One Day as a Lion

The Tune for Today is:

One Day as a Lion - Ocean View

Live Version:

Blood done been running down streets flood with beats
Pepper spray over cracked concrete
So vicious make a rich mans neck split
Underworld bout to wreck shit bet this
Banks closed stomachs churning
Lines and rows cops blastin out church windows
They heard word of two on a terror list
Hid in the pews just two city terrace kids
One held a piece just for peace of mind
The other was spittin poems blowin minds
On the picket line
Barricades lay cross made with bumpers and burning tires
And you could smell the exhaust
And you could hear the kids screaming don't
Play us, too close
You can have the mic or the heater but you can't hold both

And they were both... 
And they were both... 

Ocean of tears rise, rise a flame to tear them down
Ocean of past crimes now fill our hearts to tear them down

The water main's cut off panic hit the manor of the
Mayor who's soft
Word hit the streets that the cops got off
They shook to rhythm of heaters that burned
Like claps of thunder
You turn to look at vengeance returned that shatter control
After the whole shock of the news that a bomb hit the
Bridge at broadway
Gridlock full stop every exit way from Chavez to main
Downtown was the same
Every corner a flame with lines of people stripped of they clothes
Freeze hold up your ID's their houses burned as they watched
The colonel looked at his clock

And they were all... 
And they were all... 

Oceans of tears rise, rise a flame to tear them down
Ocean of past crimes now fill our hearts to tear them down

Review by Thom Jurek (allmusic)

Here it is...finally. One Day as a Lion are Zack de la Rocha, lead vocalist (and current as of July 2008) for Rage Against the Machine, and Jon Theodore, former drummer with the Mars Volta. De la Rochaand Theodore have been reportedly working on this project since 2006. The end result is a volatile mix of rhythm, noise, and radical poetry. De la Rocha is no stranger to the great political poets; his brand of rapping and freestyling has always been saturated with their influence as well as his own constantly evolving political thought. Many of these writers are cited in the set's acknowledgements -- Jimmy Santiago Baca, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Junot Diaz, to name just four. The name of the band comes from a near mythic photograph by the great George Rodriguez published in 1970: "It's better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb." The slogan is a tag centered in a frame on a white wall in Boyle Heights. Knowing this, you might believe you have an idea of what these songs are about, but you'd be wrong; you only think you do. Yes, these five songs, clocking in at just over 20 minutes, are an intense racket of sociopolitical noise. Theodore's drums add the taut, tightly wound pulse of the lion, the phrase, the breath, the heart of the sound, while De la Rocha's keyboards blurt, pulse, and skronk a post-9/11 warning siren throughout. Some nonsense has been made of this entire project being influenced by Led Zeppelin -- that seems to be the thing to write in 2008. Truth is, one track, "Ocean View," touches on Zep's mighty tune "The Ocean" in the melody of its refrain, but its lyrical content is in stark, even violent contrast to the former hard rock heroes as De la Rocha spits atop some mighty organic beats and squalling synths: "...Oceans of tears now rise aflame to tear them down/Oceans of past crimes now fill our hearts to tear them down...." It's poetry, it's political, it's mysterious -- until you sit down and let this killer track knock you flat on your back with its rage, power, and knowledge of reckoning. The rest you are going to have to check out, save to say that all five of these cuts are essential, pure kinetic anger motivated by love for people (to paraphrase Che Guevara). This is a five-cut call to arms. No matter what ultimately happened with One Day as a Lion, we now have this document, perfect in its short sparking length and raucous in its truth. Twenty minutes? How long was the first Sex Pistolsalbum, 30 with some filler? How long was Grandmaster Flash's "The Message"? Eight? There isn't any filler here; it's all the aural ignition of a gasoline bomb going off in your ears.



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