FOMM: Earth Daze

It's April 20th, so everyone knows this weekend is Earth Day, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday to whoever's being born.

Here are five "meaningful and worthy, kind of earthy" songs from the last five decades about the need to protect Mother Earth.

From the 1960s:
The Turtles - Earth Anthem
(from Battle of the Bands, 1968)

Starting in the 1960's with the Turtles' "Earth Anthem", a spiritual/environmental song from their classic 1968 Battle of the Bands album. The Turtles have many more great songs than their top 40 hits ("Happy Together","Elenore"), and their entire catalog is on emusic, in case you're looking for some cool tunes to fill up your monthly download quota.

From the 1970s:
The Beach Boys - Don't Go Near The Water
(from Surf's Up, 1971)

In a similar vein to the Turtles' song, the 1970's entry is the Beach Boys' "Don't Go Near The Water" from the 1971 album Surf's Up. It was also the B-side of the title track single, creating one of the best contrasting A/B sides ever! ("Surf's Up"/"Don't Go Near The Water"). Despite the attempt at "topical" material and Love/Jardine songwriting credit, it's a pretty good song from the time of the inaugural Earth Day.

From the 1980s:
The Lilac Time - Big Yellow Taxi
(from Welcome to Hell, 1989)

In that same year of the first Earth Day, Joni Mitchell wrote "Big Yellow Taxi", a vaguely ecological song about paving paradise to put up a parking lot. From the 1980's, here's a cover of this tune by The Lilac Time, from the B-side of the single "American Eyes", and the wonderfully-titled EP Welcome To Hell, Here's Your Accordion.

From the 1990s:
Dramarama - What Are We Gonna Do?
(from Vinyl, 1991)

The Earth Day song for the 90s is Dramarama's "What Are We Gonna Do?" from their Vinyl album in 1991. John Easdale wrote the song as an offhand "theme" to Earth Day II in 1990 and it became a surprise hit on SF's Live 105 and other modern rock stations (they called Alternative "modern rock" back then).

From the 2000s:
Jill Sobule - Manhattan In January

(mp3 only, 2006)

And bringing it up to now, or at least last year, here's an an mp3-only song by Jill Sobule called "Manhattan in January". It's a tongue-in-cheek ditty about the "joys" of global warming that Jill wrote and performed at the TED 2006 festival.

Everyone have a happy Earth Day, and try to reduce your ecological backpack by not burning these tracks to CD-R until you have enough to make it worth the strain on our environment. After all, it's the only environment we have!