In 2003 Pearl Jam put out a CD of songs that didn't make it to albums they put out over the years. Some were b-sides, some appeared on soundtracks and some were fan club singles, but none had been included on a regular release album. They called the album Lost Dogs.
This week historians, scholars and regular old people like me lost a brilliant man. Howard Zinn died of a heart attach at age 87. His friend Noam Chomp sky, activist and MIT professor, had this to say. “He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant,” Chomsky said. “Both by his actions and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement.”
I read Zinn's A People's History of the United States and was amazed at the inaccuracies and omissions of history I was taught in school. This book inspired some interest in history and politics I didn't have before.
Pearl Jam and specifically Eddie Vedder where also fans, and friends, of Zinn. You can read what Eddie Vedder had to say about his passing here.
On Lost Dogs they included a song called Down. The liner notes from the album had this to say...
Mike McCready: A song I wrote with Ed and Stone after seeing Social Distortion in L.A.
Ed: This was a Riot Act song, one of my favorites. It suffered from the "one thing is not like the others" syndrome...
Inspired by the writings of, and friendship with Historian/Activist Howard Zinn.
RIP Howard Zinn
Down
From the DVD Live at the Garden