And I’m ready. Just tell me where to point it, Mr. President.”
Behold the American Yahoo. Because he is most assuredly beholding you.
credits
from Songs From the Crux,
released April 1, 2021
Walter Ehresman: narration, keyboards & key percussion, guitar, groove box manipulations.
Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin , Walter Ehresman was an eccentric
presence in the Austin music scene from the '80s until his 2015 move to Mexico. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist...and a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, expressed with fearlessly honest, socially-conscious lyrics....more
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