Some Music I am Beginning to Relate To

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

I have ripped every music CD I could lay my hands on to fill my computer music collection with a full library. My goal was to not only put some variety in my computer entertainment system, but once I exhausted everything on hand, to begin to add to it with entirely new material.

I call my computer entertainment system GERRWEES - Group Electronic Rackmounted Recording WiFi Enabled Entertainment System. Much of the equipment I have assembled to create GERRWEES I acquired from my GF's step father who had passed away, his name was Jerry. Now that I have a full and diverse music library, I often play music on GERRWEES.

Normally in the past I would play my favorite selections from albums I have and basically ignore the rest, now I use random play. Since I put GERRWEES together and use him to listen to the music library, he has picked some interesting random selections recently that have been strangely appropriate for my mood or situation. It could be a song I never heard before from some recent addition or from an album I already had. The song that has struck a chord with me lately is a song originally by The Band and performed by Counting Crowes on an album I had, but never fully listened to. That song is "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and lately I'm beginning to relate to it.

After toppling statues, changing place names, and banning the stars and bars everywhere they could in recent years, I've felt really bad for anyone who had an ounce of Southern pride left in their blood. But they weren't satisfied tormenting the long defeated Johnny Reb, they are after us Yankees too. I have a special feeling when I hear this tune now, one of sympathy for the south because I'm beginning to know how it feels in this new normal of the 21st century.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
(from "The Last Waltz" soundtrack)

Virgil Caine is the name
And I served on the Danville train.
'Till Stoneman's cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again.

In the winter of '65
We were hungry, just barely alive.
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell.
It's a time I remember, oh so well.

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na".

Back with my wife in Tennessee.
When one day she called to me
Said "Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes the Robert E. Lee!"

Now, I don't mind chopping wood
And I don't care if the money's no good.
You take what you need
And you leave the rest.
But they should never
Have taken the very best.

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na".

Like my father before me
I will work the land.
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand.

He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave.
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Caine back up
When he's in defeat.

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na".