Song of the Week: "Greater Omaha"

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"Greater Omaha"

Desaparecidos

from Read Music / Speak Spanish

2002

I touched on it a little bit yesterday, but context has a lot to do with your experience with music. Connie Converse's music might not be anything special, but in the context of her disappearance, it's renown.

Conor Oberst chose an interesting context in which to release his punk band side project's debut album. It's an album full of vitriol spewed at how fucked up America is, how doomed we are as slaves of capitalism, and totally lacks any measurable patriotic pride in our country. And it was released just five months after September 11th.

But now it's been almost eighteen years since that dark day in our country's history, and it's fair to say that a lot more people agree with Desaparecidos than they did in early 2002 (maybe still not enough to effect any meaningful change, but we're getting there!).

Songs like "Greater Omaha" are angry and unrepentant. Oberst screams his frustrations into the void. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer—you know, that whole thing. And unlike Good Charlotte, Desaparecidos are singing against capitalism completely unironically.

Sure, Oberst is still a little pretentious, and sure, maybe this song rocks a little too hard (Pam asked her perennial sarcastic question of "what are we listening to?" when I played this song earlier this week). But my constant refrain holds true for this song as well—this is a song we need right now. It was just... maybe it was better that we waited until everyone took down their "Never Forget" front-yard flags first.