Stand Up and Shout
GetUp! Action for Australia
Rouseabout Records, 2007
22 tracks, $24.95
http://www.undercovermusic.com.au/standup.html
Stand Up and Shout has been produced by GetUp! to provoke airplay and debate in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election. It features 22 of Australia's best known folk songwriters, singers and musicians including Mike McClellan, Eric Bogle, Touchwood, Judy Small, Pat Drummond, Peter Hicks and Bernard Carney.
All the artists on Stand Up and Shout have donated their royalties to GetUp! for the cause. As Judy Small explains: "I am an old-fashioned stand-up-with-a-guitar-and-sing-about-politics-and-social-change-folksinger — and proudly so!"
This album will appeal to a folk music audience. Perhaps it could have been broadened to speak to a younger audience with the addition of more diverse musicians and music styles.
Stand Up and Shout demonstrates the strength of radical protest folk music in this country and will introduce many to this tradition. This CD should be added to the music collection of every trade union in this country and contribute to the soundtrack for upcoming protests.
My favourite tracks were those that addressed the treatment of asylum seekers by the Howard government: "Refuge for a Refugee" by Bernard Carney and "Not Just a Refugee" by Steve Bevis, in particular.
The collection is also enhanced by comments from the singers/songwriters about their contributed songs in the enclosed booklet with the CD, which also carries an advertisement to subscribe to Green Left Weekly, which provided advertising space for the CD, free of charge.