In times of economic uncertainty, tariffs, market crashes, inflation, strife, war and Manchester United playing piss poorly in every game (let us call them the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse), one can always turn to Terje Gravdal, the Lion of Odda, who offers more common sense than the Trumps, Putins, von der Leyens, Netanyahus, Zelenskyys and whoever is left in charge of Hamas and Hezbollah now, put together.
Terje’s speciality is political comment with a lighter touch, at times poking fun at these grandiose ‘leaders’ that live in a different world to humanity but always with an underbelly replete with gravitas.
If I could vote for the next UN Secretary General (or preferably someone to replace the joker that is in situ right now) I know where that vote would be going.
This time out, in ‘Winds will cover’, a track from an EP, ‘The Wild Child’, which has also been released today, 4th April, but which I can’t yet locate on Spotify so I’ll stick with this single, he zeroes in on the Donald and his madcap schemes to annex or otherwise take control of Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal and Lord knows where else he’s dreamed up in the last few days.
Perhaps even Norway. Oil, close to Russia…
Just to take a moment out on a side issue, I’m not going to get drawn on tariffs because I think I know what Trump’s game is (you can see what on my Facebook page, David James Bentley, if you really want to know) but on every other subject DT is fair game.
The particular thorns in Terje’s side are how President Trump has distorted the Founding Fathers’ aims when they drew up the Constitution, and the role of US politicians in “increasing the military effort in a geopolitical chess game with the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and men,” which is a subject he has touched on previously. (And he doesn’t just restrict his venom to Trump; Biden and his son get a kicking for their dirty dealings in respect of the Ukrainian company Burisma).
And that’s not to mention Putin and the oligarchs, who are included by default.
Terje is so disarming. This song starts off, as usual, as if Garth Brooks is about to waddle up to the mike and croon about how he should have married his dog instead of his wife or something equally arcane.
But he is soon into his stride, reporting like a war correspondent on how from his tower at NASA he watches the goings-on in Greenland and Gaza, walking from snow into sand, both of which will cover your steps so no-one will know you’ve been there, before the brilliant line “if you’re trouble you’ll pay double”. I wonder if he knew the significance of that line when he wrote it (very presciently) or if he’s just added it in as a late change since Thursday.
Even Donald would be impressed with that.
Roughly halfway through there’s a tasty bridge, played on (shock, horror!) an electric guitar. And then seconds later there is another one. Terje has indicated before now how he wouldn’t like to be considered a ‘Judas’ for doing that, as was Dylan back in the day (17th May 1966 at Manchester Free Trade Hall to be exact) but hey, man, we have to move with the times, for they are a-changing.
I don’t evoke the name of Mr Zimmerman casually. As I have remarked before (and Terje has kindly reprinted it on his Spotify account) I hear in his work an echo at least of the great man from decades ago.
I know of no-one else in the Nordics doing this kind of thing, except perhaps for Slagger Lund in Denmark and his political asides are more subtle and unfathomable.
I hope he gets lucky with a radio station in the UK; or better still in the US because they would just love it there. Radio WTRJ for example?
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terjegravdalmusic
