West Seattle Blog…

Roy Zimmerman: “Wake Up Call” concert

ROY ZIMMERMAN: WAKE UP CALL

“It’s a big, big country full of all kinds of people,” says satirical songwriter Roy Zimmerman, “but there’s one thing we can all agree on. And when I find out what that is, I’ll let you know.” He’s bringing his show “Roy Zimmerman: Wake Up Call” to West Seattle Saturday, February 9 for a performance at the Westside UU Congregation, 7141 California Ave SW. Admission for the West Seattle performance is $18 or pay what you can.

Details:

The world is full of funny songs, but Zimmerman’s hilarious, rhyme-intensive originals are also incisive calls to action, smart, savvy and undeniable. “Wake Up Call” is ninety minutes of these songs – funny songs like “Abstain With Me” and “I Want a Marriage Like They Had In the Bible,” heartfelt songs like “Hope, Struggle and Change” and “I Approve This Message,” and impassioned comic commentary.

In thirteen albums over twenty years, Roy has brought the sting of satire to the struggle for Peace and Social Justice. His songs have been heard on HBO and Showtime. He has recorded for Warner/Reprise Records. He’s been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

Zimmerman’s YouTube videos have amassed over seven million views, and he’s a featured blogger for the Huffington Post. In 2012, Roy and his wife and co-writer Melanie Harby traveled 47,000
miles to 161 shows in 49 states. “Even in the Reddest of states,” Zimmerman reports, “we found Bright Blue Dots — groups of people huddled together to do Progressive work where it most needs to be done.”

In every state Roy and Melanie visited they wrote a new verse to their song, “Vote Republican“, each one taking a different satirical slant on the GOP election year agenda. In the version recorded in Hyde Park, NV, for instance, Roy sits down with the statues of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and teaches them how to save a faltering economy in words taken directly from Mitt Romney’s website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJ0ORtLlfs).

Roy’s songs take aim at politics, of course; there’s a plaintive lament about how hard it is “To Be a Liberal,” a rollicking indictment of the “Socialist” policies of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, a tender ode to “Citizens United.” There are social targets as well; a lesson in
“Creation Science 101,” a lambasting of the “Defenders of Marriage” who oppose same-sex unions, a “Sing-Along Second Amendment.”

At times though, Roy wears his heart on his Left sleeve. “Hope and Change is what you voted for,” he sings, “…but you know the slogan always needed just one more word: Hope, Struggle and Change.”

“He simultaneously inspires me and makes me laugh my ass off,” says comedian/author Paul Krassner.

Sing Out! Magazine writes, “Zimmerman is a guy on the left skewering folks on the right with rapier-sharp lyrics … underneath the caustic satire is a man who is surprisingly optimistic.”

“Zimmerman lifted the evening,” reports Stephen Holden in the New York Times, “squawking and clucking his scorn with a contagious irreverence.”

“Creation Science 101″ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs
“To Be a Liberal” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3qgiNPVpSM
“I’m In” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCA6nqC7B20
“Defenders of Marriage” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bja2ttzGOFM
“Hope, Struggle and Change” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je6y2kFoPs8