The Ugly Un-American 10.12.07:Songs to Think By
Posted by Ray Church on 10.12.2007
The intersection of politics and poetry, as 411's Ray Church looks at 10 songs to think about, as well as a response to the "facts" in the Jena 6 case and this week's Shut the Hell Up Award!
My computer ate my homework this week, but rather than let everyone down and not post at all or submit a column that tried to rush through what I really wanted to say, I pulled this topic out of my hat (or another body part, I haven't quite decided).
My apologies to those readers who sent feedback last week and are reading this column hoping to see their names up in lights. I promise I'll put out the column I originally intended to next week.
Consider this my "I could write for those bums over in the Music Department" column. I was on my way to work, slightly depressed by the fact I had lost my column for the week, and I was cycling through the play lists in my mp3 player. I realized that while I enjoy all the music on my mp3 player, very little of it actually makes me think. This was after a lifetime spent pondering through the lyrics to try and discover hidden nuggets of wisdom, somehow thinking that some guy who picked up a guitar to pick up girls and feed his addictions might have some insight to life deeper than any other adult in my life.
Misguided, right?
There were, however, some artists who made me think about the world in a different way. Below you will find a list of the most prominent, but it is in no way complete. I agonized when I cut Dave Dobbyn's "Don't Hold Your Breath", a song which impressed me so much I used to end my set with it, simply because I couldn't find a video for it. On the other hand I didn't include "Hyponotize" by System of the Down, not because I didn't think it's a worthy song, but because I only recently discovered it and it hasn't really made a huge impact on my thoughts as yet.
A word of warning: as I am quoting for parts of my column, I have not stuck to my personal standards of language on this one. If you're offended by certain words, this column isn't for you.
I should also note that they are arranged chronologically, not necessarily by release date but by the time they came into my life.
So without further ado…
1: "Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2" by Pink Floyd
If you want to blame someone for the liberal mess my mind has become, blame my father. He is a walking contradiction. On the outside he is the poster boy for the conservative movement, but this image is occasionally subverted by his habit for voting for liberals and listening to music like Pink Floyd. Getting arrested for protesting against the Vietnam War didn't hurt, either.
I grew up listening to Pink Floyd on my father's lap. I could just as easily put "Goodbye, Blue Skies" or "Run like Hell" on this list, but "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2", with its rallying cry of "Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!" caught my adolescent mind. I was smart enough to know that the teachers depicted in the Wall had nothing in common with the teachers I grew up with, but this song also made me skeptical of education that sought to build subservient citizens.
The teacher who provided students for the choir in this song was subsequently fired, which only reinforced the impact of the song on me.
But in the town it was well known we they got home at night their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives
2: "Nemesis" by Shriekback
My father wasn't the only subversive person in my household. My brother came back from University when I was about 10 with a box full of new music he had been introduced to, and Shriekback was top of the pile.
At first, my only interest was the music and the video, mainly because it featured Nemesis from 2000AD Comics (Anthrax pulled the same trick on me with "I Am the Law", featuring Judge Dread). Then I got old enough to understand what the lyrics meant and the decadence it presented. I only appreciated the use of Roman imagery to talk about the worldview of the mid 80's as I got older. Madonna may have declared herself a Material Girl, but it was Shriekback her declared that the mindset of the 80's was Old Rome before the Fall.
To me, the song sums up the 80's. It was the beginning of the fiscal revolution that saw the rich increase their comparative income by massive amounts and persist with a "let them eat cake" mindset. And all the time the veneer of morality is played out while Empires fought wars over countries which were never a threat to them, like Reagan in Guatemala and Thatcher in the Falkland Islands.
We are not monsters. We're moral people. And yet we have the strength to do this. This is the splendor of our achievements. Call in the air strike with a poison kiss.
3: "There is No Depression in New Zealand" by Blam Blam Blam
I somehow understood satire from a very young age, probably because I had brothers and cousins who talked down to their innocent relative. It gave me that extra incentive to work out what was really going on.
Blam Blam Blam was another band my brother bought back from University. Considering I was middle class growing up in a poorer neighborhood, the song always struck me. It was that same incongruity, where what people tell you conflicts so deeply with what you see. Society told me that if I grow up and join the muddling masses, everything will be okay, and yet my friends from primary school did not have that same luxury.
This is another song about the veneer created to maintain social cohesion. In New Zealand, not unlike the USA, we were told myths of our own social superiority; an egalitarian country where everyone looks out for each other and where anyone can succeed. Just like the USA, it is a myth founded on illusion.
Everybody's talking about world war three, but we're as safe as safe can be. There's no unrest in this country.
4: "One" by Metallica
My friends at high school were all into heavy metal, but I resisted it when it first crept in to my circle. Luckily Metallica released "One" a little before they released the Black Album, because it enabled me to look like an early adopter, before Metallica became cool in the mainstream of the school. I was able to pick up on Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets before everyone was singing "Exit Night, Enter Light" at the top of their voice during their study periods.
As much as the lyrics, "One" was a song that entranced me with its video. Stealing liberally from the movie "Johnny Got His Gun", a fact that would be ironic if Metallica hadn't bought the rights to the entire movie so they could avoid paying royalties for it, "One" was a remarkably conservative video. This was not Iron Maiden, with Eddie masquerading in the center of their album art. Neither was it Megadeth, with their "skull silenced by bolts across the mouth" motif. This was unsettling because it wasn't supernatural horror. This was the horror of man's inhumanity to man.
The song came at a time when peace had become "cool" at our high school, but it was a vapid ideal of peace. The cool kids wore peace symbols around their neck while they sang along to insipid pop songs like "Groove is in the Heart" by Dee-Light. Metallica, meanwhile, were not singing "peace is great", they were singing "war is hell", and they did more to convince me of the need for peace than the neo-hippies ever did.
Now that the war is through with me / I'm waking up, I cannot see / That there's not much left in me / Nothing is left but pain now
5: "Television: The Drug of the Nation" by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
I'm can't quite remember who bought first bought the Disposable Heroes along to a party. I would like to say it was my friend Andre, who was the delegated philosopher in my circle of friends, but I can't quite be sure. From the opening montage of television clips, the song declares that this is not an ordinary pop song. I have since become a Michael Franti devotee, and I credit him with my interest in music and social change.
I don't think there is a single song I have quoted from more often. I used it throughout high school, whenever a teacher required that we use a quote in a piece of writing. Michael Franti used the medium to fight the medium, much like Rage Against the Machine would do to the wheels of capitalism later.
But most importantly, Franti was the first person who showed me that poetry could be empowering. He still continues today, recently traveling to the warzones in the Middle East to report back with his documentary "I Know I'm Not Alone", and in doing so, he reminds me that I'm not either.
It's the perpetuation of the two-party system / Where image takes precedence over wisdom / Where sound bite wisdom is served to the fast food culture / Where straight teeth in your mouth are more important than the words that come out of it
6: "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen
"Pump Up the Volume" was one of those movies that saw me through my teens. I bought the album just for this song, only to find that the soundtrack only included the cover by Concrete Blond. Fortunately, that's not a bad cover, but it's the original still on my MP3 player.
It's a terribly cynical song, but much like the Blam Blam Blam song earlier, it stuck with me not because it was depressing, but because it was picking a scab off society and showing us stuff that the mainstream refuses to admit. Sure, his image of society is hopeless, but to me that is only because the propaganda set up to tell us otherwise is so upbeat and cheerful. The bastards cornered the market for cheerfulness.
This is a song about society in denial. This is a song where everybody knows what is wrong but everyone makes excuses for it. Much like the protagonist in the song makes excuses for his lover's infidelity; society has made excuses for its own corruption.
Everybody knows the fruit is rotten / Old Black Joe's still picking cotton / For your ribbons and bows / Everybody Knows
7: "Know Your Enemy" by Rage Against the Machine
For a white boy like me, rap music never really appeared on the horizon until Rage Against the Machine turned the volume up. Sure, there was Anthrax and Faith No More, with their bastardized rap metal on songs like "I'm the Man" and "We Care a Lot", but it took Zach de la Rocha and Tom Morello for me to realize that rap music could do more.
Most people who listened to Rage Against the Machine mindlessly chanted their lyrics like the mindless sheep RATM stood against. "Fuck you, I won't do as you tell me" seemed little different from "I'm too sexy" or any other number of vapid chants that haunted the halls of my high school, but as a vocalist for a high school band I was in a position where I had to learn the lyrics in more detail.
"Know Your Enemy" was the first time I realized that this was not just an average rap song appealing to the white masses. Like Public Enemy (who I would have to wait to discover), this went beyond color lines and marketing tools. This was an indictment on an entire system, one in which people did not have a choice but to conform.
Yes I know my enemy / They're the teachers who taught me to fight me / Compromise / Conformity / Assimilation / Submission / Hypocrisy / Brutality / The Elite
8: "Give It Up" by Public Enemy
I got into Public Enemy later than I should have. For a long time, the only Public Enemy song in my collection was "Bring the Noise", and then only because of their collaboration with Anthrax. Then a friend at University got me into rap music, starting, of course, with Public Enemy. Being a poor university student, I had to troll the discount bin for my CD collection, and the only Public Enemy album in the discount bin was the unjustly maligned Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age.
I later collected all the big stuff, Fear of a Black Planet, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, The Enemy Strikes Back and the rest, but this album always had a special place in my heart.
Chuck D was one of the few rappers to attack the Gangsta Rap phenomenon, and he did so by setting his priorities. He is here, he argued, to attack presidents, not tell everybody how dangerous he is. "I'd rather diss presidents." The album ended with a phone call from Harry Allen, talking about the future of music and the impact the Internet would have on the music industry.
And it was right on target.
And who behind puttin the guns to the young ones / The ones that make em is the ones that take em / Rugged for no reason, down in duck season / I don't want my mama, on the street wearing armor
9: "Parabol / Parabola" by Tool
This is another band I regret waiting too long to discover. As it happened, a close friend of mine, who was teaching me guitar at the time, talked about how he sold all his old metal CD's when he discovered jazz. All except Tool, that is, and as I had never heard them before, he immediately put on Lateralus to teach me the error of my ways.
Maynard Keenan is certainly one helluva guy, and as his subject matter is so bizarre sometimes (this is a man who produced excellent songs that go by the names of "Stinkfist", "Hooker with a Penis", "Prison Sex" and "Aenima", after all), I hesitate to say that I know definitively what he means by this song, or should I say two songs as they are separate tracks on the album. It doesn't make it easy that he refuses to publish his lyrics to his songs to force the listener to make their own judgment.
To me, this is a song about the search for truth in our world. It seems, in essence, a Buddhist song, looking at the illusionary aspects of our world, and that really it is only through each other than we find any sense of reality.
At least, that's what I think he means. Everybody seems to have their own take on it, from a pure sex song to a being born metaphor...
Which is why I love the song even more
This body / Holding me / Reminding me that I am not alone in / This body / Makes me feel / Eternal / All this pain is an illusion
10: "Oh My God" by Michael Franti and Spearhead
And back we come to Michael Franti.
"Oh My God" was my rediscovery of Franti. I had bought his two previous albums ("Home" and "Chocolate Super Highway"), and while they were solid albums there were very few of those jaw dropping moments from his earlier stuff with the Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy, except, maybe, in the song "Dream Team" ("Brothers on the street / and everyone is scared of ya / so how can ten Africans represent America / Bullshit / It didn't mean a thing because in the same year / we saw Rodney King")
"Oh My God" blew me away.
First up, Franti is not scared to be sensitive. These are deeply political statements and yet he sounds as sincere and earnest as… you know, I can't find an adequate simile to complete that sentence. I can only assume he is sincere, honest and earnest.
So, okay, there's some conspiracy theory stuff in this one ("Do you really think that that car killed Diana"), but for the most part this is a song filled with astute observations on the politics of the day. He neither sides with Bill Clinton (the then President), nor the Republican Congress. He indicts them all. In fact, the only politician I've seen Franti have anything to do with is Dennis Kucinich, and Kucinich went up in my estimation immediately.
It is, in essence, a song focused on the hypocrisy of modern politics; how politicians can make a big deal about being a law and order candidate when their actions are so often promotions of the very things they rail against; military violence v personal violence, white collar crime v regular crime; property rights v human rights. It is a song about the misguided notions of our modern political system.
I don't give a fuck who they're screwing in private. I wanna know who they're screwing in public
Short Shot – Welcome to 411Mania, Mr Thompson
I was going to hold off on this one and include it in my column next week, but Michael Thompson baited me with his column this week.
In the past two weeks since this writer has been published by 411.mania.com, the e-mail address listed for correspondence has been inundated with letters and quick replies, both positive and negative, regarding the Ron Paul and Jena Six columns.
Suffice it to say, they will not be published in any column you will read on 411mania.com. However, please research any fact, nugget of information or any statistic published within what you have read here or anywhere for that matter
I'm sorry, Mr. Thompson, you don't get to play this card, especially as one of the readers who responded to your column was yours truly, and just because I like embarrassing the newbies, here's one of those letters that will apparently never published in any column here at 411Mania.com
interesting take on the Jena 6 story, but I'm interested in finding out why you left out two key events, the one where three black students were threatened with a shotgun in a 7/11 and the one where a black student was jumped at a party by white students. As far as I know, neither of these two events has been discredited, both occured (sic) before the attack on school grounds and both significantly change the narrative of events that you have put forward.
Is there a reason you did not include these events, did you not know about them or am I misinformed here?
Needless to say I didn't get a response, and with Mr. Thompson deciding to ignore those with alternative understandings of the facts, let me clarify it here.
While Mr. Thompson seems to think that this event is another example of hype by the liberal media, he has conveniently ignored some of the facts himself. Let me clarify… this is not about the guilt or innocence of the Jena Six. This is about unequal treatment under the law.
Mr. Thompson's column, while emphasizing the "facts" that he put forward and how everyone else had misrepresented the facts, gave very few actually sources to support the point he put forward. As he seems to have turned to the Jena Times as the single source of legitimate facts on the matter, I'll start by linking you to this page. All of Mr. Thompson's facts come from this single page, which I can assume is the main source, considering he quotes from it almost verbatim. As a recent graduate Auburn University, I'm sure Mr. Thompson is aware of the difficulties of using just one source for his information.
Maybe not.
It is interesting that while referring to the period of the 9th of September to the 30th of November, Mr. Thompson leaves off an interesting tidbit in the Jena Times report, the introduction to the sentence:
Despite the Media promoting racial tension
This should set off alarm bells for any critically engaged reader, and if you're unsure why, let me explain. Journalism, by its nature, is meant to be a neutral medium. As a reader, be on the lookout for emotive language, as this tends to be an indicator that the media has transgressed its duty to present facts. In this case, the buzz words are "promote" and "racial tension". They presuppose the intention of the media in question, something which is fine in an opinion piece like this, but a categorical no-no when the piece states that its purpose is to satisfy "the overwhelming number of requests from outside media and other individuals/groups".
The time period September 9 to November 30 is critical here, because it allows Mr. Thompson to avoid two critical events in the story of the Jena 6. There is the story Robert Bailey Jr. entering a party at the Jena Fair Barn. The Jena Times report states that Bailey only reported being hit once by Justin Sloan, while in a police report a day later, Bailey stated that he had been attacked by a group of attackers (you can read it for yourself here.)
Actually, stay on that page a second and read the full account, which was a report of a second incident on December 2nd, which lead to the arrests of Bailey, Simmons and Shaw. There are two contradictory accounts, the boys telling their side of the story, in which a fight broke out between Bailey and Matt Windham, which lead to Windham pulling a shotgun on the boys, when they wrestled it away from Windham and ran away. Windham's story reports that he was attacked by the boys, and went for the gun in self defense. Clearly this was a case of "he said / she said", except that there were two witnesses.
Now bare with me here. The Jena Times article reports "that two eye witnesses to the event unrelated to the victim or those arrested, gave a report of the incident that corresponded with the victim", that is, until you read the reports for yourself.
The first eye witness mentions nothing about who started the fight. All he saw was the boys running away. The second eyewitness is interesting, because his story contradicts that of the "victim" Matt Windham, in that Windham reports that he pulled out the gun in self defense, while the second eye witness reports that the three boys attacked Windham and took the gun from the backseat of his truck. In other words, the corroborating witness gives a story clearly in contradiction to the stories told by the other three statements.
Like I said, I'm not saying that the Jena 6 are innocent, but they are not alone in the system of blame here. The Jena Times, which Mr. Thompson used as his main source of facts, shows a clearly emotive bias in their report on the facts, and seems to have downright misrepresented other facts. And yet, Mr. Thompson turns to those of us who doubt his story and attacks us for trusting the media and not paying attention to the facts.
Now, why am I spending so much time on two events? Because both demonstrate acts of violence against the black students which were not evenly punished under the law, and they took place two days before the event in question. This was not an isolated event.
And by the way, anyone who says that hanging nooses on a tree is not a racist act is not dealing with reality.
The reason ignorance reigns supreme in this nation is simple: people choose not to educate themselves beyond what they are told.
Irony, thy name is Michael Thompson.
Shut The Hell Up Award
I got an email from Brandon Crow this week.
Please, please, PLEASE give the shut the hell up award to Dana Perino, the new Bush lying mouth piece...uh, press secretary. Perino tried to spin the Bush veto of the S-CHIP bill by saying Democrats hate poor people. Her point went something like this: part of the funds for this bill would come from raising taxes on cigarettes. And poor people buy cigarettes, so Democrats hate poor people.
Mr. Crow, your wish is my command, but let me add my own spin on this one. Ms Perino's greatest miss this week had to be the following comment:
As I understand it, under the Geneva Conventions, every country was supposed to interpret it for themselves, and now we have.
Great idea. Why don't we let each country interpret the Geneva Convention for themselves. Let Saddam Hussein interpret the Geneva Convention for himself… oh wait, he can't.
He was executed for violating the Geneva Conventions…
Goodbye, for now
Sorry, no shout outs this week, but thanks to crow for linking me…
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