Music Review

Title: Tear Down the Walls

Artist: Johnny Crescendo

Produced: 2005

Cost: $18.00 USD
adaptdan@yahoo.com
http://www.johnnycrescendo.com/index.html 
or send a check payable to Johnny Crescendo 
800 Cottman Ave. Apt. B1 
160 Philadelphia PA. 19111

Reviewer: Steven E. Brown

      This is a compilation of earlier releases by British folk rocker, Johnny Crescendo, who now makes his home in Philadelphia.  Johnny learned so well from ADAPT, the American street activist, disability rights group, that he helped found DAN (the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network) in England, which shut down the national telethon.  This mentality is evident throughout Johnny’s songs.  This CD includes about 80 minutes of songs.  It is organized into Anthems; Love Songs; and Folk Blues. While I like all of Johnny’s songs, my favorite remains, “The Ballad of Josie Evans,” the story of a neglected woman in an institution:
      
      Josie was a wheelchair user
      She spent eleven years inside
      A short stay institution
      Where she was banged up without trial
      Eleven years the white coats met
      And talked & analysed
      Dispensed the drugs politely 
      Until one day Josie died

	The compilation’s title song, in keeping with this theme, begins:

	This song is for all the people dying in a nursing home
	This song is for all the people who are going to die in a nursing home
	Tear down the walls
	Tear down the walls of a nursing home.

      The song continues to discuss the need for people to be able to choose where they live.  In a similar vein, the song “Not Dead Yet” addressing physician-assisted suicide, states:

	I’m lying at the gates of heaven
	I’m not dead yet…
	I was kind of amazed to see St. Peter roll up in a wheelchair
	I said, “hey Pete, I want to go back.”
	He said “go and give shit to Dr. Quack.”

	On a more autobiographical note, “I Love My Body,” offers the refrain that it’s the only one he’s going to get.  And in the tender “Jasia’s Song” Johnny offers this tribute to his daughter:

	My heart is aching for you my little child
	For you my little child
      My heart aches for you my little child
      My little child
      Go to sleep now
	Shhh
	Hold daddy’s hand
	Go to sleep
	
	If you are not familiar with Johnny’s work this is a great place to start.  If you know it and do not have this compilation, you may well want to add it to your library.
      
      For the desperate and the damned?
      And which people vote?
      For injustice in the land?
      Is it you or your mother?
      Is it you?  Is it you?

      Josie left a letter
      Which I found amongst her things
      It said I am and I survive
      & my heart still has wings
      They can take away my freedom
      They can drug me with their lies
      But they don't have my permission
      & I hang on to my pride