May 18, 2010 by alunparry

Slay The Rich – Live Video

Warning: there is strong language on this video from the start

I wrote this song in the run up to the Haiti gig earlier this year. It’s a disgrace that life or death situations like those which faced the people of Haiti are dependent upon charity.

All around us we see good people striving like hell to meet this desperate need or that desperate need through charitable events.

Yet this world is bloated by private fortunes, massive resources concentrated into the hands of single individuals while the rest of us scrabble around for necessities. Meanwhile governments represent the powerful not the needy.

Good souls respond by trying to do something themselves to help others, but in reality the fact we have to is an indictment of the system that lets poverty and illness rely upon mere charity.

I want a world where charity is no longer needed for such necessities of life itself. And certainly one where the tuxedoed billionaires can no longer throw the odd crumb at us and think it entitles them to bask in the title of philanthropist, but are recognised as the bandits they are.

I could probably do with singing this one a semi tone higher but I’d only just written it so hadn’t really polished it off in terms of which key best suits my voice. Anyhow, here it is, as sung in the famous Cavern in Liverpool, filmed by the great people at Bandinabox TV.

And for those who don’t understand the use of poetry to make a point, I’m obviously not inciting any criminal activity within this song. And the fact that artists feel the need to explicitly say this these days illustrates just what kind of a heavy handed State we have allowed ourselves to live under. But that is one for another song…

#alun parry#bandinabox#cavern#charity#haiti