Skinheads in Albany? Mark Alan’s song is still relevant

I was in the middle of my set last night at Calapooia Brewing in Albany. A fine place to set up in a corner and play original acoustic tunes. I like this gig, I recommend it for my brewery-gig colleagues.

But there was a bit of surprise. In walked a group of 6 or 7 guys, a few of them with shaved heads. Tattoos, leather, patches, black denim, chains and belts, etc. A quite normal assortment of styles that you see in most of the venues I play in. But I love tattoos, and I love patches, and I tend to gawk closely at such adornments. I couldn’t help noticing that these patches and tattoos were SS Lightning Badges, Parteiadler Eagles, and Swastikas. Striking, to say the least.

Normally, when I see this, I am fairly unfazed. A little bit fascinated. I think to myself, do these people really exist anymore? It seems like the tide of history would have swept them away by now. But another thing I couldn’t help noticing was that the next song on my set list was Mark Alan’s “Don’t Pass Montgomery By.”

At that moment, I was playing “Lightning Rod,” a fairly aggressive, funky acousto-rowdy number about televangelists. And Skinheads being music lovers (as I hear), they were paying pretty close attention. As I wound up the outro-vamp of “Lightning Rod,” I begin to wonder what was going to happen when I started singing Mark’s lyrics, which come right out of a Martin Luther King speech. Especially when I get to the part: “They gotta word for a black man/They gotta word for a Brown man…” And the chorus: “Open up your eyes/See the ugly face of hate/They only want to hide/From their ignorance and fear.”

A lot can go through your mind in 10-20 seconds. Here’s what went through mine:

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