Shuttin’ Detroit Down
"This machine kills fascists"
These are the words Woody Guthrie had emblazoned on his guitar.
Conventional wisdom is you can’t change the world with a song. I don’t buy that. The arts are the voice of the proletariat, music, plays, books, they’re the only way the impoverished masses can stand up to power. But you must believe your opinion counts, work 10,000 hours refining it and never give up, the truth battles encroaching duplicity on a regular basis. Or, as Neil Young put it, "Rust never sleeps".
But what are the odds that art challenging convention is going to make it to the top, is going to have a chance to engender change, when those in power are the heads of the labels, the publishers and the radio stations. Sometime in the last two decades, the midwives of art no longer saw themselves as outsiders, but entitled barons. Thus you have top-heavy record companies run by overpaid lords with almost no infrastructure underneath them. The new media department is expendable, everything is expendable but my multi-million dollar paycheck.
As for truth… Roger Friedman reviews the leaked "Wolverine" in advance of its "authorized" release and loses his job. Doesn’t matter that the film is widely available online to the audience that keeps the movie company in business, truth must be buried at every juncture.
So we end up with a number one record by the Black Eyed Peas entitled "Boom Boom Pow", featuring the endless repetition of the fatuous lyrics: "Boom boom boom, gotta get-get". I’ll tell you, I’m not even sure what this song is about. Other than being a beat-based concoction that services Top Forty radio.
Chances are you haven’t even heard "Boom Boom Pow". You’ve tuned out. I wonder why? And so much of the public thinks music is a confection, candy that is swallowed while partying and the only aftereffect is you get sick.
Come on, when are we going to admit we’ve got a material problem in the music business? Aren’t these label heads fiddling while Rome burns? Aren’t they no different from those Wall Street millionaires who were flying high until it all crashed? There’s no SUBSTANCE! The public knows it. But the industry denies it.
Last night I watched the ACM Awards. I still haven’t figured out why there are two country music award shows. It’s like having the Grammys in February and the Shammys in July. Huh? But one similarity between the two shows is the honoring of out-of-date material. I love Miranda Lambert’s "Gunpowder & Lead", but isn’t that an eighteen month old song?
And I’d love to tell you how great the show was. Like the Grammys, it featured wall to wall music, hell, country did this first. But so much of the material was just plain. Like there was a slot and the writers fashioned a peg to fit the hole. The lack of creativity was stunning. I’d be ashamed to stand up and sing this dreck.
I was amazed that Jamey Johnson won Song of the Year for "In Color". I don’t know how the voting is done, but the fact that a real song, a great record that touches me can win gives me a modicum of hope.
But basically, the ACM show was built for the DVR. You just fast-forward, to sit through most of the productions was just too damn painful. Scratch that, too damn BORING! Does country really believe it’s immune? That it can ram this crap down terrestrial radio stations’ throats and the public will continue to buy it ad infinitum? That listeners won’t scatter like they have in every other genre of music?
But there was one magical moment.
Yeah, you’ve read the reams of press about John Rich’s "Shuttin’ Detroit Down". The problem is, the authorized release is just another country ditty. The lyrics matter, but the music sounds like a ride in the country with the windows down, like "The Dukes Of Hazzard". It’s made for the market, and that’s why it doesn’t resonate. But to hear John Rich sing it acoustically last night was to hear a completely different song.
My daddy taught me in this country everyone’s the same
You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame
When it don’t go your way
We haven’t been the same for decades. There are winners and losers. It’s like India. There are the high caste aristocrats and the untouchables. Oh, we need the untouchables to buy our product, even our mortgages, so we can live behind a walled community and party, with our faces featured in "Vanity Fair".
What makes you so special? What gives you the right? As the cliche goes, you put your pants on the same way we do. You’ve raped and pillaged, and for this you should be respected? You get that AIG bozo complaining in the "New York Times" that he got ripped off by not getting his $700,000 bonus? Well, the company would have been out of business, if we, the people, the taxpayers, hadn’t bailed you out!
Now I see all these big shots whining on my evening news
About how they’re losing billions and it’s up to me and you
To come running to the rescue
They convinced me there for a while. They needed the billions to free up the credit markets, so the whole country wouldn’t crash. But the real story was they just put the cash in their coffers, because their balance sheets were so much worse than they’d let on.
Well pardon me if I don’t shed a tear
They’re selling make believe and we don’t buy that here
Did you read Matt Taibbi’s article in "Rolling Stone", where he explained how this all happened? Take the time:
When you read how Joseph Cassano, who worked previously for convicted criminal Michael Milken, sold the same bad insurance to all comers, you’ll be livid. Wall Street made money. It was not the banker of America, funding business development, it was a game designed to make its players rich. And now assholes like Hank Greenberg say they bear no responsibility? Isn’t this like tobacco companies promoting a healthy lifestyle while the Marlboro cowboy dies of lung cancer?
I’m not gonna recite every lyric, I’m not gonna bore you with politics. I’ll just say that John Rich has tapped into the national psyche with "Shuttin’ Detroit Down". To the point where this far left of center Democrat is cheering this right wing Republican. Because I’m down with the truth, we’re all down with the truth. I don’t mind you getting rich adding to society, earning it the hard way, but when you create a fallacious game and ruin our entire country’s economics, I’M PISSED!
EVERYBODY’S PISSED!
But we’ve got Fergie and the boys singing nonsense. Bono wants to save the world, he just can’t write a song espousing his philosophy, not one anybody wants to hear. It’s all about marketing the tour, where the real money is. I thought these people were supposed to be SONGWRITERS!
Flo Rida just rhymes his nonsense over a smash record from long ago. The definition of a hit is so far from quality, it’s astounding. And the shoegazers are no better, it’s all about attitude with them. The fact that the songs are third-rate and no one can sing is irrelevant. They’ve got CHAMPIONS!
I just don’t give a shit.
Just like News Corporation muzzled Friedman, the rights holders are too uptight to allow John Rich’s acoustic version of "Shuttin’ Detroit Down" to appear on YouTube, to be an instant single on iTunes. Because that’s breaking the rules, the old rules that make them rich. Thank god they’re so behind the curve that they’re becoming poorer by the day. Because they just don’t get it, they just don’t understand it’s a changed world, one in which the proletariat has access and isn’t going to take it anymore.
That’s what they hate about the Internet revolution. The rising power of the people.
But the people need anthems. Rallying cries that help them in their cause, of standing up and taking this country back.
Because in the real world they’re shuttin’ Detroit down,
While the boss man takes his bonus paid jets on out of town
I wouldn’t buy an American car. Never. But that’s not because of the workers, but the executives, who’ve played financial shenanigans and produced what I don’t want. They thought they weren’t beholden to the public, that we’d buy whatever they constructed. But last I checked an automobile was something that got you from here to there, and I don’t want something that’s gonna break and eat a ton of gas, but something efficient, something Japanese, just like everybody else.
The reason no one wants an American car is because they don’t appeal to us. Just like today’s music. Write something great, and people will clamor for it. The public knows excellence. Look at the triumph of the Wii and the iPod, neither cheap but both incredibly successful, unlike Chrysler.
Release this naked take of "Shuttin’ Detroit Down". I dare Top Forty radio to play it. I dare all those TV news stations to feature John Rich singing it live. This is what America wants. Naked, raw emotion delineating the common truth. This is what the music business refuses to give us. This is why music is perceived to be a second-rate art form. If you’re not taking risks, if you’re not challenging convention, you’re not an artist, you’re just a businessman, no better than those Wall Street jerks.
We’ll be singing "This Land Is Your Land" until the end of time. I can’t name one song from the hit parade THIS DECADE that will be memorable even ten years down the road. Five. Don’t you think this is a problem?
