LONG LIVE THE PROTEST SONG, LONG LIVE US ALL!

- by Noah

I was reading Howie’s protest song post Thursday and checked out the PopMatters link to see their list. Lots of good stuff there, even if I, too, had a problem with the lack of Clash songs (no "White Riot", "Clampdown" or "Call Up"?) and I think Dylan’s "Masters Of War" or "With God On Our Side" would have been more appropriate for the current times than their choice. But, the real issue I have is that they seemed to skimp on the protest songs of today. I understand that the 60s are considered the golden age of protest, but there’s a perception that the protest song is an all but dead art form. Not true, to say the least. Protest music is very alive... and very well.

Perhaps protest songs are a little underground these days, but consider who’s in the way between the songs and us, the would be listeners. In a nutshell, your radio and TV stations are controlled, thanks to the media consolidation of recent years, by as few as five conservative run corporations. Start with the San Antonio based Bush Backers Clear Channel. The last thing these companies want is a thinking audience. Clear Channel has no problem serving up the mind-numbing vomit of Rush Limbaugh nationwide every day, but, they are reluctant to do the same for the progressive Randi Rhodes, even if she beats Limbaugh in the ratings where they go head to head. Transparent agenda?

It also doesn’t help that record companies are afraid to sign acts who deal with "social content" in their lyrics 1) because they know it will be hard to expose such artists to the public, at least through the traditional means of massive radio play, and 2) the people who run record companies these days aren’t exactly art-oriented and music-oriented deep thinkers. The end result is the endless stream of mindless dreck and mind rot of today’s best known pop music. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t good artists out there writing good stuff.

There’s an adage (I don’t know how old) that periods of great stress or repression lead to better art. It’s certainly true of the Great Lisbon Earthquake and its effect on Voltaire ("Candide") and other writers of European Enlightenment. It lead a whole culture to question the very nature of its existence. Without the ravages of Russia brought on by Napoleon, we might not have heard of Leo Tolstoy (War And Peace). Extreme poverty in the south in the 20s and 30s fostered a canon of American folk, country, blues, and jazz music that is still being built on today. No dust bowl in Oklahoma? No Woody Guthrie and no John Steinbeck. More recently, the generation of the 60s (my generation) came of age with a fear of being nuked at any moment by evil Russians, a series of political assassinations of leaders who wanted to make the country a better place, and two horrible Presidents named LBJ and Tricky Dick and their Vietnam War. Good thing we didn’t know then that the head of the FBI was running around the Plaza Hotel in a dress, insisting on being called Mary at night while urging Martin Luther King to commit suicide during the day. Might have made the times traumatic.

The 1980s gave us the affably vacant Ronald Reagan, the first in a chain of four Presidents who embarked on a mission of warring on the middle class and destroying the American Dream through corporate program union busting, removal of tariff protections that, combined with corporate tax welfare breaks, leading directly to a tsunami wave of factory closings and American jobs being shipped overseas, NAFTA, CAFTA, monetary re-distribution up to the top 1%, and the rest.

On top of it all is the fact that the current crap artist in the White House is such an absolute criminal lunatic that he makes an allegedly Las Vegas owned and operated crook like Nixon look better by comparison. Judging by the over 750 "I’m above the law" signing statements and, just this week, recent rights canceling executive orders that Bushthug has signed, he aspires to top every two-bit, tin-horned dictator the world has seen. When people like Hussein, Marcos, King George III, Stalin, and Hitler are "the decider’s" idols, LOOK OUT! The time is ripe for some great protest music, even if the performers end up in a stadium in Chile with their fingernails pulled out before they disappear completely. Hmmm. Who was head of our CIA when that was orchestrated?


Here’s a selected list of just a few of the fine recent (1980-Present) protest songs. No particular order. No New World Order. Find them while you can.

Outkast- Bombs Over Bagdad
System Of A Down- Boom
Pearl Jam- World Wide Suicide
Rage Against The Machine- Killing In The Name Of
Rickie Lee Jones- Ugly Man
Green Day- Minority (protesting the Pat Robertsons of the world)
Rush- Witch Hunt (another protest of Repug religious nuts)
Midnight Oil- Beds Are Burning, Put Down That Weapon
Jackson Browne- Lives In The Balance (This one was written about the U. S. intervention in Central America, but it sure works for Iraq!)
The Minutemen- Joe McCarthy’s Ghost (He’s alive and well in so many Repugs. The reader should note that this band has numerous other great protest songs such as Cheerleaders, a song about those who cheer for war.)
Garth Brooks- We Shall Be Free (His attack on homophobia. Garth sold zillions of CDs before he wrote this song. Now?)
Billy Bragg- Help Save The Youth Of America
REM- Flowers of Guatemala
The Sound- Missiles
Bright Eyes- When The President Talks To God (One of that all time best about Dubya and the voices he hears. Personally, I would prefer a President who spent his time with interns, consenting adult ones at least.)
Kate Bush- Army Dreamers
Billy Joel- Allentown (About the disastrous effects of Reaganomics.)
Sinead O’Connor- Black Boys On Mopeds (It’s NOT a love song to Margaret Thatcher.)
Guns & Roses- Civil War
The B-52s- Channel Z (Kinda sums up the Reagan years.)
Metallica- Blackened, Master Of Puppets
The Psychedelic Furs- President Gas
Translator- Sleeping Snakes (About the insanity of having enough nukes to kill everyone in the world 10 times over.)
Willie Nelson-What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth?
Fountains Of Wayne- Everything’s Ruined ('Nuff said)
Tom Waits- Day After Tomorrow (A letter from a very depressed, not so gung-ho soldier.)
Laura Cantrell –Sam Stone (This great Alt-Country artist brings things full circle by covering this classic John Prine song from the 60s. Expect more Sam Stones on your sidewalk soon.)

There are also whole albums by current artists to check out. I suggest Sleater Kinney’s One Beat, Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, The Beastie Boys’ To The 5 Boroughs, and a fine compilation assembled by Fat Mike (NoFX) called Rock Against Bush. Now available in 2 volumes, featuring such artists as Pennywise God Save The USA, Sum41 Moron, Ministry No W, and The Offspring No Bagdad). I also urge the reader to go visit Punk Voter. It’s a real eye-opener for those who think the current generation of musicians has nothing to say.

The reader should also be aware that protest has moved into the ringtone arena. My favorite consists of Bushthug’s famous "Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job" quote laid over a musical bed of Arlo Guthrie’s version of the Steve Goodman classic City Of New Orleans. Also back as early as 2005, ringtones were being used for political protest purposes. That year opponents of Philippine President Gloria Arroyo obtained a wiretap recording of a conversation between the head of state and a top election official. The recording featured Arroyo discussing fixing the country’s 2004 election. Perhaps she didn’t have her own in house "political manager" like some do. The Arroyo government then blocked the media from broadcasting the recording. Imagine that; the media working hand in hand with the government on election corruption! But, thanks to modern tech, it was too late. The cat was out of the bag. Some enterprising people of conscience took the recording and mixed parts of it with the popular music of the day and, next thing you know, the ringtone shot to the top of the country’s download charts. Download activity was so intense that it crashed the system (or was there another reason the system suddenly crashed?). You can make your own ringtones at home. We have the technology. Science is great, even if Republicans don’t want it taught in schools! Imagine a world where every time a phone rings, it’s a protest song! Be mad as hell. Don’t take it no more!

Impeach. Convict. Imprison. NOW! Sing it as you walk down the street. Pick up the phone and sing it to your congresscreep. Shout it from the rooftops! IMPEACH. CONVICT. IMPRISON. NOW MORE THAN EVER!