Mike Watt July 4 Greetings + Free MP3

Watt and Thurston Moore w/Tom Rapp’s Fourth Day of July”

By Fred Mills

Mighty Mike Watt is away from the United States this weekend: “I'm in Spain, ain't home and on tour,” he writes, apologizing for not getting the missive that follows to us on July 4. No apologies needed, Watt (on bass, natch).

He’s talking about a cover of a Tom Rapp (Pearls Before Swine) song, “Fourth Day of July,” that he and Thurston Moore recorded in 2003 and made available as a free download via the Protest Records site. Wrote Watt, “I posted this song last year on the Fourth of July. It seems like a good tradition to maintain, so here goes. Like last year, I’m not going to say much about the song. I want you to hear it the way I heard it: with zero preface. This song will haunt you.”

Check it out (lyrics posted below):

Fourth Day of July

Links:

Protest Records

Mike Watt Hoot Page

Mike Watt MySpace

“Fourth Day of July,” lyrics by Tom Rapp:

And it came to pass on the first day of July
The last man home from Vietnam was going to arrive
The ship came in so silently, its bow a ghostly white
And when they looked upon the decks, there was not a man inside

Then the sea began to roll and from the ship a moaning
A line of broken children, all from the ship a-coming
The light of death was in their eyes
The broken children of Vietnam
On the first day of July

Like a war beyond control, to Washington at dawn
A line of ghostly children upon the White House lawn
Grown men did turn away, not to see it anymore
To see the burning child running to the White House door
No one found a place to hide
The burning children of Vietnam
On the second of July

All across America a line ten miles long
The dead children all coming home
From the land of Vietnam
To men who got too far away
From what was done in their name
Someday must all have to pay
Who never saw a child die
The dead children are coming home
Four days in July

On every door and window across this sad gray land
A mark that would never go away of a thousand thousand hands
A voice like voices in a dream
A voice like somebody else’s scream
Or not somebody else’s scream
A voice within a fire
The burning children of Vietnam
On the third day of July

Then they came upon the sea, it did open up before them
A line of children all with wounds, upon the ocean walking
Then the sky began to rain
And beat the land with tears of rage
And every year upon that day if a hundred years go by
It rains upon America
On the fourth day of July