# Protest Music



## Guest (Sep 8, 2019)

It's like we are raised in a box that we're not supposed to see. We pretend we are free but we are confined in a box with transparent walls. What's the box made of? Rules, laws, beliefs, mores, cultural taboos, consumerism, tradition and what not. On a television show, when an actor looks into the camera, talks directly to the viewing audience, this is known as "breaking the fourth wall." The fourth wall is imaginary and normally the actors pretend it isn't there. When the fourth wall is broken, it often startles the viewing audience. Protest music broke a fourth wall for me and I did find it startling.

Protest music and music with a subversive socio-political bent automatically appeals to me. I grew up in the world of socially conscious folk music-Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul & Mary, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, etc.-plus my older brother was also an anti-war folk musician and singer resisting the draft in his college years back in those days so I heard all the recordings and listened to all the lyrics. Hell, we even learned some of these songs in school-This Land is Your Land, Blowin' in the Wind and like that. While protest music certainly sprouted in the public mind during this era, it has always existed for many centuries.

When I got old enough to become socially active, the protest music that seized my soul by the **** was hardcore punk. To this day, my all-time favorite protest band has to be Britain's Discharge. While I was in the service, I listened to Discharge incessantly. I didn't care what anyone thought. I met some other sailors that shared my mindset and we would sit around and talk when we could and trade music back and forth. It was then that I discovered the band Feederz headed by a guy named Frank Discussion. He used music and art to pull the cover off reality. I later became friends with his ex-wife
.





Frank Discussion took his cue from a Marxist-influenced group headed by a French political subversive theorist (please understand that my use if the word subversive as used in this article should be considered complimentary if not heroic) named Guy Debord who had written a highly influential book published in 1967 called The Society of the Spectacle. This book became the bible of the Situationists from which Feederz derived their stance. Debord's book broke the fourth wall of reality for me.
Basically, the Spectacle is what Debord calls our mass media, HOWEVER, while the mass media CAN occasionally serve a beneficial purpose of keeping the public informed, the Spectacle does not. The Spectacle's purpose is to obfuscate, to lull society into a kind of sleepwalk via consumerism-a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. After WW2, many of the West Europeans embraced consumerism fervently. Things that were rationed or not at all available during the war were now in abundance and therefore priced affordably and people began filling their homes with them.

In capitalism, we all work in factories or offices or stores or other businesses for bosses who looked over our shoulders and monitored our activities. The jobs were inherently boring and unfulfilling and lulled us into a kind of torpor. In this essentially drugged state, consumer goods are advertised to us in such a way as to appear to be the answer to what we are lacking inside-that new, fine car or that super-cool android phone or that new 55-inch flat screen TV. So we buy it but, of course, the lack is in ourselves not in our environments so this new gadget cannot fulfill us. Instead the thrill of owning it wears off and the drudgery of everyday life returns and now we must buy some other new gadget to fill this void in us.

To keep us buying, the goods are presented in a way as the answer to all our lack of true experience, a replacement of it. In essence, goods are marketed as fetishes. A fetish is an object of worship, an object that possesses magical power or which a god acts through. Own this brand new shoe and you'll run faster and jump higher, wear this perfume or cologne and you will be irresistible to the opposite sex (or same sex as the case may be), buy these jeans and people will see you as hip and sexy and hence very desirable. It wasn't just that the goods were magic but that the magic rubbed off on you and made you magic too. You too are a marketable product to another consumer, something they desire and seek to own-provided you wear and carry the right goods.

What these consumer products do no longer matters. Just their image is enough to set off pangs of admiration and envy! Just owning them is enough. You don't buy it because you actually need it; you buy it because you're cool if you own it. I might need a car to get around but I don't need a huge SUV or a slick muscle car but I'll buy the SUV or the muscle car because then everybody on the road will fear me or envy me and won't mess with me because I can squash them flat or make them eat my dust. I become an alpha male and, as we all know, women LOVE alpha males!






So these goods are called Spectacles and the goal is to own as many as we can. Society is itself a mega-Spectacle. And each individual is also a Spectacle. Our shoes and pants and shirts and glasses and belts and purses and hats and jewelry and phones are like magical armor and weapons we don to go out in the capitalist, consumerist society to fight and slay the evil of drudgery and boredom and to avoid being seen by others as such. So we walk around under this consumerist spell. We don't see the real world and we don't experience anything. Smart phones really drive this home. We can sit in a crowded room and talk to no one while we stare at a little screen utterly absorbed in what it tells us or shows us. It is a Spectacle-something to look at, an image, a magical image.

But it goes deeper than just this. It comes down to survival. Science and technology have advanced to such a degree that mere survival-having a place to live, food to eat, ways to stay clean and healthy-were met to the point we actually take them for granted. So now the concept of survival has to be redefined. For me, as an example, my phone, my wallet and my keys are vitally important to my continued survival. Without the phone, I can't call anyone, I can't get online (I pay my bills online), I can't send or receive email. Without my wallet, I don't have my bank cards which I need to make purchases or to pull money out of my bank accounts. Without my keys, I can't drive my car or get into my house. Do these things really contribute to my basic survival? No. But with survival redefined in a capitalist and technologically advance society, survival as I experience it, is tied to these objects because I can't do anything or go anywhere without them. But under the consumerist spell, survival is yet redefined as I can't get by without that watch or that camera or that pair of designer jeans.

But remember, it's not simply that you need that watch or camera or whatever, it's how these things make you look to others. THAT is the Spectacle! Debord wrote: "The Spectacle is not a mere collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images." That is, we don't see one another as people but as images. In fact, we don't see anything for what it is but only as an image. You may watch a commercial where a pudgy, uptight guy with a messy work space is using a certain type of cell phone and the guy next to him is younger, hipper looking, trim and his work space is neat and he's laid back and he uses this new 5G smart phone. The message is that the new 5G phone is better because the image presented shows the 5G user as youthful, healthy, organized, cool as opposed to the unhealthy, stuffy, messy guy. Nothing about the performance of the phones is shown nor any context of why that new 5G phone is better for someone who only needs a phone to make and take calls. We are being sold an image and being told we need it because others will perceive us as a more desirable type of person if we have it. This grooming works on younger people exceptionally well: "I can't just have a phone that only makes phones calls! All my friends use smart phones! Everyone at school has a smart phone! If I don't have a smart phone I might as well be dead!" And it's those young people whom the corporations want to groom into ardent, lifetime, image-obsessed consumers. Like smoking, start 'em young and they're hooked for life!

So what does the Spectacle do to us as people and as individuals? It takes us over. The Spectacle isn't just something that intrudes into our lives now and again; it IS our lives. Its language, as Debord explains, are images composed of the signs of the dominant form of production. It infects the very way we think in a very fundamental way. Even when we mean to get away from it, we often flee to it. Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback, wanted to protest police brutality especially that aimed at African-Americans and did this by kneeling during the national anthem. I found this admirable especially because it irked and angered the very types of Americans I generally loathe and avoid whenever I possibly can. It was a way of peeling back the Spectacle to reveal the true life hidden underneath-and, yes, that is guaranteed to anger people because they are in love with the illusion that they spend every waking moment dreaming about. But Kaepernick then turned around and signed a deal with Nike shoes. So Nike, which may have no experiences or concerns actually battling against police brutality, has now associated itself with a symbol of that fight against oppression by aligning NOT with Colin Kaepernick but with his IMAGE! So a young African-American shopping for a pair of shoes is likely to buy Nike before he buys, say, Addidas because of an image he associates with that product and thus show everyone around him that he stands with Kaepernick by helping to fill the coffers of Nike and tacitly encouraging others to do the same. The police brutality continues while Nike gets rich.

How then do we battle against the Spectacle? That's where the term Situation comes in. We must create situations that peel back the Spectacle. Defacing billboards, for example, ruins the spell it intends to cast over the observer. The Situationists proposed journeying to areas of the country or state that one has never been to and socializing as way of getting real life experience back into one's existence. The sad truth, however, is seen in the example I gave about Colin Kaepernick: there really isn't much one can do. In the end, we sell out to the Spectacle because it is SO pervasive. How can we subvert all these images? A few of them? Sure. But ALL of them? No. They are so lacking in depth that their very superficiality makes them immune to subversion and, as a resort, makes capitalism immune to the same which I find very sad.

Some say vote-change the system-but that won't work because politics is utterly immersed in the Spectacle. Trump was elected ENTIRELY based on the appearance his campaign cultivated of him as a rich businessman who understands the little guy. Experience in government? None needed. When Trump stated his intention to destroy the ACA in his campaign, they cheered, despite most of them being dependent upon the success of the ACA. They didn't care because in the society of the Spectacle, appearances and images matter and nothing else. Literally nothing else. When Trump stated he had a health care plan that was "beautiful" and where everyone would be covered at minimal cost, NOBODY bothered to ask to see the plan. They just voted for him. When Congress was embarrassing itself unable to kill the ACA after promising for years to do just that, Trump was livid but NOBODY asked him to unveil his plan!! That might have been a good time to do it! He lied to them and they don't care. Why didn't anybody do something about this? Because in the society of the Spectacle, we go for images only and images are necessarily devoid of content. And I don't mean this solely to attack Trump either. ALL politicians do this stuff. Trump is just a bit more brazen about it. Their campaign commercials don't tell us what they know or can do but only how bad their opponent is and how good they themselves are while flashing up images of farmers working and auto factory workers working at full tilt and happy families having dinner together. Good wholesome American images that you will take with you to the polls when you vote. You won't remember anything that these commercials really said because they didn't say anything. But you will remember those wholesome images because that's the kind of America YOU want!

To battle against the Spectacle requires that society be addressed with images. We would have to participate in the Spectacle to try and overthrow it which allows it to subsume and COOPT the effort and energy spent trying to destroy it and therefore make it stronger and even more pervasive. Again, the Colin Kaepernick example serves this point well. When we fight back against the spectacle, we will be trivialized and then turned into an image, packaged and sold back to the very public we were trying to liberate.






An example, was when the punk ideology of "anarchy" was being thrown in the 1980s and the circle A's were everywhere:








But within a short time, t-shirts began appearing in shops with the circle A symbol:








Anarchy had simply become part of the Spectacle and putting money in some entrepreneur's pocket while the workers who made the shirts might have been slaving in some sweatshop in Latin America or Asia.

Luckily, bands as the Dead Kennedys saw through the ruse:






But as the video makes clear, the whole punk movement got subsumed by the Spectacle. How do you stop a big corporation from making money off you? Take them to court? They have a team of ruthless attack lawyers that all graduated from Harvard or Yale law schools and have unlimited funds to pay them their ridiculous fees. What do you have?

But still, I think, protest music serves a purpose. It is, I think, a form of the Situation. After all, it educated me about how phony our reality truly is. What else do we do? Sit around singing love songs and oh baby let's do it all night long? I prefer the loud metallic, punkish brand for its energy, its anger, its rage even if it might, in the end, be impotent. Perhaps we are stuck in a fight of Calvinistic proportions. Perhaps we must fight against the Spectacle eternally. For as long as we are battling, we know we're not dead, we know we're forcing them to keep coopting us. Maybe as long as we battle, we know we haven't lost.






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## Guest (Sep 8, 2019)




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## Guest (Sep 8, 2019)




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## Guest (Sep 8, 2019)




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## Guest (Sep 8, 2019)




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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

Well, this is all very interesting from a historical perspective but whether in Government or Opposition the punks and hippies are in charge. It is everywhere in modern day establishment to everyone's detriment for it lacks the music element. I can provide examples. The sort of imagery which is truly radical as an antidote is wholesome, if exceedingly twee, in the extreme. I'm a radical. No one on earth gets where I am coming from these days as I am right. And I see the New Seekers in 2019 as being deeply anarchic.

New Seekers - I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing:


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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

I can do you two or three of my leftish ones from the 1980s as I am a very old style social democrat economically (definitely not Blair/Clinton and in the US you would define me as socialist yet it isn't Sanders/Corbyn either as both come with extreme liberal agendas) but I am also now a moderate social conservative who is vehemently anti liberalism (and that doesn't mean Trump because he never fought in Vietnam, is way too economically right wing for me and has had in my opinion a poor attitude to women).

If I expanded, you would find me barking - I've been told to take my meds by people who assume I am on meds when I am not and feel they could do with being on meds although being typical they think they are normal. Put it this way. I'm not at all impressed by money and not impressed by "21st C sex. And I strongly believe we need a revolution to replace representative democracy with real direct democracy.

Over 6 million people take part weekly in the UK Premier League's fantasy football (soccer) game. If a computer system can handle that, then one can cope with weekly referenda to the people. They decide on the future of policy. But it would require our armies becoming so sick of defending the current system that they help to deliver it by coup. The key issue is an old one though. Would they then hand it over? At the moment, no. But its time is coming. The development is inevitable if democracy is ever going to survive.



The Redskins: Kick Over The Statues -






The Men They Couldn't Hang: Ironmasters -


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

How about protest music by people that actually put themselves at risk for their principles (unlike anyone in a Western democracy in the past 50 years)?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)




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## Guest (Sep 10, 2019)

What does putting yourself on the line mean? You fight against the system and 75 years later, they elect a white supremacist fascist into the White House with help from Russia? We stand against oppression while he talks about how he and a mass murderer over in the Pacific fell in love. Malcolm X died, they made a movie about him and after the movie becomes a big hit, RJ Reynolds starts marketing "X" cigarettes to young black kids. They made him part of the Spectacle. Gil Scott-Heron tells us that the revolution will not be televised and it ends up on a sneaker commercial without the consumers who watched the commercial understanding Heron's poem.

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8: 32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

If there was ever anything written against the Spectacle, it was that. The revolution will not be mediated with images. But the truth is, the revolution wouldn't have to be so messy, so Mad Max. We the People have the power. We own the means of production not fat-chump billionaire. If we don't show up for work, what do they do, how will they make their money? They can't repair their mansions or mow their lawns or fix their own cars or repair their own roads. WE do that for them. And that is the reason for the Spectacle--to control us so we don't make that connection, so we don't realize that we don't have to do a damned thing they say. But we don't do that.

So that's what the protest songs do--remind people that WE hold the power. Whatever we want, they can't keep it from us. So they divide us against each other with politics. Protest songs won't give power to the people--the people already have it. We just have to remind them of it.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Ok, whatever. i will leave you to your geezer punk nostalgia


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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

Bwv 1080 said:


> How about protest music by people that actually put themselves at risk for their principles (unlike anyone in a Western democracy in the past 50 years)?


Well, yes, absolutely and thank you so much for being gracious enough to reply.

In this contest, and my computer has been playing up all night so what I want to say is only just about getting through, I would mull over the brilliant, brilliant Nina Simone and her campaigning while noting that Sammy David Jnr somehow walked it irrespective of racial prejudice so some could evenwhen it was difficult. If ever you want proof of what is now the average yet overfed protester just look at the thinness of him and Andy Williams, even when both were cash loaded, in their tiny waist bands. Then I would be turning to the great Jara who was revived in name by Calexico but is by far best represented by himself. The Clash also made a significant reference to him on the sublime "Sandinista!"- while that's discussed elsewhere, it alas won't be nominated. The key here is that mega rich liberals today protest too much.

To be frank, I'm not sure even if I want to go deep into this thread. What's the point? Liberals and fascists are now bedfellows. The fascist liberals support all porn even where it is akin to a consensual holocaust or the kind of thing that in the 1950s would have led to a committee deciding whether those involved should go into an asylum or just be given the death penalty. They were right. Ours are wrong. All of them. Look at the UK Parliament today. It is the impact of establishment dope and coke as was the financial crash.

Finally got there.....one of the greatest clips of all time:






He got his hands cut off later, just as the public now. Yes I did vote Remain and am vehemently for Brexit. The ex head of our secret services says that the entire UK is suffering from a collective breakdown. No, no. Only insofar as the establishment is impacting on us. He confuses the country with that establishment which is now round the twist. Its time is over. It has made sure that it has effectively destroyed itself.

The Carpenters:


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

One of the powerful anti-apartheid protest songs was "Biko" by Peter Gabriel:
https://www.one.org/international/blog/soundtrack-to-a-protest-movement-apartheid-x-biko/


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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

Some facts. Of the many candidates for the UK Tory leader competition, all but two admitted to taking illegal drugs. The new Liberal Democrat leader was a drug law breaker. Labour, person to person, would be worse. They just talk about it less. The Tory PM was a part of the Bullingdon club which used to terrify poor Indian restauranteurs by smashing their places up before paying to repair them, such was the extent of their money. Ex PM Cameron was also in that club. So, yep, who needs Crass when crass governs?

The Lib Dems are extremely keen on swearing. "B-------s" to Brexit. Ditto Greens. Climate change protesters who while right on their issue are totally full of double standards in the cars that they drive and the planes that they fly in are now "f--k each other, don't f--k the planet". Yes. That is their latest ad campaign. It's crude enough for me as a non driver/non flyer to want to pollute the planet in response.

I like swearing among males at soccer. It's the proper working class man or used to be. Now it is banned. I don't like swearing in church. Now vicars, all ex bank mangers, swear at the pulpit to appear trendy. Everything has been turned perversely and maliciously upside down. It's divorce a-plenty. Johnson. Trump. Man. Have I seen the impacts of divorce on kids as they became adults? Yes I have. All victims of adult narcissism. The abortion numbers are outlandish. Porn. Much if it is the new so-called consensual holocaust. Have you looked at it at its most extreme? They are now encouraging people to get off on others injecting meth almost certainly to be dead in days. Look at it. Feel sick at what liberals have done.

There is one on there - an absolutely legal, formal channel - with 5 million views which shows some old tart dressed up as an elderly woman with a walking stick who is subsequently gang raped. This is apparently freedom of expression. Bring back the death penalty for that sort of dirt as soon as possible.

Peters and Lee:


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## Hiawatha (Mar 13, 2013)

This is not anti-establishment to the extent that the establishment existed . It is the establishment. You do realise, of course, that anything other than sex for procreation - and being no church goer I am totally unique in my opinions here - is warped? The so-called love in rear sex which isn't love whatever the orientation. Oral sex which will lead to mouth cancers and is a kind of flesh eating cannibalism. I gave up on sex years ago when I got fed up of being asked what was wrong with me for simply being what was normally conventional. Sorry if this is too punk for you. I am genuinely punk and have had my fill of it. I guess with your records you are just too conventional for me. But, hey, fine. I'm a very tolerant guy.

As for the shift from tobacco/nicotine to dope, you've got a move from a drug which schizophrenics do like a chimney to keep on an even keel - it kills them but alleviates their symptoms - to one which is involved in every US school shooting and so-called Muslim atrocity. It is utterly vile and yet they are legalising it. Tell you what. Bring in those shops here. I will buy it and hence éasily work my way onto the front page newspaper with psychosis. It guarantees me doing a bloodbath and I'm really looking forward to it unless the UK comes to its senses and keeps it illegal. The only people it will have to blame are the policy makers. Some zeitgeist smileys and a bit of Puff the Magic Dragon which is such a lovely song:

Peter, Paul and Mary:








But it is sheep which are my favourite animals. They are so lovely and docile that they don't have opinions and just accept the will of the majority. Because I love them and I wouldn't have sexual inclinations towards them - that too is normal other than in parts of the celtic fringes - I'd murder a pervert in wellington boots. Anything else? Yes. Thanks for asking. If you really want to do punk and go completely off the scale I can go further being a real individual who also follows the herd . I am 150% behind our multi-cultural community and always have been - world music, anti apartheid, a black girlfriend, once, and I absolutely want immigration now down to nil now as you can't in any way plan or manage a brothel or a whelk stall if you have no ability to manage numbers. Out punk me if you dare.

If this is what has replaced the paternal, bring back the national 1950s style Dad:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49645338

Looking forward too to the Nazi legislature and the judiciary with its Nazi international backing putting the clown PM into prison as then he will be a martyr and we can overturn all of 'em with tanks overnight. When I'm deciding if I should replace Salah with Aguero, I'll vote on policy addressing climate change.

Camper Van Beethoven - Tusk:






(wow - so many threads which have encouraged me to get out my paint box - thanks so much)


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2019)

At a certain point in the song, you hear them sing "Up against the wall, motherf-ckers!" Abbreviated UAW/MF, they were an anarchist group of street artists started by a guy named Ben Morea. They were pretty radical and weren't afraid to brawl with those who got in their way. They served as the inspiration for the Weather Underground.






They told you in school about freedom
But when you try to be free they never let ya
They said "it's easy , nothing to it"
And now the army's out to get ya
Sixty nine America in terminal stasis
The air's so thick it's like drowning in molasses
I'm sick and tired of paying these dues
And i'm finally getting hip to the American ruse

I learned to say the pledge of allegiance
Before they beat me bloody down at the station
They haven't got a word out of me since
I got a billion years probation

Sixty nine America in terminal stasis
The air's so thick it's like drowning in molasses
I'm sick and tired of paying these dues
And i'm sick to my guts of the American ruse
Phony stars, oh no! crummy cars, oh no!
Cheap guitars, oh no! Joe's primitive bar... nah!

Rock'em back, Sonic !
The way they pull you over it's suspicious
Yeah, for something that just ain't your fault
If you complain they're gonna get vicious
Kick in the teeth and charge you with assault
Yeah, but i can see the chickens coming home to roost
Young people everywhere are gonna cook their goose
Lots of kids are working to get rid of these blues
Cause everybody's sick of the American ruse

Well well well , take a look around !
Well well well , take a look around !
Well well well , take a look around !
Well well well , take a look around !
Well well well , take a look around !


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2019)

I love to lie and lie to love
I'm hangin' on they push and shove
Possession is the motivation
That is hangin' up the goddamn nation
Looks like we always end up in a rut
Everybody now
Tryin' to make it real compared to what

Slaughterhouse is killin' hogs
Twisted children killin' frogs
Poor dumb ******** rollin' logs
Tired old ladies kissin' dogs
I hate the human love of that stinking mutt
I can't use it
Tryin' to make it real compared to what

President he's got his war
Folks don't know just what it's for
Nobody gives us rhyme or reason
Have one doubt they call it treason
We're chicken feathers
All without one nut goddamn it
Tryin' to make it real compared to what

Church on Sunday sleep and nod
Tryin' to duck the wrath of God
Preachers fillin' us with fright
They all tryin' to teach us what they think is right
They really got to be some kind of nut
I can't use it
Tryin' to make it real compared to what

Where's that bee and where's that honey
Where's my God and where's my money
Unreal values a crass distortion
Unwed mothers need abortion
Kind of brings to mind old young King Tut
He did it now
Tried to make it real compared to what

Tryin' to make it real compared to what


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

The Founders


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Blooded the Brave


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2019)

Hiawatha said:


> Well, this is all very interesting from a historical perspective but whether in Government or Opposition the punks and hippies are in charge. It is everywhere in modern day establishment to everyone's detriment for it lacks the music element. I can provide examples. The sort of imagery which is truly radical as an antidote is wholesome, if exceedingly twee, in the extreme. I'm a radical. No one on earth gets where I am coming from these days as I am right. And I see the New Seekers in 2019 as being deeply anarchic.
> 
> New Seekers - I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing:


I'm sorry but that song was coopted by the capitalists long ago:






As I said, it gets trivialized, turned into a symbol and pushed back on the masses to get them to buy more crap. One more reason I don't drink soda. This is the symbol this song got reduced to:










Just another Spectacle.

I wonder how much they paid the New Seekers to use that song.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

All the bands on this thread are entrepreneurial capitalists, here is some pure revolutionary music


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Bwv 1080 said:


> All the bands on this thread are entrepreneurial capitalists, here is some pure revolutionary music


Meh. Too cheerful.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Bwv 1080 said:


> All the bands on this thread are entrepreneurial capitalists


Those are the best kind. The global conglomerates that gobbled up all the innovative small companies and turned everything into cheese are the problem.


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2019)

starthrower said:


> Those are the best kind. The global conglomerates that gobbled up all the innovative small companies and turned everything into cheese are the problem.


Yes, you can be an entrepreneurial capitalist without selling out. This is, after all, a capitalist society which makes it pretty hard to live any other way. But once the Spectacle coopts you, then it's not so good but that can happen so fast that you never had a chance to stop it. In Lennon's case, Beatlemania took off before any of them had any developed any sophisticated ideologies. By the time, Lennon started figuring things out, he had been part of the Spectacle for so long, I doubt he could have ever gotten totally free of it.

The punks deserve credit, they were avoiding the big labels and were going DIY as much as they could, even forming their own labels on shoestring budgets and finding factories to press the vinyl and then finding stores that would stock them. Others had to sign to small labels that at least had some kind of distribution system. And doing all this before there was an internet. That wasn't easy. I only know of two labels that were not owned by a larger distributor--Alternative Tentacles and Manifesto. They managed to sell enough records to remain truly independent. The rest inked deals under the umbrellas of larger distributors or they folded.

While I realize that punk isn't everyone's cup of tea, I sort of cut my socio-political teeth with it. I also went with it because so many people found it unlistenable or were intimidated or repulsed by the whole scene. Melodic folk protest songs were all well and good--that's what I grew up on--but the catchy melodies put them in grave danger of getting coopted into the Spectacle. The Coke commercial thing, for example. Some of those songs were dying to be turned into commercial jingles. The punk stuff was too blaring, obscene and anti-music to ever be used that way. The melodic stuff made headway into the mainstream but was usually too trivialized by then to have any effect. Punk couldn't make those inroads but the music also remained outside of what could be usefully subsumed by the Spectacle. True, it would always remain small and limited in its appeal but that was the trade-off. We couldn't reach out to all of them, they would have to come to us and most didn't.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Punk didn't do it for me on a purely musical basis. But I understand the move away from the corporate music industry stranglehold. I don't listen to much pop/rock music these days but I've supported a lot of small label "underground" type artists.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

The first wave was great, Clash, John Lydon, Ramones, Dead Kennedys,etc. most everything after sucked


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## Guest (Sep 14, 2019)

I feel that for protest music to avoid being absorbed by the capitalist milieu has to shed melody. I have nothing against melody, of course. I wouldn't be in this forum if I did. But my conclusion on this is purely political as opposed to aesthetic. Melody is very useful in political systems. Every campaign has a campaign song. Every campaign cycle, some group or singer is threatening to sue a candidate for using their songs without permission. Karlheinz Stockhausen stated that his musical endeavors were, at least in part, borne of his hatred of the martial music of Nazi Germany. Every nation has its own anthem and, in every case, they are always overtly melodic.

There is something subversive in the idea of radical socio-political ideology put into nice melodic lines that are very hummable. But I don't think that, ultimately, it worked. These songs got absorbed and diluted. Again, I recognize the importance of those songs but I don't think they accomplished what they set out to do. Maybe it was because the ordinary people out there who don't think subversively could believe that this song they hummed on a constant basis could have had any subversive content--something they would derisively dismiss as *SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!*

These are the same people who work 8 hours a day as opposed to 16, who go on vacation every year, who get weekends off, who get overtime pay, who get sick days and holidays, maternity leave and medical insurance through their employers and who only have that stuff because socialists fought for it and won it for them. Who get medicare and social security and unemployment because someone who subscribed to a socialist ideology thought it up.

I see socialism as a useful antidote to capitalism but I do not see it as an end goal. I think anarchism is. The reason boils down to freedom. In a capitalist system, freedom is a privilege not a right no matter what anyone says. You have no rights a rich capitalist is bound to respect. In a socialist system, freedom is real but limited. Ultimately, we must still be governed and all human beings must work together. In anarchism (which is an anti-political ideology and not a economic system as socialism and capitalism are), I have the right to do as I want as much as I want. Picture socialism and anarchism as like the difference between being married and being single respectively. Married people have to govern their lives by consensus. Hubby can't go off on a fishing trip for a week without clearing it with wifey. If he was single, however, he could go fishing whenever he felt like it and if he decided to fish for another week, he could do that without needing to call home first because there is no one there whose permission he needs.

These are two systems that cannot coexist for the same society. Either we are governed or we are not. Some might say that an anarchist is no different from a rich capitalist in that what's to stop him from owning a huge, polluting factory if he wants to own one? Theoretically, nothing. HOWEVER, any anarchist could tell you that actions have consequences. Whether there are laws or not, whether there are governments or not--actions ALWAYS have consequences. An anarchist must always be aware that the world doesn't revolve around him and he doesn't live in some solipsist fantasy where I am the only one that matters and everyone else is only there to serve me in some manner. I have to be aware that my wants may clash with the freedoms of others who won't be thrilled about it. So my behavior is self-limiting if not out of respect for others then out of fear that one or a group of them may decide to solve the problem I pose to them by applying baseball bats to my skull. You may say that this would be a society ruled by fear. Well, fear is a part of life. We will never be without fear so we may as well learn to live with it in a productive manner because it will never be eradicated and, frankly, I don't think it should ever be.

So, while theoretically, I could go fishing for another week if I chose, I still have responsibilities. I have an occupation, maybe I have cats or dogs that need to be fed, my property needs upkeep, maybe I promised to donate my time to help a friend or neighbor. I can blow all these things off if I want to BUT there will be consequences for doing so. But there is no law that compels me to do a damned thing if I don't want to. It boils down to personal responsibility.

I know. You can think up a million scenarios where big problems would arise. But, you know, we'll just have to deal with them as they come because we can't anticipate everything that might happen. Ultimately, I think the human race is destined to full individual freedom. The problem isn't economic and it won't fix itself if the right processes are put in place. The problem is that we have been taught to be servile. The very root of the problem. We are not meant to be servile, we don't function well under servility. We function best when we are self-governing. Yes, there are many things we can accomplish collectively but we can't be compelled to do it by law. Law=no freedom. No freedom=ruination.

You cloak this message and set it to a pretty melody and it will float around the public without ever being understood.

At least, that's how I see it.


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2019)




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## haydnguy (Oct 13, 2008)




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## haydnguy (Oct 13, 2008)




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## Guest (Sep 21, 2019)

We all know that the nuclear threat ended after Mr. Reagan implored Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." Voila! The wall came down, the nukes were disarmed and the world was suddenly safe! Except, of course, nothing like this happened. The threat of nuclear annihilation is as real now as it ever was. Not only have the nuclear arsenals not been shut down, the former Soviet Union does not even know where all its arsenal went! Some were stolen and some appear to have secretly auctioned off to the highest bidder. For example, the nuclear suitcase bombs--red clay, as it is known--have simply vanished. We have no idea who may have them now and what they plan to do with them. The US govt seems to believe that the Arabs lack the money and know-how to procure and arm the red clay but I think Saudi oil money COULD buy a few as well as the cooperation of people who know _exactly_ how to use them. These could be placed in bus terminals, airports, sports stadiums, even a damn YMCA. Blow up one city and then send a message: "We have several more of these in different cities, you'll never find them all in time, so here is a list of our demands..." What are we going to do at that point?






Govts have always tried to play down the severity of such a war to utter and comical absurdity. In one propaganda reel from the fifties on how to best protect oneself in the event of an attack, it suggested holding up a newspaper to shield one's face and eyes. These bombs unleash the most horrendous and hideous destruction ever witnessed by the human race including melting steel structures and disintegrating houses in a flash but holding up a stupid newspaper is going to protect you. If only the unfortunates at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had known!






If a nuclear war started with Russia, according to Princeton's computer models, 91.5 million people would die the first phase including 2.6 million in a 3-hour attack that would effectively destroy Europe followed by a 45-minute retaliation that would kill 3.4 million. This would be followed by a period where NATO and Russia (and we won't assume China or North Korea would be joining them) would start taking out each other's big cities to prevent the other side from being able to recuperate and regroup. During this stage of the war, New York would be destroyed along with about 85 million people.






Conditions on the ground would be horrific. These bombs would be far more powerful than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. For one thing, we tend to prefer thermonuclear bombs which are far more powerful than fission bombs producing yields of several hundred kilotons compared to the 12-15 kilotons for the Little Boy detonated over Hiroshima (and less than 2% of the plutonium used actually fissioned). In a thermonuclear explosion, there is a primary explosion: chemical explosives ignite around a hollow sphere of Plutonium-239. The hollow ball is called "the pit." As the pit implodes, it is tremendously compressed. When the pit becomes dense enough for a fission chain reaction (i.e. when it reaches supercriticality), a neutron generator injects neutrons into the pit as it compresses. This then kicks off the chain reaction and the resulting explosion generates tremendous heat and pressure that kicks off the secondary explosion which is a fusion detonation where two atoms are fused which, in turn, releases a tremendous amount of energy. The fusion fuel is a solid compound of lithium and deuterium and called, appropriately enough, lithium deuteride. This fuel undergoes fusion through a kind of "wick" of plutonium-239 or uranium-235 that is embedded inside it. The primary explosion compresses the fuel which compresses the wick inside and causes it to undergo fission and this explosion drives the atoms of the compressed fuel back outward which basically just slams the atoms of the fuel together producing a massive fusion detonation. The fuel is wrapped in a uranium shell and the explosion causes this shell to undergo fission and this fission explosion accounts for about half the total yield of the bomb. It is a horrendous explosion!






Part of the problem with nuclear war isn't even the prospect of war itself. The problem is that we could blow ourselves up or start a war by mistake. An accident or mishap is all it takes. A Titan ICBM in its silo in Kansas sprang a leak and dumped its rocket fuel into the silo, the missile exploded but fortunately, the bombs were not armed. If they had been, we would have destroyed the Breadbasket Midwest. In 1961, a B-52 carrying two 4-megaton thermonuclear bombs, crashed near Eureka, North Carolina. Each bomb had more explosive power than all munitions ever detonated in the history of the human race _combined_! Only one of the failsafes worked. It was a low-voltage switch that prevented arming the bombs. Had this failsafe failed like the rest of them, much of the eastern seaboard would be a gulf! Our maps would look very different today.

When you hear the punk tunes calling a nuclear war "a mass crematorium" that's a pretty good analogy. The heat generated in the bombs are hotter than the surface of the sun. This heat bursts out of the bomb and sets everything on fire. Anything not blown apart by the enormous shock wave, will be burned, seared or melted in the intense heat. The firecloud will generate tremendous winds in excess of 100 mph which is higher than hurricane force and the temperatures of these winds will be on the order of 100 degrees celsius--enough to boil water. Anyone caught in those winds will die. There is nothing they could do. The blast will blow a huge hole in the ground and fling all the dirt, dust and rocks in the air. All of it would be severely irradiated. The heavier pieces of debris would rain back down first. But the light dusts would be spread by the violent winds and blown around for hundreds of miles. This dust is so irradiated that if you collect up one ounce and then spread it uniformly over a square mile, you could march thousands of people through it for years 24/7 and all of them would receive lethal doses of radiation.

If you hide in a cellar or bomb shelter you could survive the explosion as long as you are in the center of the shelter. If you are leaning on the walls or standing close to them, you would be killed when the shock wave hits because the walls will buck so violently that it would like getting hit by a Mack truck doing 80 mph. Then, course, you can't come out. The surface would be so irradiated that you would get acute radiation sickness very quickly and die an agonizing death. Untold millions, even billions would die from radiation in the aftermath. If you survive that, you get to enjoy the thrill of stepping out a shower, running a brush or comb through your hair and watch it all come off in the bristles while you stare at the mirror in amazement at the long swath of bare scalp you just exposed on your head. Ask the Japanese survivors how fun that is.






We need an anti-bomb/anti-nuke protest movement now more than ever before. We have a president who thinks we should try detonating nuclear bombs in approaching hurricanes in hopes of turning them back. Now is not the time to be silent.

BTW, the secondary fusion cores on the bombs in that B-52 that crashed in North Carolina in '61 were NEVER found! They are still buried somewhere under the North Carolina soil.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)




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## Guest (Sep 21, 2019)

Taggart said:


>


This was an important album for me. My brother had it. He bought it right after it came out when most people were ignoring it because of Beatlemania. He was just entering high school and I was 6, I think. He became an S&G fanatic and would sit in his room for hours learning all the chords and fingerings. Over the years, he would perform the songs for people as he grew more socially conscious and the reality that the draft was awaiting him upon graduation.

I heard my parents talk about the draft a lot and I saw guys on TV getting killed or being dragged by their buddies through rice paddies under heavy gunfire while he's trailing blood and screaming in pain at the top of his lungs, "My fking leg, watch my fking leg!" I loved "Bleecker Street" although I was too young to even know where Bleecker Street was. But the song "He Was My Brother" used to make me cry. I didn't know at the time that it was about the Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner murders in Mississippi. It made me think instead about my brother being drafted and sent to Vietnam and dying there. The thought of it was unbearable and the thought of how my parents would take it was even more unbearable. And then I would realize that there were already many parents who were crying over their lost sons and kids my age crying over their dead older brothers that they loved as much as I loved mine and how much they would miss him. They had to live with what I only feared might happen but might happen soon. Like watching a fatal car wreck in agonizing slow motion. The emotional impact of it would be too much for me and I would lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Then I would splash water on my face and pretend like I was just washing up.

My brother managed to stay out of the draft although he had a draft card. He got college deferments. He said had it not been for the draft, he probably never would have stayed in college where he eventually got a degree in microbiology and became a professor and then an administrator. He's retired now. When I taught myself the guitar, my brother was surprised I had become so good because I was actually a drummer at the time and he would have me perform at shows with him. We still perform together once in a blue moon. But I think of everything we've done down through the years, the decades, and wonder what it would have been like had he been dead and gone all that time.

He knows every S&G song on guitar--every note on every song. You close your eyes and you'd really think it was Paul Simon playing because it's so perfect. I think the only S&G I taught myself was "April Come She Will." I always wanted to learn "The Dangling Conversation" but I never got around to it--beautiful poetry set to beautiful music, each of which could have stood by itself. I'm kind of an authority on the music of S&G because my brother played them all so incessantly.

So I would say that "Wednesday Morning, 3 AM" is the original moment of my social outlook on life. The music that kicked it all off for me. Every time I read about some injustice that occurred somewhere, I would think about a song from that album. And I would feel sadness, rage and outrage and that outrage has never gone away. I still carry it. But I think it's helped me keep a straight head about what really matters. I don't care what TV shows are going to get cancelled or what movie has all the critics raving or what celebrity couple is breaking up. This country is splitting up families and putting kids in cages without due process or even basic sanitation. I want filthy fkr Trump swinging by his balls. That's what matters most to me.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

_The Savage Rose_ is one of the best bands we've had here in my country, founded in the late 60s and still active. 
Members include the fabulous main vocalist Annisette and relatives of the classical composer H.D.Koppel; one of the members, Thomas Koppel, originally a classical pianist, has however died. 
Lyrics became increasingly political and they often still tend to be so. The musical style has been extremely varied, and much more experimental than just these examples show.

_The Shoeshine Boy is Dead_ (1973)






_Inuit Nunat_ (a song about lost Greenlandish identity)(1973)






_Fløjten bag Muren_ (about separation and longing for freedom, from an album with politically charged folk songs from around the world. 1989)






_Homeless _(2017; the singer is now 69 years old)






List of their main albums
https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/the-savage-rose

1968 Television presentation, quite hippie/punk-ish


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I sometimes "revolt" against everything with some noisy black metal \m/ At a concert I went to, I saw a guy whose back of jacket said (among other things) ANTI-HUMAN. Wow!


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2019)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I sometimes "revolt" against everything with some noisy black metal \m/ At a concert I went to, I saw a guy whose back of jacket said (among other things) ANTI-HUMAN. Wow!


I see humans as just another life-form no better or worse than any other but too smart for our own good. Our capacity to change the world was outstripped by our urge to conquer it and dominate it. What I hate is when some jerk tries to tell me that human life is sacred and this crap. And that's all it is--crap. Abortion, for example, may be unfortunate but to be against it because your religion says it (even when it really doesn't) is just stupid, sanctimonious garbage that interferes with the natural order and disrespects the world.

I think it is acceptable to hunt for food as long as animals are not hunted to extinction but our overpopulated numbers have made it necessary to impose rules and restrictions on hunting to prevent depleting animal stocks. There are too many humans. We don't need this many people. However, that doesn't make me anti-human. I wouldn't go around culling humans indifferently saying it has to be done because who would I be to decide who gets culled and who doesn't?

Likewise, I'm not indifferent to human suffering. I don't want to see any animal suffer and since humans are animals why should I make an exception for us? I just don't think we are intrinsically worth more than other animals. In a biosphere, we all are links in a chain, we all serve a purpose but human numbers are upsetting the balance and a mass die-off is necessary but I don't believe we should wipe each other out over it. Nature has a way of taking care of those problems and it's happening. Use up the resources? Then die. Problem solved. If that sounds cold-blooded, it's not. It's what is happening and there is nothing we can do about it. If people don't like that choice then DO something about it. Don't just throw your fking religion at me. That's just cheap, lazy and cynical. Not to mention utter hypocrisy. If you have a solution then offer it.

If we humans are so great then we should be doing a lot better than this.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Zere Asylbek / Зере - Сүйүнчү


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