Andy Pratt – "Avenging Annie" (1973)

They call me “Avenging Annie”

I’m the avenger of womanhood

I spend my whole life telling lies

There’s an old English proverb that sums up the fundamental principle of gender equality very nicely: “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  (And vicey-versey, of course.)

But there’s one place where many people don’t want to see men and women treated equally – and most of those people are female.

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The National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) of 2022 – which specifies how much money the Department of Defense may spend to maintain our country’s armed forces next year – easily passed the House of Representatives in September.  

The bill has yet to be voted on by the Senate, but the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the legislation by a 23-3 vote, and you would think that the full Senate will vote to enact it by a similarly comfortable margin.  (For some reason, the Senate’s leadership hasn’t gotten off its ass yet and scheduled a vote on the NDAA, but most Washington types expect that to happen soon.)

The United States hasn’t drafted anyone into military service since 1973, but men are still required to register with the Selective Service soon after their 18th birthday.  The proposed NDAA would require women to register for the draft as well. 

What does the public think about drafting women if the draft were reinstated?

In 2016, 63% of Americans supported drafting females as well as males.  But in a 2021 poll, only 45% said they favored drafting both women and men.

If you break that latest poll down, you find that 55% of men favor drafting women.  (Now that my daughters are beyond draft age, I’m down with that.)

But only 36% of women support subjecting both genders to the draft.

In other words, only 36% of American women really believe in gender equality.

Hypocrisy, thy name is you if you believe in treating men and women equally except when it comes to the military draft.

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To celebrate the 12th anniversary of 2 or 3 lines earlier this month, 2 or 3 lines interviewed 2 or 3 lines.

As I explained in that interview, I hear a lot of 2 or 3 lines-worthy records on Sirius/XM when I’m driving in my car.  When that happens, I take a photo of my car’s multimedia screen – which gives the name of the record that’s playing, as well as the artist who recorded it – whenever something I like comes on “Underground Garage” or some other Sirius/XM channel.  

As of today, there are 474 records on that list.  Except for posts that feature new inductees into the various 2 or 3 lines halls of fame, all the records that will be featured on my wildly popular little blog over the next 12 months will come from that list – except for those that aren’t.  (My blog, my rules.)

Today’s featured record doesn’t have anything to do with the subject matter of today’s post.  That’s going to be the rule, not the exception, in the upcoming months.  So don’t drive yourself crazy trying to find a connection.

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I remember hearing Andy Pratt’s “Avenging Annie” a number of times when it was new.  (It was released in 1973, when I was a junior in college and had plenty of time to listen to the radio.)  But it was way off my musical radar until earlier this year, when I heard it on the Sirius/XM “Underground Garage” channel.

Andy Pratt

Pratt wrote about the genesis of the song – his only record that charted – in a 2006 article:

I wrote “Avenging Annie” in the summer of 1972 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at my mother’s 1926 Steinway B Baby Grand piano.  I had broken up with my first wife, and I was stoned on marijuana.  On my turntable was the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, particularly the Woody Guthrie song “Pretty Boy Floyd.”

You can clearly hear that the first part of “Avenging Annie” is an altered version of “Pretty Boy Floyd.”  I was going into a creative trance, and I altered Woody’s words.  Then out came a Bach-like piano riff which I liked, so I began singing to it in falsetto, taking the part of a woman I called “Avenging Annie.”   A whole story came out, which was a fantasy version of my relationship with my ex-wife, combined with the outlaw theme of the American West. 

The record is even crazier than you’d expect from reading what Pratt wrote.  I’ve never heard anything that sounds remotely like it, and I doubt that I ever will.  

I love it to death, but YMMV.

Click here to listen to “Avenging Annie.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: