As Americans enjoy this 4th of July Independence Day Holiday I wonder if over the 200+ years since gaining independence from the British Crown they haven’t traded the single monarch for a gaggle of 500 to 600 “kings and queens” to rule over them. Has the representative democracy that was born in the USA on the 4th of July in 1776, breaking the leash of the British Crown, deteriorated to a situation where the status of “representation” is questionable.

Do the people that are elected to government at all levels actually represent the people or do they represent the people who secure their positions on their thrones with “contributions” while those that they are elected to represent become merely serfs who provide those kings and queens with lots of money to spend like drunken sailors. They take advice on how to spend the money extorted from the serfs under the threat of punishment (pay your taxes or else) not from the serfs but from the Lords, Princes and Dukes who secure their thrones.

So it seems that, while the war for independence was won, the hands of time have taken the people back to their pre-war state of serfdom. Now with so many kings and queens to deal with the people can’t just rise up and expel the current single ruler and replace it with another they can only “elect” another of a similar ilk. The position of king or queen has become a “career” and those kings and queens fight with each other to get their hands on the serfs money. While in most cases these career kings and queens do not rise to their thrones via heredity, there seems to be a “factory” that produces them all with the same malfunction in place that allows them to go about dining on caviar and wine while the serfs are struggling on “cake”.

As a folk rock songwriter it is my obligation, if you will,  to look, see, hear, observe and seek to understand what is happening around me and the world we live in … and then get those observations in to a song. So here on this July 4th 2024 are we really independent now Day, I offer the song TRADING KINGS AND QUEENS. The question is “can we fix it somehow or are these kings and queens too powerful now”? It seems there is and election soon to be held in the USA (and elsewhere) will it offer the opportunity for change or will it just be an opportunity to rearrange the “royal family” with different faces but with the same malfunctions in place?

TRADING KINGS AND QUEENS – LYRICS – by BOB CRAIN

It’s high time we replace kings and queens with people in this game of leaders of leaders

Career kings and queens now answer the call to get amongst the greedy the greedy

Self indulgent wealth accumulation without regard for the peasants the peasants

No thought in their mind of service in the true representative kind representative kind

Reeking with the stench of self aggrandising breast beating promotion

We don’t have kings to murder and abhor we have kings to many like whores on a penny.

Kept in power by money and lies these kings to many drawn to shit like flies. 

Its as if they come off the assembly line malfunctions in place and all the same kind

Brought in on a truck and placed on a throne to which none of them were born

Is patriotism or politics the last refuge of the scoundrel

Have we left it too late can we not fix it somehow

or are those kings and queens to powerful now

Freedom won from royalty now held on to with money

Lyin back flippin double dealing are today’s kings and queen’s decrees for ruling for ruling

So busy pumping up their own tyres they have forgotten whose car their drivin’ their drivin

So much lyin’ and deceit just to be persons of title and fortune and fortune

Modern kings and queens squabble over possession of the throne the throne

And as in the past they make a show of throwin the peasants a bone throw ‘em a bone

We don’t have kings to murder and abhor we have kings to many like whores on a penny.

Kept in power by money and lies these kings to many drawn to shit like flies. 

Its as if they come off the assembly line malfunctions in place and all the same kind

Brought in on a truck and placed on a throne to which none of them were born