Michael Franti and Spearhead: Hole in the Bucket
[purchase]
With and without the sparse-but-funky backing soul of Spearhead, Michael Franti has staked his later career on proactive, politically sensitive songs which cry out to the listener to reconsider his or her relationship to society. Here, in their 1994 debut outing, he uses a chance encounter with a homeless street beggar to muse on the responsibility of the passerby: should we drop the quarter in the cup, and address poverty in passing, even if we have concerns about the recipient's ability to make appropriate choices about the use of that money to better themselves, instead of spending it on canned pork products and wine? Franti says yes. I agree.
