The Rebel Black Dot State Song of the Day
John Linnell, "Michigan" from State Songs, Vol. 1 (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: To date, there has not been a second volume of State Songs. Unlike Sufjan Stevens's always hypothetical "fifty states project"—an album dedicated to each state of the union, as with his extant albums Michigan & Illinois—Linnell's project was feasible; there are songs of fifteen different states on State Songs, plus "The Songs of the 50 States." Keep up that clip & the Union would have been complete in two more albums & an E.P., or up the track count slightly & State Songs would be complete in three volumes. I'd love to hear all of those songs.

The R.B.D.S.O.T.D.'s patriotic summer continues. Songs of America, some of them nontraditional, I confess, followed Independence Day for a week & a half. We've just completed a nineteen-song tour of America's great cities, Boston & Detroit double-dipping—Beantown in a doubleheader, the Motor City with a return engagement. We now turn our focus to the several states. Our great republic is the United States, after all, & in these troubled times a reminder that those united states are not mere provinces of the District of Columbia's empire would do us all good. But fear not, this is a political tangent I'm off on, not a partisan tangent; both of America's great parties have been guilty of imperial overreach in the service of their own ideologies & only through reform of the whole nation can we restore the proper constitutional balance.

Now to the music.

"O Michigan,
Exemplar of unchecked replication,
O Michigan, o Michigan,
The tank the fishes are in!

"Expansionist in spirit,
In letter borders obtain,
Don't hold us back, don't hold us back,
We must eat Michigan's brain!

"Now grow back Michigan,
We miss you again."