Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ “Counting Down The Hours,” written a couple of years into America’s war against Iraq, is a protest song. Rather than being a call to action, it is a song of commiseration, asking how a person is to get through a time when war is happening. It would fit well on the iPod of Powhatan, a man who wished he were not on the edge of war with John Smith and his settlers, but felt ill-equipped to stop them.

            Leo says  “And a punter from the Pelhams and the police, in the rain/Were concerned more with a car than with the fact the light had changed” (Leo ll. 10-11). A punter is a gambler who goes for the long odds. The conceit here is that people, comfortably situated in suburbs that are far removed from the war, are gambling against the odds that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and this is like a cop who pursues someone without regard for whether they have done anything wrong. Rather than being a voice of reason within the group that is waging aggressive war, Powhatan and his people are on the receiving end of an irrational war. Powhatan likewise pleads to John Smith, “What will it availe you to take that by force you may quickly have by love, or to destroy them that provide you food” (qtd. in Smith, “The Proceedings of the English”). He is saying that not only do the settlers not need to war with the natives, it is actually against their self-interest to do so. Likewise, Leo metaphorically implies that betting against the odds cannot end well.

            Leo takes an ironic stab at his own superficiality when he claims “I could deal with trying to process pigeons acting like they’re doves/But not with interference from the power lines above” (Leo ll. 14-15). His simile says that he is uncomfortably struggling with how Americans claim that they are peaceful, yet do not act that way; however, as a resident of New Jersey, the really bothersome issue of 2003 was the rolling blackouts that New England was dealing with. Leo knows that these are backwards priorities. Powhatan’s troubles were much more real. He is resigned that “I am old and ere long must die,” yet he does not want to leave the world such that his “tyred men must watch, and if a twig but breake, every one cryeth there cometh Captaine Smith” (qtd. in Smith, “The Proceedings of the English”). He is resolved that he will die soon. That does not mean that he can or should leave the world poorly situated for his family who, after all, do not know well “the difference of Peace and Warre” (qtd. in Smith, “The Proceedings of the English”).

            Erin Wester has contended “As Powhatan neared death he realized that war was not the way” (Wester, “Smith and Powhatan”). There may be some truth to this. Powhatan may have begun as warlike and later come to the conclusion that peace was a better solution for his tribes. We have only John Smith, Powhatan’s sometimes enemy, as a source to advise us. As stated in the band Anthrax’s song “Indians,” “We all see black and white/When it comes to someone else’s fight” (Spitz/Benante ll. 1-2).  Likely, neither is saint or savior. In favor of Powhatan, it is not to difficult to see bias when Smith says “Powhatan more like a devill then a man…told (Smith) now they were friends” and Powhatan would “for ever esteeme his as his sonne” (Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia 102). “Devil” is a fine way to characterize your new father.

            Powhatan would have enjoyed “Indians” as it is a vindication of the native tribes of North America being wronged. The European settlers oversaw the natives being “Turned into second-class citizen(s)” (Spitz/Benanate l. 15). The song ends with “Love the land and fellow man/Peace is what we strive to have” (Spitz/Benante ll. 20-21). This echoes all of the major chords of Powhatan’s speech. He is ever willing to use the tribes’ knowledge of the land to provide Smith’s people “with that you cannot get but by our labours” (qtd. in Smith, “The Proceedings of the English”). Hindsight tells us that the Europeans were only interested in friendship in short bursts born of necessity. Powhatan is long gone, and though the Europeans did not “quickly…miserably end” without his aid, the charge of “rash unadvisednesse” would not be disputed by Ted Leo or Anthrax as an enduring American quality (qtd. in Smith, “The Proceedings of the English”).

            Things turn out much better for Rip Van Winkle than for Powhatan. Things turn out much better for Van Winkle, even, than for Daisy, the fictitious subject of Big Black’s song “L Dopa,” yet he would have found their topic delightfully similar. Their common theme is the bewilderment felt after waking from many years of sleep. Daisy is a prom queen who slept through the prime of her life. When she is given the drug L Dopa to revive her, she cries “Are we here now?/I am a horror/This is an old one/”What, Daisy?”/L Dopa fixed me, all right” (Albini/Durango/Riley ll. 10-14).  That “fixed” bit is the band using a literary technique known as sarcasm. Daisy experiences bewilderment that is similar to what Van Winkle feels upon awakening and finding that he no longer knows anyone and “his beard had grown a foot long” (“Rip Van Winkle” par. 28).

            We turn now to Rip Van Winkle’s wife, Dame Van Winkle. She would have turned to a track such as Helmet’s “Diet Aftertaste” to express her frustration. The song is about glad-handing socializers who, in reality, have nothing much to offer. Singer Page Hamilton accuses, “It makes perfect sense, you’re never hated/But then, appearances are overrated” (Hamilton ll. 3-4). Through the persona Irving constructs to narrate his tale, he claims that Rip had “universal popularity,” but he had “an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor” (“Rip Van Winkle” pars. 5-7). Rip’s wife is ever presented as being in a fury at his lack of usefulness. Both Hamilton and Dame feel that there are more important things to be concerned with than simply being well-liked.

            It is ironic that the tale is an archetype of romanticism, yet Thomas Creel notes that a prime characteristic of the romantic form is “a rebellious spirit-a reaction against society” (Creel, “Gill’s recap”). Dame would certainly contend that Rip’s central failing was a preoccupation with society, as with the subject of the Helmet song, to the exclusion of things which should matter in a more big-picture sense. The only person Rip was rebelling against was his wife. “Society” was willing to accept his laziness as a personality quirk; they were far from censuring him for operating outside the norm.

            Isaac Sullivan has pointed out “After taking such a long introduction to paint Rip as a lazy man, the story ends with Rip ending up in a pretty good situation” (Sullivan, “Hedges and Irving”).  Once he becomes aware of how much time has passed, he settles in happily with the new generation, and as an old man, no one expects him to do the work he would not have done, anyway. “He soon grew into favor” with the “rising generation” and became “a chronicle of the old times” (“Rip Van Winkle” pars. 59-60). Though, rightly speaking, he never accomplished anything of note beyond sleeping a long time, he is accorded the position of a wise old man. While his wife has long ago passed away, she is surely looking down from wherever she is, thinking something along the lines of Hamilton’s lyrics “I’d send that brain you ration/To feed the smallest starving nation” (Hamilton ll. 9-10).