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1933

from DEMOS by Rick Berlin

/

about

For a really long time, as 1/2 German, as one who stole his name in a non-drugged hallucination reading Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, who’s reading The Magician (Colm Toibin) about the sexually repressed life of Thomas Mann and Hitler’s grotesque rise to power, streaming The Plot Against America (HOB) and soon to read Philip Roth’s book about the same horrific fantasy, seeing Richard Gere in Bent on Broadway, all of that and well before I’ve asked myself - how would I have acted in Deutschland under The Reich? As the rise to power crept up the ladder slippery with blood. As Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were forever ‘removed’. Would I have had the courage to hide a schoolgirl in a secret room behind a bureau? I fear I would have done nothing, loathed myself. Lived, had I lived, in a never ending nightmare of guilt and shame.
So this song is (not unlike ‘Did It Happen?’ - about rape, incest abuse) as pretentious as it is an unexpected necessity for me to speak about. An odd result. More ‘lieder’ than rock. More rumination than song.

lyrics

1933

if i had lived in
in Germany
in 1933
would i
i wonder
would i
have felt like
isherwood
r like
a man afraid
a man
afraid of

of himself
n for his friends
torture
hiding from
young boys
in brown
shirts
of windows
cracked n broken
books
burned

r would i
make friends w
Sally
Bowles
touching legs under
a table
in a Cabaret
an Angel in
Blue

my first job
in Boston
i had to evict
drag queens
from a squatters
dirty apartment

i balked
i quit
i couldn’t do it
i was
no hero
no pat on the back
for this guy
it was an easy call
a silent leaf
settling
on frozen ground

i wonder
still i wonder would i
have given up my life
to save my friends
r played the card
of a phony
Aryan

afraid of nazis
of torture
of death
of young boys
in brown shirts
of windows
cracked n broken
and books
burned

afraid of everything

in the end
i am
…a coward

credits

from DEMOS, released November 18, 2012
GBand selfie

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Rick Berlin (now playing w/ THE NICKEL & DIME BAND) image

Rick Berlin (now playing w/ THE NICKEL & DIME BAND) Jamaica Plain

A giant on the Boston music scene. His colorful songwriting + strong stage presence have influenced countless other artists since the early 1970s. He continues to make music w/ intelligence + integrity, building an international reputation around his knotty, singular piano playing, straight-from-the-heart singing and a style of character-based songwriting that's drawn comparisons to Waits + Cohen ... more

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