So this current wave of protest and resistance is inspiring and uplifting and badass and all that, but we all know that this shit didn’t start on November 8th, right? (Or even June 16, 2015.) People have been marching and pressing for justice for a long, long time, and even in the past few years some incredibly important movements have swept the nation and filled the streets to address serious, systematic injustices. (There was a reason I made the theme of Ball of Wax 38 protest songs way back in the fall of 2014.)
Kimya Dawson first shared “At the Seams” – her beautiful, heartbreaking ode to Black Lives Matter – a year and a half ago, but as I was putting this volume together I realized that it was a perfect, and necessary, fit for the theme of resistance and rebuilding. It doesn’t address our specific shitty situation, because it doesn’t need to. This shitty situation’s roots go way, way back (more on that later), and we need to do so much more to fix our country than get this fucking maniac out of the West Wing. I’ve already spent far too many words on this when what you should really be doing is clicking play below again and again until you’ve committed “At the Seams” to memory. This is important, and I’m so honored that Kimya let me include this song on Ball of Wax 47.