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Beastie Boys Against The War: Nice sentiment, shame about the execution...

 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:45 / 13.03.03
The Beastie Boys have written an anti-war anthem.

"Now don’t get us wrong ‘cause we love America
But that’s no reason to get hysterica"


Now, granted, I haven't had the chance to actually hear the song 'In A World Gone Mad' yet, but the lyrics are bad. Very bad. If I'm 100% honest, there is no difference in *quality* between this swill and Poets For The War - obviously, I agree with the sentiment of the Beasties' effort and not the latter, but they are essentially two sides of the same deeply embarrassing coin.

The question is, what else did anyone expect? Writing songs with an overt political message is always a tricky business. Those who can pull it off tend to be people who give the sense of being deeply politically involved and aware on a day-to-day basis - whenever otherwise relatively apolitical artists decide to make a song about a Big Issue, the result is bound to be embarrassing. And the Beastie Boys are essentially an apolitical band - every now and again they make tiny little gestures, and there's the whole Tibet thing, sure (though oddly, they've never mentioned Palestine), but they're very much grounded in a safe, middle-class, hippy-ish form of liberal/left-wing politics - nothing too radical, nothing too confrontational.

I find it hard to believe anything in this song is news to the majority of their listeners... but maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure there *is* a case to be made that this song has political value regardless of the success of its execution - I'd like to hear it.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:04 / 13.03.03
Just thought I'd point out that I think the Beastie Boys have made some fantastic music when they've stuck to doing what they do best - dumb fun, whether of the variety of 'Fight For Your Right...', 'Hey Ladies', or the better parts of the last two albums. They're like a living argument against letting your politics define your taste in music (although there are ways in which even Mark 2 of the Boys, the supposedly right-on version, can be objected to on political grounds).
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
14:04 / 13.03.03
I think it's pretty safe to say that it's one of, if not THE worst Beastie Boy songs ever written, and I completely loathe their first album.

Wait til you actually hear the song - the deliverary is so lame and stiff, they've never sounded so...white! It's just a pathetic old school homage, very simplistic rhyming over a mediocre beat. It sounds lazy. And the lyrics - they are so cringe-inducing, it's just doggeral. If this is an indication of where they are headed on their next record, it's going to be TERRIBLE.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:11 / 13.03.03
'snot just the Beasties, though—everyone who's turned a hand to the exercise lately seems to have withdrawn it covered in cack. Flux recently mentioned a Sleater-Kinney song on the topic that was just as bad, and I recently downloaded John Mellencamp's "To Washington," out of morbid curiosity—and it was as bad as I could have imagined. Most songs coming out of the September 11 attacks were horrible, too (Springsteen's execrable "The Rising" empathically not excluded).

My gut says that pop music isn't a great venue for political sentiment beyond the crudest, broadest call-to-arms/we-shall-overcome variety—it's really a medium for telling stories and sketching characters: and if those stories and sketches have a political significance, that's what connects.

And the quote-unquote "political" songs that we remember, the ones that last, are generally pretty vague: "The Time They Are A-Changing" never mentions Vietnam or civil rights explicitly, but is forever associated with them...

I am, at this moment, listening to a radio program about music's role in war—so I may have more insights later.
 
 
bjacques
15:09 / 13.03.03
Ouch! The Poets For The War were hilarious, especially "Joy Skilmer(!)." I wonder if Lee Greenwood's "Message to Saddam" (or "Message to Iran," or whatever) is still selling well.

Successfully mating wit to politics has always been hard, even more so for something you'd actually want to hear twice. Even Jello Biafra, Phil Ochs and Frank Zappa were hit and miss.

Hey, what about "The Times They Are A' Changin' Back" by Bob Roberts?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:14 / 13.03.03
I'm hoping that Jarvis Cocker gives it a shot. I think that if anyone can pull it off, he can.
 
 
bjacques
15:44 / 13.03.03
Ohmigod! How could I have forgotten the Cicninnatus of protest singers?? (The Sydney Morning Herald apparently likes IE better than Netscape.)
 
 
Jack Fear
14:49 / 27.03.03
A bump for news on the protest-song tip: as Flux notes on his blog, REM have a new tune called The Final Straw up at their website. 'Snot bad, but I doubt it's gonna change the world...

Also: Sonic Youth have set up Protest Records, which offers copylefted MP3s of antiwar songs donated by various artists. Pity they're all fucking cringeworthy.

Haven't heard the Zack de la Rage/DJ Shadow thing, though...
 
 
iconoplast
16:17 / 27.03.03
I'm glad Jack Fear brought up Zack de la Rocha, because that was the amazing thing about Rage Against the Machine - they were specifically, and pointedly, political. But they pulled it off like no-one else.

My gut feeling is that if we want protest music we're going to have to go down to Chiapas, find Zack, drag him back to the states, and boot Chris Cornell out of Audioslave long enough to get a couple of angry, protest-inspiring grunts out of Zack.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:31 / 27.03.03
d00d.

Pay attention.

Zack has recorded an anti-war protest song, with DJ Shadow. It's called "March of Death," and you can find it here.
 
 
grant
18:32 / 27.03.03
Well there's something going on around here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to... I got to beware

Ain't it time we stop, children
what's that sound
everybody look
what's going 'round....
 
 
Jack Fear
18:42 / 27.03.03
Well, yeah—but come on: the weapons with which the war is being prosecuted are far advanced from those used in the Gulf War of 1991--why are we protesting it with the same music we used for the war in Vietnam?

Songs are weapons, too—are you telling me the state of the art hasn't advanced in 35 years?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:45 / 27.03.03
Fly, you haven't heard bad until you've heard Dr Karl from Neigbours do his thang.
 
 
grant
01:35 / 28.03.03
Have bullets changed that much? Aren't M-16s standard issue any more?

Heck, all they've done with the weapons is put better guidance systems on 'em. All the rest is fire rocket... make go boom.

The less specific... the less tailor-made... the better the song.
 
 
Loomis
07:37 / 28.03.03
Remember the line from that Edwin Collins song: "Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs."
 
 
No star here laces
08:39 / 28.03.03
Even robbie fucking williams has an anti-war song as his latest b-side, according to popbitch. What a dreadful thought...

The Steve Earle effort is the best to date, I feel.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
11:34 / 28.03.03
YES! Karl Kennedy is as God to me! So flawed, so human. Take that warmonger! (I know I'm going off thread here but does anyone remember when he performed that song in Neighbours, I believe it was called "The River of the Soul", that was beautiful....)
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:48 / 28.03.03
In a way, it's good that even shitty anti-war songs are out there, because at least if an artist can't articulate their point of view well, they can at least make some show of solidarity.

The pro-war jingo songs aren't much better written than that Beastie Boys tune, after all.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:21 / 31.03.03
Oh, Jesus—I mean, Allah: Cat Stevens—sorry, Yusuf Islam—has leaped into the fray, with a remake of "Peace Train" recorded with South African musicians.

Download here (Windows Media).
 
 
bio k9
06:42 / 07.04.03
"It was like he decapitated someone in a primal ritual and stuck their head on a stick."
 
  
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