April 29th 1992

"Riot in LA. Where the fuck were you?"

Well, I'll tell you where I was, Ozomatli. Exactly 20 years ago, I was a seven-year-old, trapped in Omaha, NE, feeling depressed about squirrel poetry. But across the Rocky Mountain range, in a little place called Los Angeles, people were rioting in the streets over Rodney King (remember him? "Can't we all just get a long?"). In fact, there were other cities around the US that were up in arms against the "establishment."

As this song suggests (originally composed by ska-band Sublime), the riots of '92 may have started out about Rodney King, but like most riots they ended up about people being sick of authority. No one in government was especially interested in helping the little man, the middle class. Poor people were just poor and there was no helping the fact. Not after middle America grew fearful of Reagan's so-called "Welfare Queen." So no, no one was offering much in the way of "assistance." And in the end, people just had enough.

They literally toppled over "order". Taking to the streets, burning building and looting. You'd be surprised to know that a lot of stuff being looted were the necessities. Pampers and whatnot.

Does any of this sound familiar? I suppose the closest we've gotten to those '92 riots are the Occupy camp-outs. But it's all centered around the same thing, right? Government still doesn't seem particularly interested in the little man and how sick and tire he is of being sick and tired.

I bring this song to your attention because, for one thing, it's a damn good song. Its a bombastic cacophony of beats and brass. It's also an accurate archive of history. Songs can be like that, poetry as well. The creative written word can be just as useful as the Library of Congress.

Just think of Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology Song). Like Rachel Carson, writer of Silent Spring, Gaye was a little ahead of curve in prophesying our nation's environmental demise. Even back then, the fish were stuffed to their gills with mercury and Gaye was writing about it. He sang about it and we can still sing about it today.

I can almost guarantee that Sublime's song will still be relevant a decade from now, just as Mercy Mercy Me has stood the test of time. What beautiful eloquent piece of history will you archive today? Will some kid in the future take your artifact, brush the metaphorical dust off of it and find it relevant to her life? I hope so.