This Song Ain't the Same

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10393

This Song Ain't the Same
by Brian Morton | Oct 11 2007


snip//


Fast forward to today, and if you listen to the radio, it's hard to tell that America is in year four of a gigantic losing quagmire our leaders sank us into on the basis of lies. Turn on the television, and you'll only see a debate between those who were in favor of war and are in favor of staying, and those who were in favor of war and now are thinking we might want to be withdrawing. All those who were never in favor of the war in the first place are still sitting on the sidelines, wondering how those who were right all along still never get a chance to say their piece into the microphone.

Even some of the most powerful artistic statements in pop music about the war still tiptoed around the subject--Green Day's American Idiot and its elegy to the war's futility, "Wake Me Up When September Ends," didn't take on the issue of the war or our leadership directly but hinted at it in the lyrics or in the somber accompanying video depicting a young man leaving his girlfriend to go to war.

Which is why it will be interesting to see the reaction of the commercial music industry to Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic. Broadcast radio, owned by a bunch of corporate behemoths, nowadays likes to stay far away from just about any music with non-jingoisticpolitical sentiments, so it is hard to see pop stations playing anything as blatantly political as "Last to Die," where Springsteen sings, "We don't measure the blood/ we've drawn anymore/ We just stack the bodies outside the door."

The Springsteen that came out all the way in support of John Kerry in 2004 while other more prominent recording artists of the day were hiding behind their record companies is now fully on the record in his protest, as he mentioned this past Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes:

Well, I think that we've seen things happen over the past six years that I don't think anybody ever thought they'd ever see in the United States. When people think of the American identity, they don't think of torture. They don't think of illegal wiretapping. They don't think of voter suppression. They don't think of no habeas corpus. No right to a lawyer . . . you know. Those are things that are anti-American.

I find it encouraging to finally hear this coming from a musician of Springsteen's stature--but also depressing to think of how few others, even with a president approaching 30 percent approval ratings, who won't step up to agree. And heaven forbid we should ever hear it on the radio.
_

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

1. Dixie Chicks, anyone?

I'm not a fan of their music, but I was pretty excited when that one gal spoke up against BushCo. If even one Country-lovin' Repug changed his/her tune after her pronouncement, it was worth it.

And I'm also happy for them that they seemed to be able to bounce back.

It does seem true, though, that pop culture seems to be sidelining itself this go-round. I remember being a young punk rocker/activist in the eighties, and how righteously pissed we all felt about Reagan's administration. That era spawned a veritable cottage industry of protesters with guitars and microphones that either outright opposed the Conservative agenda, or simply lived openly in ways that made the cons' skin crawl.

Perhaps there are too many "opiates" nowadays, too much smokescreen. The masses are hypnotized by pro sports, video games, competitive consumerism, Britney's hoo-hoo.