"Wasteland of the Free" and a memory glitch

[omorka]

Holy crap, my memory is going! I'm not old enough for this!

I got linked to the lyrics of this song in the comments of a political blog. I got a stunning sense of deja vu, and started singing along. I'm convinced that I've heard this before, which isn't all that surprising - it's a fairly old song, from my last year in college, over a decade old at this point. So I looked it up in iTunes, and sang along to the 30-second clip. I had the melody right. I have heard this before.

The problem is, I clearly remember this being a male voice singing with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. I went ahead and bought the song off of iTunes, and the melody I remember is the one that DeMent sings, but clearly what I am remembering is a cover by someone else. I quite like her version (presumably the original), but -

Does anyone else remember there being a cover version? Houstonians, was there a local band or singer that did a cover, maybe, and I'm remembering that? There's no other version available on iTunes, and Googling the title plus the word "cover" gets me nothing but bloggers quoting the lyrics while talking about government cover-ups.

Man, this is going to drive me nuts . . . glad I finally picked up the song, though.

Comments

[shefsatyr.livejournal.com]

It's a male voice in my head as well, never heard Iris's version, I don't go out of my way to listen to her, don't care for her voice/style for the most part. But I know those lyrics and it was a males voice that was singing them.
Oddly enough I almost feel like Jimmy Racraft sang this one a couple of times. The first few shows when he was just starting play again. Then he stopped playing it for some reason. I could be wrong though.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

The guitar I'm hearing mentally could well be Jimmy's playing, but it seems like an unlikely choice for him - he almost never does political stuff, at least if it was recorded after 1972.

Hmm. Only way to find out for sure on that one would be to either ask him directly (or Jimb, if he was playing with him yet at that point), or find a recording somewhere.

Glad to know that someone else remembers this, though!

[shefsatyr.livejournal.com]

I remember Jimmy doing a political song those first few shows and it was one of my two favorite songs he was doing at the time, the other of course being It's Too Late. He stopped playing it and I asked him why and he said someone has said they were bothered by the "downer" song. I never knew the title of that first song and we never got it on tape, but the more I think about it the more I think it was Wasteland. I'd ask Jimmy at this point if I were you. Then we'll have to have him play for us "just to be sure" :)

[shefsatyr.livejournal.com]

And Jimb and Wiley were playing with him at the time.

[wyldraven.livejournal.com]

According to the Google cached playlist (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:VZeTwUD3yCoJ:https://www.kpft.org/studio/playlistbuild.php%3Fweek%3D53%26shownumber%3D13+%22Wasteland+of+the+Free%22+-dement&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=35&gl=us), KPFT played a song titled "Wasteland of the Free" by Kevin Welch from the album Songs of Freedom on Saturday September 29, 2007.

Amazon also lists the same title by Kevin Welsch on this compilation album: Freedom Sings (http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Sings-First-Amendment-Center/dp/B000LX41FG).

Maybe that's what you are looking for?

ETA: http://oldermusicgeekentertainment.blogspot.com/2008/07/music-wasteland-of-free.html

[omorka.livejournal.com]

The music at the link is the DeMent version, which I have. I'd be interested in hearing Welch's cover, but if it's the one I'm thinking of, it's unlikely that I heard it on KPFT - I haven't listened to the radio on a regular basis in over five years. So I would have had to run into it some other way.