Born to Choose by Various Artists (CD, and similar items

Born to Choose 1993 was a benefit for reproductive rights and quality health care for all and for a woman?s right to choose. As the liner notes say: ?National Healthcare is the real ?right to life? issue." Anyway, the music is worth a listen, no matter what you believe on the issue. The compilation starts with R.E.M. (with Natalie Merchant) doing Photograph. Writing credits go to ?Berry/Buck/Merchant/Mills/Stipe? and it was originally written to be included on Automatic For The People. Filled with ennui, it is a beautiful, longing song that seems to come from sometime long ago. Next comes Matthew Sweet doing the Beatles? She Said, She Said. This is an inspired choice for this compilation, especially because of the ending repetition and variation of ?I know what it?s like to be dead/sad/dead? and ??Cause you?re making me feel like I?ve never been born.? And what a powerful version. Next comes the easiest way to hear Bob Mould with Sugar live doing Running Out of Time. This live version is taken from their hard to find first live album ?Live At Te Cabaret Metro, Chicago, Illinois, 22nd July 1992? album. The title song from the album comes from Mekons? 1999 album ?I Have Been to Heaven and Back: Hen?s Teeth and Other Lost Fragments of Un-Popular Culture Vol. 1? This song lays down the manifesto in unmistakeable terms. John Trudel?s Rant ?N? Roll continues the activist poetry and says it and means what it says. R.I.P. Graffiti Man. Tom Waits weighs in with the weirdest offering of all, which somehow fits if you just read enough into it. Lucinda Williams? Pancakes takes us out of the ?intellectual battlefields? and back to ?How it feels.? Another poetic masterpiece is Greenlander by Pavement. Sad and alone and facing terrible odds, this non-album track speaks to fighting forward, not backward. NRBQ picks up the tempo with Don?t Talk About My Music, and, as usual, they excel beyond the expected. Cowboy Junkies do their own twist on the Tom Rush song (written by David Wiiffin) Lost My Driving Wheel. I didn?t think anyone could do it better than Rush, but it is so perfect for them. Appropriate and sad. Soundgarden?s HIV Baby really hits home in relation to the abortion controversy, and really makes you think, as well as it should. The compilation ends with Helmet doing Distracted. What a way to end it, literally. This compilation is as important now as it has ever been. A must-have.