Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers’ Top Ten Songs on Bandcamp

For Christmas, if you want a last-minute present, why not buy some music by my band The Four Fathers? Please also feel free to like us on Facebook, and to follow us on Twitter.

We play politically-charged roots reggae and rock — mostly original songs, and mostly my own compositions —and our first LP ‘Love and War’ was released last year, and is available on CD via Bandcamp (it can be sent anywhere in the world). On our Bandcamp page you can also buy the whole album as a download, or buy individual tracks — and you can also listen to or buy our subsequent EP, ‘Fighting Injustice,’ and our song ‘Close Guantánamo,’ released as an online single, as downloads.

We’re currently working on our second album, which will be released next year, featuring a number of songs that are becoming prominent in our live shows: ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’ (about how white westerners regard their lives as more important than others), ‘London’ (about gentrification, and how London has changed over the last 30 years), ‘Riot’ (about the need to end inequality), ‘Equal Rights And Justice For All’ (about the importance of habeas corpus) — as well as two songs by guitarist Richard Clare — ‘When He Is Sane’, about mental health, and ‘She’s Back’ (about ‘Pussy Riot’) — and some love songs, ‘Tell Me Baby’ (about love and aging), ‘Dreamers’ (written for a friend’s 50th birthday) and ‘River Run Dry’ (about the end of a relationship, a song I wrote as a young man).

For now, however, feel free to check out our ten most popular songs on Bandcamp and have a listen — or buy them if you’d like, which would, of course, delight us!

1. Song for Shaker Aamer

The Four Fathers’ best-known song, ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ was featured in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, a campaign to secure British resident Shaker Aamer’s release from Guantánamo and his return to his family in the UK, which I launched with the activist Joanne MacInnes in November 2014. The song features Shaker’s voice, recorded by a TV crew in Guantánamo, as he called out for justice. Shaker was released in October 2015, and this version features revised lyrics reflecting his release. The video has, at the time of writing, had over 5,700 views.

2. Sweet Love and Ever After

An autobiographical love song for my wife and son, which was the first new song I had written for a long time, when I wrote it in the summer of 2014.

3. Fighting Injustice

A live favourite, ‘Fighting Injustice’ is a rocking roots reggae anthem, and a rallying cry for those opposed to the Tories’ cynical austerity policies, and the crimes of the banks who crashed the global economy in 2008 but were then bailed out. This version, with a re-recorded guitar part, was featured on the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP that we released in July 2016.

4. Tory Bullshit Blues

A rollicking rock and roll defence of socialism, taking aim at Margaret Thatcher and her baleful influence on politics, and on the contemporary threat to decency posed by Nigel Farage and UKIP. This version, with re-recorded vocals and guitar, was featured on the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP that we released in July 2016.

5. 81 Million Dollars

This song was written after the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was released, in December 2014, which revealed that the two psychologists who led the torture, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were paid 81 million dollars for doing so, even though torture is illegal and morally repugnant, and the program didn’t yield valuable intelligence. Mitchell and Jessen are currently being sued by some of the victims of the torture program.

6. Rebel Soldier

An old folk song which I gave a new tune and a roots reggae rhythm while living in Brixton in the 1980s.

7. Close Guantánamo

The first song to be released from our forthcoming second album, ‘Close Guantánamo’ is featured in a promotional video for the Close Guantánamo campaign, and was released on November 10, 2016. I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012, and the video, by drummer Brendan Horstead, features photos of some of the 500+ campaigners and celebrities who have stood with posters reminding President Obama of how many days he had left to close Guantánamo at 50-day intervals throughout 2016 as part of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo.

8. City of Dreams

An urban country lament that I wrote in Brixton in 1987 — and wrote a second verse for in 2015 — which partly derived from my disgust for the Canary Wharf development that took place under Margaret Thatcher.

9. Sea Shanty for Helena

A poignant love song by Richard Clare.

10. Neo-Liberal Bullshit Blues

A version of ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’ for the US release of the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP, with a new guitar part and a new vocal recording, featuring references to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump instead of Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Farage.

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.