Ah! The “Reagan Years”…. This song was the result of hanging out with a radical left-wing Methodist Minister and seeing the alarming increase of homeless people on the streets and benches of New York City in the winter of 1988-89…
I remember one January day in Grand Central station, women in high heels and fur coats stepping over and through dozens of sleeping homeless men who were attempting to find a place out of the frigid cold.
Sobering.
For those of you used to my “positive songs” this one may be a bit challenging to here.
I do believe that one of the responsibilities of songwriters is to sing about the full human experience in a way that can hopefully challenge our habitual way of thinking and inspire change and transformation. Ultimately any one of us could end up on the street. It’s a fact of modern life. Which is why community and personal development are so important because strip away all our “stuff” and we are all fragile, vulnerable members of this crazy human tribe…
Please click on the arrow to play:
All The Money’s Gone.
Song # 132 | June 19, 1989 | CD: Feather On The Wind
Living on the edge of the road
Desperate just to shake off this cold
Clutching in a brown paper bag
Everything that I have…
What is it in me that you despise
When you walk by me averting your eyes?
Is it fear of me or fear of where you
Might someday be too?
Refrain:
You’ve got to open your eyes
To what the world has become
Where there’s plenty of money for guns
But when you ask them to toss you a crumb
They say “all the money’s gone”
The preacher comes around and we’re told
The streets of heaven are paved with gold
That’s really nice and fine and all that
But I eat less than his cat!
Refrain:
The system seems to work for some folks
But if you’re black or poor you’re welcome to choke
And when you dare to start asking them “Why”
Well then, you’re welcome to die…
Refrain:
And I just want to lie down i n peace
Without fear of being stabbed in my sleep
Where they won’t steal the shoes from your feet
Where they have clean sheets…
Refrain:
And I don’t know just what else to say…
Copyright 1989-2015 by Mark Shepard. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
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