"This machine kills fascists"<\/p>\n
These are the words Woody Guthrie had emblazoned on his guitar.<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom is you can’t change the world with a song.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t buy that.\u00c2\u00a0 The arts are the voice of the proletariat, music, plays, books, they’re the only way the impoverished masses can stand up to power.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, as Neil Young put it, "Rust never sleeps".<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometime in the last two decades, the midwives of art no longer saw themselves as outsiders, but entitled barons.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus you have top-heavy record companies run by overpaid lords with almost no infrastructure underneath them.\u00c2\u00a0 The new media department is expendable, everything is expendable but my multi-million dollar paycheck.<\/p>\n
As for truth…\u00c2\u00a0 Roger Friedman reviews the leaked "Wolverine" in advance of its "authorized" release and loses his job.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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".\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll tell you, I’m not even sure what this song is about.\u00c2\u00a0 Other than being a beat-based concoction that services Top Forty radio.<\/p>\n
Chances are you haven’t even heard "Boom Boom Pow".\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve tuned out.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder why?\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Come on, when are we going to admit we’ve got a material problem in the music business?\u00c2\u00a0 Aren’t these label heads fiddling while Rome burns?\u00c2\u00a0 Aren’t they no different from those Wall Street millionaires who were flying high until it all crashed?\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no SUBSTANCE!\u00c2\u00a0 The public knows it.\u00c2\u00a0 But the industry denies it.<\/p>\n
Last night I watched the ACM Awards.\u00c2\u00a0 I still haven’t figured out why there are two country music award shows.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like having the Grammys in February and the Shammys in July.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 But one similarity between the two shows is the honoring of out-of-date material.\u00c2\u00a0 I love Miranda Lambert’s "Gunpowder & Lead", but isn’t that an eighteen month old song?<\/p>\n
And I’d love to tell you how great the show was.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the Grammys, it featured wall to wall music, hell, country did this first.\u00c2\u00a0 But so much of the material was just plain.\u00c2\u00a0 Like there was a slot and the writers fashioned a peg to fit the hole.\u00c2\u00a0 The lack of creativity was stunning.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be ashamed to stand up and sing this dreck.<\/p>\n
I was amazed that Jamey Johnson won Song of the Year for "In Color".\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
But basically, the ACM show was built for the DVR.\u00c2\u00a0 You just fast-forward, to sit through most of the productions was just too damn painful. Scratch that, too damn BORING!\u00c2\u00a0 Does country really believe it’s immune?\u00c2\u00a0 That it can ram this crap down terrestrial radio stations’ throats and the public will continue to buy it ad infinitum?\u00c2\u00a0 That listeners won’t scatter like they have in every other genre of music?<\/p>\n
But there was one magical moment.<\/p>\n
Yeah, you’ve read the reams of press about John Rich’s "Shuttin’ Detroit Down".\u00c2\u00a0 The problem is, the authorized release is just another country ditty.\u00c2\u00a0 The lyrics matter, but the music sounds like a ride in the country with the windows down, like "The Dukes Of Hazzard".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s made for the market, and that’s why it doesn’t resonate.\u00c2\u00a0 But to hear John Rich sing it acoustically last night was to hear a completely different song.<\/p>\n
My daddy taught me in this country everyone’s the same<\/span> We haven’t been the same for decades.\u00c2\u00a0 There are winners and losers.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like India.\u00c2\u00a0 There are the high caste aristocrats and the untouchables.\u00c2\u00a0 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".<\/p>\n What makes you so special?\u00c2\u00a0 What gives you the right?\u00c2\u00a0 As the cliche goes, you put your pants on the same way we do.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve raped and pillaged, and for this you should be respected?\u00c2\u00a0 You get that AIG bozo complaining in the "New York Times" that he got ripped off by not getting his $700,000 bonus?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, the company would have been out of business, if we, the people, the taxpayers, hadn’t bailed you out! They convinced me there for a while.\u00c2\u00a0 They needed the billions to free up the credit markets, so the whole country wouldn’t crash.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Well pardon me if I don’t shed a tear<\/span> Did you read Matt Taibbi’s article in "Rolling Stone", where he explained how this all happened?\u00c2\u00a0 Take the time: <\/p>\n
You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame<\/span>
When it don’t go your way<\/span><\/p>\n
Now I see all these big shots whining on my evening news<\/span>
About how they’re losing billions and it’s up to me and you<\/span>
To come running to the rescue<\/span><\/p>\n
They’re selling make believe and we don’t buy that here<\/span><\/p>\n\n