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Underground > Radio & Music >

Chris Walla: Terrorist!

  
 
grant
15:53 / 18.10.07
This really reads like something from The Onion:

The master recordings for Chris Walla's new solo album were seized at the Canadian border.

And now, they've disappeared.

It was a "political" album.

They were all on a hard disk that was confiscated by Homeland Security. Luckily, Walla's enough of an analog guy that he also had his recordings on tape, so he's frantically mixing & mastering them to have the album out on time.

Still -- this is a little weird, isn't it?
 
 
*
16:14 / 18.10.07
Indie kids too apathetic to care about Iraq, Iran, or Guantanamo Bay, now rise in revolt! The streets are full of skinny white people with greasy hair and knit caps looking alternately peeved and bummed out.

This gummint is at a point where I alternate between appalled disbelief, impotent rage, and fits of hilarity. It's a strategy developed by psi-ops to keep us numb.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
19:25 / 18.10.07
I do wonder if this is a key element:

"I'm calling it Field Manual because myself and the guy who designed the packaging were looking through all these Army field guides from World War II. And there was one that he found that was really terrifying, actually," Walla explained. "It was basically a manual issued by the Army in the late '30s, early '40s, about how to build what we now call an [improvised explosive device] in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like how to hide a bomb in a bed or in a tube of toothpaste. Just terrible stuff, and I started having this feeling of, like, 'Well, we need a new field manual.'

Perhaps the DHS found out (how? Read the disc? Inside information? Reading emails via Echelon?) that the hard disc contained material relating to IEDs etc, and decided to confiscate it? There have been less sinister reasons for bureaucratic confiscations before.
 
 
*
05:54 / 19.10.07
So far as I can tell, there's nothing on the disc about IEDs. That was the OTHER "Field Manual"... you know, the one the guys who made the legislation that resulted in this craplicious scenario were probably trained out of.
 
 
rizla mission
08:29 / 19.10.07
Initially I found this rather baffling, as in, what kind of peculiar logic would lead to the feds hassling this mild-mannered indie guy when, say, any number of overtly anti-government punk bands can cross borders and do as they please unmolested...

...but I suppose the quote above re: the "field manual" thing at least gives an understandable rationale, even if it's an obviously heavy-handed and dumb-ass one.

I suppose the most worrying aspect here is how little one has to do (eg, incorporating words and images from a long obsolete bomb-making manual into album artwork) before attracting the attention and active suspicion of "security" services.

Most likely this will all blow over, seeing as how Chris Walla is a nice white chap whose best-known band mostly sings about, i dunno, girls and stuff... but we can probably imagine the difference it might make if, say, a muslim guy in a hip-hop band was collared for similarly dubious reasons, and that's certainly not a happy thought re: freedom of expression in America.
 
 
M.a.P
21:14 / 19.10.07
This might be a little trivial, but i've tried to get the mixed tracks of my band's latest 7" sent on a cd-r by regular snail mail to Europe twice, and it got stuck at the U.S border each time because there was no description of the content of the cd (Jim, the sound engineer mentioned "retarded reasons")!
It got even weirder when we realized that we could, of course-how stupid of us, get everything through painlessly using ftp...
Long live paranoïa!
 
 
grant
17:19 / 22.10.07
Customs says it was commercial property brought through the wrong entry.

Hmm.
 
 
whatever
07:28 / 23.10.07
Now, if there's one thing we should have all learned in the six years since 9/11, it's that the government repeatedly employs tactics of misdirection to obfuscate the true motives of their actions.

This Chris Walla incident is no exception.

Consider the vast amount of politically themed mainstream music that has a much more far-reaching subversive potential. How many people are really going to be listening to the solo record of the guitarist from a marginally successful indie band? And furthermore, how many of those people are going to 100% recognize and empathize with the particular bias asserted?

Probably not enough to change the world. Or the country... or state... city... town? I suppose there could be a block in the suburbs subject to an awkward period of family dinners featuring pubescent Johnny and Janes staging half-hearted hunger strikes, but even that is limited to what, like a week tops? Until the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album comes out and fonk is cool again, anyway.

No, this 'politics' business is merely a guise.

I realize how filthy the government is. The repression, the economics of power, the monetary impositions, The Outer Church...

But as we spiral closer and closer into the eye of Armageddon, I think that we need to accept the new chaotic order of affairs that can be seen to dominate recent history. No longer is it entirely a given that the pre-ascribed Manichean dichotomies of good and evil will prevail in the present and/or future. Hierarchies become more and more subject to subversive individuality, and historical events' analysis to be done on a one-to-one basis.

I would venture to guess that Chris Walla's delayed album has nothing to do with any such unsavory 'political' content as inferred by various sources, and rather has more to do with the musical content. To be sure, if Death Cab for Cutie's track record is any indication, there's really not much 'talent' from which 'innovative' or 'pleasurable' material would conventionally spring forth.

Uncle Sam is now undoubtedly biting the bullet to prohibit the proliferation of this new soul-shattering auric assault by posing as Big Brother politicos. Preventing a solo Walla from entering the canon of current music is to prevent Kanye West from sampling, DJs from mixing, and Death Cab from playing any of this new tripe which threatens to at some point in time enter into the realm of the collective audio unconscious. The chances are slim, and perhaps the government should allow us to fuck ourselves should we so will it, but I for one appreciate the effort they appear to be making in order to allow global music lovers a final 5 years of relative amiability.
 
  
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