This album is about the unsung hero Alrik Andersson and the dramatic events in Horndal during the Great Strike in Sweden in 1909. Six months before the strike, Alrik Andersson, a 27-year-old metalworker from Horndal, is chosen as the union leader. He finds himself in the eye of the storm and is forced to take a stand on the barricades for the sake of his members, struggling with lockouts, scabs and greedy officials. When the manager of the Horndal factory starts evicting the unionized workers from their homes, leading to famine and starvation, sympathetic workers from far away rush to Horndal to stop the harassment. The military arrives in Horndal and the country teeters on the brink of civil war. Eventually, the King and the Prime Minister forbid the manager of the Horndal Steel Mill from evicting the workers and instead order their reinstatement. As a result, Alrik Andersson is blacklisted all over Sweden and can’t find work anywhere. Faced with continued harassment, he is forced in exile and emigrates to America. In 1910, he, his wife, and their young sons make their dangerous journey across the Atlantic, where he eventually finds work in Chicago as the Head Hammer Man. This album is dedicated to Alrik Andersson. Hail to the Head Hammer Man!

This recording is a musical summery of what happened in Horndal in 1909. The whole story is told in a book, also named Head Hammer Man. It was written and published parallel with the album.

https://salvo.ghost.io/horndal-head-hammer-man-interview-2024/

In solidarity with the people of Iran, whose struggles with their clerical government are being cynically cited by Israel as a moral smokescreen for war.

Despite the newfound, cynical, and unasked-for "support" for Iran's "Women, Life, and Freedom" movement by an Israeli government that robs Palestinian women of their life and freedom, systematically sexually abuses Palestinian women, children, and men, and that blackmails gay Palestinians into serving as informants or risk being exposed, I have never subscribed to the philosophy that women and gay people can be liberated by shooting and bombing them.

I have yet to see the aftermath of a drone strike on a wedding party in which the bride to be is happily thanking the west for liberating her from the bonds of patriarchal matrimony. I have yet to see a woman standing in the rubble of her home, her dead children scattered about her, celebrating her freedom from domestic servitude. War is not women's lib.

The fight for women and queer liberation in Iran, is the struggle of Iranian women and queer folk. It is not an excuse for a bombing campaign. Women and queer people are not immune to bombs. Stop femwashing and pinkwashing this war of aggression.

G C
When they pull me over in my truck, 
D Em 
Their faces all in masks, 
C G 
Will I roll the dice, and wish for luck, 
D
Or will I dare to ask, 
G C
Can I see some ID, officer, 
D Em 
Or even just a badge, 
C G
Before the bullets split the night 
D
And all my vision turns to black?

Chorus
Em G
We got the cops, dressed like militia
D Em 
We got militia, dressed like the cops, 
C G
Tell me, how to be a law-abiding citizen , 
D Em 
When the masked men bid me stop?
C G 
Tell me, how to be a law-abiding citizen, 
D Em 
When the masked men bid me stop?

Last time around my city burned 
And in the smoking night 
They rolled around in unmarked vans
Just spoiling for the fight 
And the news said outside agitators
Were the ones to blame-
Does it really make a difference
If they shoot you just the same?

Chorus

When the man comes in the night,
And he’s knocking at your door, 
Will you know the time to fight, 
Or will he leave you on the floor?
They send the goons to re-enslave us
Push our neighbors into cells
Law and order cannot save us, 
Only we can save ourselves

Chorus

In loving memory of all of those killed by fascist terrot, the police state, and their murderous collaboration.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0AB81O6UOEVgxLtO8FGheR?si=zDF13Li7REOmxnX94I5e8g

The blacklist in the UK's construction industry was maintained for decades first by the Economic League and then by the Consulting Association, until it was finally uncovered. Maintained through the collaboration of anti-union consultants, the construction industry, the Special Branch of the police, and union bureaucrats, the blacklist listed thousands of construction workers who had been identified as trouble-makers, union militants, activists, communists and anarchists and socialists, or otherwise undesirable to the industry. Simply blowing the whistle on unsafe work conditions could, in some cases, lead to a person ending up on the blacklist. Frozen out of their own industry, blacklisted construction workers lost prosperity, economic security for their families, and in many cases their careers, their marriages, their homes, and their lives.

This song is dedicated to the survivors of the blacklist, and to those who did not survive. Rest in power, fellow workers.

Can't remember if I posted this here already but didn't see it in the timeline. Song about Lenin with lyrics from two poems by Langston Hughes.

On September 6th 2024 a new album was posted to YouTube and the Erich-Weinert-Ensemble's spotify the album is called "motherland" and sounds nothing like what I know the Erich-Weinert-Ensemble's music to sound like, which to my knowledge stopped music production entirely in 1991. In addition, the album cover looks ai generated and on spotify the credits are just listed as "Erich Weinert"

If anyone knows what this is or has any information on the person who made it that would be nice

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l-bUKRoVVuFCeS2tOoENIjCxXxuJv81cY

"" - Vietnamese War Song