"Beat the Bushes" single

[TedsGarage]

        SINGER CAMPAIGNS WITH A GUITAR
        By TED McCLELLAND

        Rebecca F. had just heard her political anthem, “Beat
the Bushes,” played over the PA system at the Elbo Room.  It
got her to musing about Vote for Change, the Anybody But Bush
musical revue led by Bruce Springsteen, REM and Pearl Jam that
will barnstorm the swing states this fall.

	“I wish I was on it,” Rebecca said.  Her impresario, Jerry
Freda, sat beside her in a booth, nodding his head.  “I can’t
imagine why we’re not, except it’s all people who are already
established.  People need new voices.”

	Unlike, say, Death Cab for Cutie, Rebecca has been dissing
George W. Bush onstage since last spring, when Freda played
her the demo for “Beat the Bushes,” a song he wrote after
hearing former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill tell 60 Minutes
that Bush had been planning to invade Iraq for years.

	““I said ‘I just wrote this song, this guy is pissing me off.
 She said, ‘I really like it,’” said Freda, a retired meat
packer and amateur musician who recorded the demo in his
basement.  

	Rebecca is a singer/songwriter/poet who teaches composition
at Robert Morris College.  Her songs feature elliptical lyrics
such as “A home pregnancy test,/ A baby bird in a jar,/ A
plastic eyeball,/ A wooden duck.”  But she has known Freda
since she was a girl growing up on his old street in
Barrington, and she agreed to sing his broadside because “it’s
so direct.  Subtlety is beautiful, but this is a dangerous
time.”

	The pair knocked out a CD, and sent it to Randi Rhodes of Air
America Radio, who played it on her show.  They set up boxes
at Reckless Records and The Alley, pledging all proceeds to
John Kerry.  With 200 copies sold, it hasn’t exactly been a
hit. On Saturday night at the Elbo Room, they tried to sell a
few more. 	 

	“Beat the Bushes” was the third song in Rebecca’s set.  As
she sang the opening lines, heavyset Matthew Barrett started
swinging his hips and shouting the lyrics when his mouth
wasn’t occupied with a beer or a smoke.

	“As the great misleader is exposed,” Rebecca sang.  “And we
all start learnin’/ That all of this destruction/ Was just for
Halliburton.”

	While Rebecca strummed through the bridge, she addressed the
issues.

	“Does anyone in here have health care?”

	“I don’t!” a voice from the back shouted.

	“Wouldn’t it be nice to have health care?”

	A few bars passed.

	“Does anyone in here know someone whose education is based on
property tax?”

	No one confessed to knowing such a person.

	“Wouldn’t it be nice to have education based on something
other than property tax?”

	You can’t dance to a policy statement like that, so Rebecca’s
violinist sawed into a Dave Matthews-style jam that reanimated
Barrett and his friends.

	“Get up!  Get off your ass,” came the chorus.  “It’s time to
beat the Bushes/ With truth that undermines/ The bullshit that
he’s pushin’.”

	Afterwards, Freda roamed the bar, holding the box of CDs at
waist level, like a beer vendor at the ballpark.  He sold 10
copies.  That wasn’t as many as the all-time high of 16 at the
Heartland Café, but it was respectable for a 40-member
audience.

	Leigh Hale arrived too late to hear the song, but she bought
a copy anyway, to annoy her Republican roommates.

	“I like the title,” she said.  “That’s enough for me.  I’m
going to play it real loud.  We’ve got two Republicans and one
Democrat, so there’s a debate going on in our apartment.  I’ll
play it in the car on the way home.  I doubt I can change
their minds, though.  They’re stuck on Bush Bush.”

	Rebecca ended her set with “Beat the Bushes.”  The second
time around, Matthew Barrett coaxed a table of women to join
him in his political dance.

	“It’s an awesome song,” said Barrett, a Rebecca F. groupie
who attends all her shows.  “I bought six copies.  I gave one
to a guy I work with.  He’s a wallflower when it comes to
politics.  He said, ‘I listened to the song, and it made a lot
of sense.’”

	Unfortunately, as another fan pointed out, “Beat the Bushes”
isn’t destined to become a timeless protest song.  It’s not
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” or “Masters of War,” “which
don’t specifically say which politicians suck.”

	If “Beat the Bushes” is out-of-date after Nov. 2, that’ll be
all the success Rebecca asks for it.  But she’ll have to find
a new song to get Barrett dancing.

	“Beat the Bushes” can be heard at rebeccaf.com