Song of the Day 2/14: David Peel and the Lower East Side, “Up Against the Wall”
Today’s tune is in honor of Mike Bloomberg’s policing policy which, considering this song was recorded in 1968, shows that mini-Mike wasn’t an innovator but a reactionary.
Of course, Bloomberg’s retro policy was hardly shocking to its victims. When David Peel (born David Rosario) returned to New York City after two years in the Army, he took up busking in Washington Square, singing mostly about his love of marijuana and his resulting mistrust of the city’s police force in a style that can only be classified as punk-folk. His first LP, “Have a Marijuana,” recorded live in the park, contained this rant, which I can report was a popular choice for playing in the back of the bus on school field trips back in the day.
The album didn’t sell, but Peel’s career skyrocketed in 1971 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono saw him performing in the park while passing by in their Rolls Royce. They got out, joined the audience and subsequently backed his musical efforts. Lennon, who was under surveillance by the FBI, surely appreciated the anti-police state tenor of many of Peel’s songs, such as “Here Comes a Cop.”
Peel, who took his stage name from a 1960s rumor that smoking banana peels would get you high, recorded many LPs and never stopped performing in New York’s public spaces, so naturally he serenaded the Occupy Walls Street protesters in Zuccotti Park in 2011. He died of a heart attack in 2017.
