Fighting Injustice: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Release New EP Including Reworked ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’
5.7.16
Today, London-based band The Four Fathers release the Fighting Injustice EP online, via Bandcamp, in two versions: one for the UK and one for the US.
The EP features three reworked songs from the band’s debut album, ‘Love and War’, released last summer, written by lead singer Andy Worthington, a journalist and human rights and social justice activist, who has spent the last ten years focusing primarily on the US prison at Guantánamo Bay Cuba.
Please feel free to listen to the EPs below — and please support us by buying them, or by buying individual tracks, if you like them. Later this month we will be in the studio making the first recordings for our second album, to be released in 2017.
The EP’s headline song, ‘Fighting Injustice’, is a live favourite, an anthemic roots reggae song opposing austerity and greed, remixed for the EP and with a newly recorded guitar part by Richard Clare.
The EP also features a reworked version of ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, the band’s best-known song. Originally recorded in 2014, and featured in the campaign video for the We Stand With Shaker campaign that Andy launched with the activist Joanne McInnes to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, Andy rewrote the lyrics following Shaker’s release last October, and recorded the new lyrics with Richard on backing vocals at the EP recording session in May.
The final reworked song is ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’, the band’s galloping rock and roll cry for socialism as an alternative to the iniquities of 21st century capitalism, with its roots in the Thatcher years, and with its apposite commentary — after the EU referendum last week — on the misplaced scapegoating of immigrants for the crimes committed by the bankers who crashed the global economy in 2008.
For the US version of the Fighting Injustice EP, Andy rewrote some of the lyrics for ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’ to reflect the US political situation, replacing Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan, and Nigel Farage with Donald Trump, and renaming the song ‘Neo-Liberal Bullshit Blues.’
The EPs cost £2.50 ($3.25) and can be downloaded via Bandcamp. The tracks are also available individually for £1 ($1.30).
For further information, or to book The Four Fathers, please contact the band via Andy Worthington.
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
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9 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my article promoting the release of two new EPs by my band The Four Fathers, reworking songs from our debut album ‘Love and War.’ The Fighting Injustice EP comes in a UK and US version – both feature a reworked version of our roots reggae anthem ‘Fighting Injustice’, ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ with new lyrics reflecting Shaker’s release from Guantanamo last year, and for the UK, ‘Tory Bullshit Blues” – and for the US, ‘Neo-Liberal Bullshit Blues’ – our rollicking rock and roll defence of socialism against Tories/Republicans.
...on July 5th, 2016 at 9:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
On Facebook, when I posted the link to “Fighting Injustice,” I wrote:
From my band The Four Fathers’ newly released Fighting Injustice EP, here’s the title track, an anthemic live favourite. Go on, have a listen and see if, afterwards, you can get the chorus out of your head! “If you ain’t fighting injustice / You’re living on the dark side.” It’s pretty much my mantra for life. You can listen to it for free, but if you like it and want to support us, you can buy it as a download for just £1 ($1.30) or you can buy the 3-track EP for £2.50 ($3.25), which also includes ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ and ‘Tory Bullsh*t Blues.’ You can also pay more if you wish.
...on July 9th, 2016 at 3:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted the link to “Tory Bullshit Blues,” I wrote:
Topical? I hope so. With Cameron, Johnson, Farage and Gove all gone, but with the media now slavishly glued to the Tory leadership contest, as though this whole Brexit disaster isn’t entirely the fault of the Tories (and UKIP), here’s my band The Four Fathers’ reworked version of ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’ from our debut album ‘Love and War’, with a punky new guitar part and re-recorded vocals, from a session back in May for our new Fighting Injustice EP. I hope you enjoy it, and if you like it, after listening to it for free, you can buy it – for just £1 – or buy the EP for just £2.50.
...on July 9th, 2016 at 3:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Richard Osbourne wrote:
Nice one Andy!
...on July 9th, 2016 at 3:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Richard. Just back from a gig at Lewisham People’s Day. We were on first, so it wasn’t a big crowd, but those who were there were appreciative. We’re slowly getting the word out, but it’s difficult out there, as you know, I’m sure, as a photographer. In the band we mostly have day jobs – and I do, sort of, as a freelance writer and activist – so I can spend some time trying to get people just to listen to our music – not even to buy it! – to try and get us even just a little bit known. 30 years of depoliticisation – and the corporate dominance of the industry – means that protest music still isn’t very fashionable, even though it would be hard to imagine a time when it was needed more!
...on July 9th, 2016 at 3:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Richard Osbourne wrote:
Any kind of creative activity is extraordinarily difficult to make money at these days. The attitude has filtered down from our financial ‘masters’: unless it makes me money, it has no value. We’re on the receiving end of it a lot – many people won’t pay for art that transforms their workspaces. Or they’ll pay for the product (that they can see and touch) but not the artist to create the work. Or they’ll pay £150m for a Van Gogh. We have to make a few quid doing other things to fund our art. Great you are putting it out there – best of luck with it!
...on July 9th, 2016 at 5:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Without creativity, we really would be doomed, wouldn’t we, Richard, but as you say, for 20 years now – since Blair’s New Labour project began its evil transformational work, I’d say – we have moved into a materialistic dystopia in which everything has been commodified, and all that matters is making money. I’m fortunate that I keep managing to find various means of support for my Guantanamo work (in large part through the generous donations of my readers), which enables me to spend time doing other things that don’t pay, but it’s depressing in general that the cost of living is so artificially high, when so many creative people, who don’t make a lot of money and probably never will, need, essentially to have that recognised. I’d like to see widespread social housing available to people for £50 a week, and no tax until earnings reach £15,000.
...on July 9th, 2016 at 5:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jan Strain wrote:
Andy – You always get better every minute of every day. I am a huge fan of The Four Fathers.
...on July 11th, 2016 at 12:37 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jan. Very glad to hear that we’re improving. I think you will like what’s coming for our second album – my new songs London, Riot, Equal Rights and Justice For All, Close Guantanamo, Tell Me Baby and Dreamers, plus a song I wrote 30 years ago – River Run Dry. Richard also has a new song, She’s Back, about Pussy Riot, and another older song about mental health issues.
...on July 11th, 2016 at 12:38 am