I Have It and You Don't!

Last time i saw a copy of this going used on Amazon, it was like sixty bucks. (There's one now for $69.99)Joe takes the poetry of Canadian Robert W. Service (probably best known these days for "The Cremation of Sam McGee" or "The Shooting of Dan McGrew"), who was an ambulance driver in World War One, sets them to simple acoustic 12-string tunes and sings them."O, ye whose hearts are resonantAnd ring to war's romanceHear you the story of a lad -- A peasant boy of France..."One of the strongest antiwar albums i've heard, because it's so low-key; Joe doesn't push the songs or work hard to sell them. They're just there.Whether it's "The Ballad of Jean Desprez", a nine-and-a-half minute epic of martyrdom, revenge, reprisal and heroism, the sardonic irony of "The Twins", the foreboding intimations of mortality in "The Munition Maker" ("There are no pockets in a shroud...") or the chilling reminder of the cost of war in the closer, "The March of the Dead", you will take something away from this album that will make you think about whether, as Joe and Service ask "... in God's sight, [can] war ever, ever be right?"