“To the Teeth”
A Holiday Present From Our Poet of the Year
Dateline: 12/28/99
Ani diFranco happily sends us the title track from her just-released album, To the Teeth. There are many reasons why Ani gets our millennial love and rockets: in a time when many artists put out a record every three years or so, Teeth is her second album this year (Up Up Up Up Up Up came out in January 1999), plus she put out another collab with hobo poet Utah Phillips (Fellow Workers, released earlier this year), plus she signed Sekou Sundiata to Righteous Babe for a CD and (a Babe first) book, plus she wowed 'em at the People's Poetry Gathering in NYC this spring, plus she played some 200 other dates, plus she gives us hope, in this bizarre gyration of the years, that a single voice with something to say can find a way to get it out and across, over and in.
She may be fed up with these States, but to us she's the real patriot. Happy Holidays, all. The Voice of the Poet is Heard.
--Bob Holman
to the teeth
the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we're all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
every year now like christmas
some boy gets the milkfed suburban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and the women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when your men bring the guns home
look at where the profits are
that's how you'll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
in the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run its course
they're gonna make a pretty penny
and then they're all going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah malcolm forecasted this flood
are we really gonna sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood?
true it may take some doing
to see this undoing through
but in my humble opinion
here's what I suggest we do:
open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he's giving head
to some republican senator
and if i hear one more time
about a fool's right
to his tools of rage
i'm gonna take all my friends
and i'm gonna move to canada
and we're gonna die of old age
--ani difranco
Audio clips from the CDs linked above & many other Ani diFranco albums can be found at Borders.com:
- To the Teeth (1999, Righteous Babe Records)
- Up Up Up Up Up Up (1999, Righteous Babe Records)
- Fellow Workers (1999, Righteous Babe Records)
- Hunger with Janis Ian (1997, Windham Hill Records)
- The Past Didn't Go Anywhere with Utah Phillips (1996, Righteous Babe Records)
- Dilate (1996, Righteous Babe Records)
Her own site for Righteous Babe Records isn't up yet, but there's a ton of stuff about Ani diFranco out there:
- Cooking Vinyl's Ani diFranco site is a good place to begin, with a biography & interview, extensive discography in 2 parts & news summaries about To the Teeth & Fellow Workers (with Real Audio clips).
- The Absolute Ani folks went on tour following Ani through the southern U.S. in April 1998 & came back with AniLive, a gallery of pictures, audio & video.
- MegaZone's Not the Official Righteous Babe Records site is home to several Ani diFranco email discussion lists & the archives of what may be the first fan site.
- Anidifranco.org has a good archive of links to articles about Ani (including The Righteous Reader e-newsletter from Righteous Babe Records), a huge picture collection, a lyrics database listed by album & also searchable & the Quotable Ani collection of reader-submitted Ani-isms.
- Mother Jones Magazine's MoJoWire site has an interview with Ani.
- At Absolute Ani you'll find current tour dates, song lyrics with a search engine, the Ani Talk email discussion list, a good-sized picture archive, the Ani Tape Traders Message Board & a brief history of Righteous Babe Records. (Most of the other pages are empty but for ads or under construction.)
- For those who want to learn to play Ani's songs on the guitar, AniTabs is the resource you need.
- Want more? Wander through the Ani diFranco WebRing (80 sites!).
