Category Archive 'Rock n’ Roll'

30 Jul 2014

Conservatism as Punk Rock

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ramones4
The Ramones at CBGB

Kurt Schlichter has a good rap, arguing that Conservatism is the new Punk Rock, while those sad millennial kids are listening to Tony Bennett.

We’ve heard it all before a hundred times, the same old lack of imagination, the same old sorry set list. The music of liberalism doesn’t move us, it doesn’t change us, it doesn’t excite us. It’s just there, aural wallpaper designed to keep us quiet, to get the liberals through one more election cycle, to help them hold power just a little longer.

Today, Sheena is no longer a punk rocker. Instead, she is a disaffected Oppression Studies grad student trying to pay off her $200K student loan debt working part-time at the local Starbucks. She chooses cuddly conformity and cozy control over the excitement of actual independence. Sure, she has a nose piercing the show that she’s a rebel, but this rebel’s cause is to replace her helicopter parents with a helicopter government.

We conservatives want to tear it all down. We conservatives want to smash it up. Liberalism, I want to destroy you. We’re where the action is, where the excitement is, where you can hear new music from bands you mainstream liberals have probably never heard of.

Liberals want to see themselves as punks. They aren’t. They are sad conformists who frankly deserve the consequences of their inaction.

Read the whole thing.

14 Jul 2014

Heavy Metal Cello

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Two cellists perform AC/DC‘s 1990 hit Thunderstruck.

11 Dec 2008

Worse Than Threats of Violence

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The US has sometimes resorted to playing loud Rock n’ Roll to break prisoners’ will to resist. And some musicians are offended at their being selected for use as negative reinforcement.

Andrew O Selsky:

Blaring from a speaker behind a metal grate in his tiny cell in Iraq, the blistering rock from Nine Inch Nails hit Prisoner No. 200343 like a sonic bludgeon.

“Stains like the blood on your teeth,” Trent Reznor snarled over distorted guitars. “Bite. Chew.”

The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago, told The Associated Press he was soon suicidal.

The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, “to create fear, disorient … and prolong capture shock.”

Now the detainees aren’t the only ones complaining. Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons.

A campaign being launched Wednesday has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and is now on a solo tour. It will feature minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the British law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees and is organizing the campaign. …

Not all of the music is hard rock. Christopher Cerf, who wrote music for “Sesame Street,” said he was horrified to learn songs from the children’s TV show were used in interrogations.

“I wouldn’t want my music to be a party to that,” he told AP.

Bob Singleton, whose song “I Love You” is beloved by legions of preschool Barney fans, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that any music can become unbearable if played loudly for long stretches.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?” …

Some musicians, however, say they’re proud that their music is used in interrogations. Those include bassist Stevie Benton, whose group Drowning Pool has performed in Iraq and recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies.”

“People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,” he told Spin magazine. “I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”

List of music used

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Hat tip to serving military officer.

22 May 2007

“Hope I Die Before I Get Old”

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World’s oldest Rock group: the Zimmers.

3:40 video

17 May 2007

Campaign Song for Hillary

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign site is asking readers to help pick her campaign song, suggesting as possibilities:

City of Blinding Lights – U2

Suddenly I See – KT Tunstall

I’m a Believer – Smash Mouth

Get Ready – The Temptations

Ready to Run – Dixie Chicks

Rock This Country! – Shania Twain

Beautiful Day – U2

Right Here, Right Now – Jesus Jones

I’ll Take You There – The Staple Singers

Skippy offers a few alternatives here.

The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports:

Washington Wire came up with several suggestions this afternoon for songs that could be used as Clinton’s campaign song. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to print them, as the editors deemed them “inappropriate” and it was “unseemly” of us to suggest them.

There are some more suggestions in this Shakesville posting’s comments.

My own suggestion would be the song performed on this 2:28 video.

09 Oct 2006

Rock Video of the Day

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Smoke on the Water (best version) served up by BamaPachyderm via Rock Aid Armenia (think: Cher).

Oh, by the way, Fuck Mohammed Muhammed Mohemud, Mahmoud, well you know.

I can get behind that.


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