Once again I'm left feeling rather alarmed by how poignant my pre-prepared choice of album review is. As you may know, dear reader, I'm running a few weeks ahead of myself - very handy for a) the weeks when I'm too poorly to work and b) when I suddenly remember something I meant to add to a review I wrote weeks ago. Blues For Allah LyricsIt's come in very handy down the years I can tell you. Download one piece wallpaper luffy 1920x1080 for mac. I sit down to write this review having just witnessed the harrowing week of the French shootings and about an hour after witnessing the thousands-strong march across France by several members of the public, heads of state, patrons of honour, special guests, the world's top politicians - oh and David Cameron. I don't know how this sad story will truly end, I doubt in fact that it will ever have an end by the time this article goes to print in a couple of months' time and I don't know what major shift in world politics this will have. What I do know is that the Grateful Dead saw it all in 1975 judging by the contents of this Muslim-influenced album and it's eerie desperate cried for world peace. Grateful Dead Album YoutubeAnd by co-incidence I'd picked out just this album - the most suitable piece in my whole collection - a week ago, three days before the shootings (an obvious choice: I'm just about to start work on my Grateful Dead book proper after a fortnight of Dire Straits and I didn't fancy sitting through 'Shakedown Street', the other Dead record I've got left to cover). At least twice I've sat down to write this review down the eight-years-this-Easter this site has been running and in that time I've lost this CD once (not that unusual either, but it did delay my plans that week) and woken up with 'Go To Heaven' going round my head the other (so that album naturally took precedence). To be honest I'm getting rather scared now because this keeps happening - a perfect example of what the Dead used to call synchronicity. The reason 'Blues For Allah' is partly so apt because it is, from the title down, a predominantly Muslim record (the only AAA one until Cat Stevens turns into Yusuf on 'An Other Cup') - and yet it's subject matter is more world than local politics. The scenery isn't Americana, cowboys, convicts and 'wharf rats' - it's sand, deserts, camels and Arabian Winds, which is unusual to say the least. However much more than this, the album also happens to be a eulogy for lost innocent souls, the poor people who weren't responsible but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when evil was in the neighbourhood - the title track, for instance, being inspired by the assassination of Arabian King Faisai, a Grateful Dead fan no less, who was murdered by his own nephew in a still-befuddled-sounding coup (perhaps, too, the band were contemplating their much ballyhooed concert at the foot of the Geeat Pyramids of Egypt in 1978). Other characters are suffering too though: the Dead (or at least their lyricist Robert Hunter) might be telling the band or their whole generation to 'roll away the dew' before they get set in their ways forever, reflects that we can't have everything we want in life on 'Crazy Fingers' and finally lets loose the gates of hell on the title track before the song pleads to put the past wrongs behind us and 'meet as friends' not enemies.
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