Crazy Life

"Crazy Life" was written by Toad the Wet Sprocket members Glen Phillips,Todd Nichols, Dean Dinning, and Randy Guss. It is the eleventh track off of their 1997 release...Coil. The LP is their fifth studio album and the final one before the band broke up in 1998. The band has since then reunited and released an EP called Architect of the Ruin in 2015. "Crazy Life" is a song about Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first-degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Thus the lines..."Anyway now, it don't seem right, He is in there and you're on the outside,Over pine ridge to wounded knee,There's blood on the ground as far as you see" and "What have you done with Peltier, Who did you think you'd taken away". "Crazy Life", in the eyes of Toad the Wet Sprocket, obviously seems to speak to those government agencies initiating and continuing the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier for his involvement in the 1975 Pine Ridge Shootout. Amnesty International supports the contention that the entire processings regarding his imprisonment and two consecutive life sentences were tainted from the get go and as a result it's not fair that "he's in there and you're on the outside". Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman (Florida) for the murders of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams who were on the Pine Ridge Reservation searching for a man named Jimmy Eagle, who was wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault and robbery of two local ranch hands. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993 and was denied. His next scheduled parole hearing will be in July of 2024, when Peltier is 79. On January 18, 2017, the Office of the Pardon Attorney announced that President Barack Obama had denied Peltier's application for clemency. Barring appeals, parole, or presidential clemency, Peltier will most likely remain in prison for the rest of his life.