Souteneur in a Soutane

History of music chiefly involves clerics and choirs using canticles and hymns to pacify congregations and pander to their fears of death. Pimping salvation as mind control has been going on for centuries. Though many put biblical, monarchal, and papal opiates behind them in favor of democracy, pharmaceuticals, and secularism, a sense of mortality remains a powerful motivator. Anthems of freedom and protest were a relatively recent result of this paradigm shift, as are rap, rock, roll, and whatever's hot. Better chance an indelible impression, finish projects sooner than not, give it a shot before soul's set adrift. Why consciously choose to be forgotten by receding into anonymity? Some say it’s what’s behind this big push for artificial intelligence.

A half dozen billionaires regret having to face own demise, so want to upload their elite and sanctified identities for posterity into miles of memory banks and super servers in industrial data centers. This vain legacy presents numerous potential liabilities and provides zero value. An electromagnetic pulse wipes files. Computers stop working if plug is pulled. Circuit cooling puts enormous strain on local reservoirs. Electricity required to run gets ripped from public use and strips environmental resources that provide shelter and sustenance. Collected data goes mostly unanalyzed, typically only used to persecute law abiding residents. Electricity rates skyrocket and home values plummet. Vast tracts of arable land have already been replaced by solar and wind farms and warehouses, better located on rooftops and wastelands. Water flow blocked by hydroelectric dams floods banks of lakes, ponds, and rivers, driving families from ancestral homes. Worst of all, a large net loss of jobs broadens gap between haves and have nots. Computers never saved anyone or anything, though up to this point they provided busywork for smartypants.

Diametrically opposed and elegantly superior, human memories can be sorted into 4 common types:
- Sensory (immediately experienced for a second)
- Short Term (up to 30 seconds)
- Working (just long enough to complete a task)
- Long Term (episodes from life or facts acquired decades ago)

Also classified as Long Term are personal traumas, which usually influence future behaviors, and unconscious motor skills, including ability to resume riding a bike long after giving it up, or other habitual actions, like brushing teeth, sometimes described as somatic tacit knowledge. Atypical and rare are Eidetic (so-called photographic recall), Hyperthymesia (detailed, involuntary, personal history), and Savant (hyperfocused feats, such as reciting entire libraries of books, recalling instantly day of week of dates from decades earlier, or reproducing complex procedures). Dementia can disrupt all or any of them, generally dismissed as “a senior moment”, though a symptom worth recognizing. Your employment among society has an expiration date; however, your right for care and respect does not.

Not much point in posting info tidbits when readers only want evidence that validates own delusional deficits. Yet Martin Luther King did say, “Silence is betrayal.” Cave painting, composing, oral tradition, and writing (from cuneiform through e-books) have been how mankind transmitted affirmations, emotions, and superstitions across millennia. But only a few exceptional authors are remembered. Songs combine meter, movement, and poetry. and serve as a mnemonic, trigger, or wisdom methodology. Below by year of release are a dozen newly discovered bicycling related songs for your consideration among the 2400 listed and now updated.

Advantage Lucy, Red Bicycle [J-pop], Have a Good Journey: The Best of Advantage Lucy, Eastworld, 2001

Milburn, Bicycle Bridges, What Will You Do (When the Money Goes), Mercury, 2007

Riccardo Perotti, Bicicletas de Marzo, Bicicletas de Marzo, Vault Music Group, 2009

The Wiggles fea. Emma Watkins, Ba Ba Da Bicycle Ride [juvenile]. Dial E for Emma!, Universal Music Group, 2016

La Bicicleta de Alan, Lima [Peruvian pop], single, self, 2016 “Move, move, fire truck flying, combi, bus, tremor. The bicycle sees a much better future.”

Yes You Are, Comet Bicycle [indie], Here’s to the Great Unknowns, self, 2019 

Alexis Jacobo, La Bicicleta, single video, self, 2021

Vinicio Capossela, Staffette in Bicicletta [Italian], Tredici Canzoni Urgenti, Warner Music, 2023 - From artist’s 12th album which won critic’s award for Best Album of the Year; “Like the air as it rushes by on a bicycle, this is freedom: action and responsibility... Waging war against war, dispatches hidden inside hair curlers. and then gloves, hand-knitted sweaters, and socks. And the names of martyrs rolled up inside the bicycle frames.” 

Govind Vasantha, Our Cycle, Meiyazhagan [sndtrk], Think Music, 2024

HelloMary fea. Lilo, Cycling, single/video, self, 2025 - Duo crash their delivery tandem and carry on anyway.

Drunken Irish Bard, The Runaway Bicycle of Ballymote [Celtic folk], single/video, self, 2026 - “The gears are spinning backwards, the tyres are full of hope. God bless the runaway bicycle that flew through Ballymote!”

Friko, Dear Bicycle, Something Worth Waiting For, ATO Rec., 2026