Music

Music is a necessity. Though I focus mostly on alternative/industrial/EBM/electronic styles, my tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging.

More music

by

Two more anti-war music links:

  • Zach de la Rocha and DJ Spooky: March of Death
  • Meshell Ndegeocello: Forgiveness and Love (Turn down the volume on your speakers first — the ‘music off’ button to kill the site’s background music is a tiny little button in the top right. Click on ‘downloads’ on the grey menu bar towards the top of the window, then you’ll find the download link in an orange box towards the bottom. I try to support artists by driving traffic to their sites, but Flash-based websites make it really tempting just to go ahead and post the direct download link [ahem] even though that’s considered ‘bad form.’ Anyway…)

(Via the NION Music Project)

More protest music links

by

busn-n-bones

A couple more protest song links, courtesy of Doc Searls:

First off, R.E.M. has released a rough take of a song called “Final Straw“. It’s only available as streaming audio, rather than being downloadable, but at least it’s out there.

Secondly, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth has created Protest Records, a site focusing on collecting protest .mp3’s that have been released free for download. Nineteen have been posted so far, and it looks like there’s space for quite a few more. There are also a collection of stencil files provided with simple instructions: “Download. Print. Cut. Spray.” So if you start seeing things like the ‘Bush-N-Bones’ around your town, you know where they came from.

More protest songs

by

Salon has posted links to six protest songs that have been released by the artists to the web as free-for-download .mp3’s:

  • The Beastie Boys “In a World Gone Mad…” (which I posted about earlier)
  • Billy Bragg “The Price of Oil”
  • Chumbawumba “Jacob’s Ladder (Not in My Name)”
  • Ani DiFranco “Self Evident” (which Kirsten quoted in February)
  • John Mellencamp “To Washington”
  • Saul Williams “Not in My Name”

Remixes of the Saul Williams track, along with two other tracks from him (“Bloodletting” and “September 12^th^”) can be found at the Synchronic Records website.

This is cool.

(Via Kirsten)

Beastie Boys: In a World Gone Mad

by

The Beastie Boys have released an anti-war protest in the form of a rap track, freely avaible to download from their website, called “In a World Gone Mad“. Not their best work, admittedly, but interesting nothenless. While artists like Ani DiFranco have kept the “protest song” alive, the Beastie Boys are the first big group (no offense meant at all to Ani fans!) I can think of to do something like this.

Okay, they’re no Dylan. Still, it’s something.

Lyrics below, courtesy of Blogcritics…

In a world gone mad it’s hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight

Mirrors, smokescreens and lies
It?s not the politicians but their actions I despise
You and Saddam should kick it like back in the day
With the cocaine and Courvoisier
But you build more bombs as you get more bold
As your mid-life crisis war unfolds
All you want to do is take control
Now put that axis of evil bullshit on hold
Citizen rule number 2080
Politicians are shady
So people watch your back ’cause I think they smoke crack
I don’t doubt it look at how they act

In a world gone mad it’s hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight

First the ‘War On Terror’ now war on Iraq
We?re reaching a point where we can?t turn back
Let’s lose the guns and let’s lose the bombs
And stop the corporate contributions that their built upon
Well I?ll be sleeping on your speeches ’til I start to snore
‘Cause I won’t carry guns for an oil war
As-Salamu alaikum, wa alaikum assalam
Peace to the Middle East peace to Islam
Now don’t get us wrong ’cause we love America
But that?s no reason to get hysterica
They’re layin’ on the syrup thick
We ain’t waffles we ain’t havin’ it

In a world gone mad it’s hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight

Now how many people must get killed?
For oil families pockets to get filled?
How many oil families get killed?
Not a damn one so what?s the deal?

It’s time to lead the way and de-escalate
Lose the weapons of mass destruction and the hate
Say ooh ah what’s the White House doin’?
Oh no! Say, what in tarnation have they got brewing??!!!!???!!
Well I?m not pro Bush and I’m not pro Saddam
We need these fools to remain calm
George Bush you?re looking like Zoolander
Trying to play tough for the camera
What am I on crazy pills? We?ve got to stop it
Get your hand out my grandma’s pocket
We need health care more than going to war
You think it’s democracy they?re fighting for?

In a world gone mad it’s hard to think right
So much violence hate and spite
Murder going on all day and night
Due time we fight the non-violent fight.

Soundtrack for a Century

by

A couple weeks ago, on the way back from Ellensburg, Prairie and I stopped off at a Fred Meyer’s so that she could pick up the Chicago soundtrack. While we were there, I browsed through the racks, and stumbled across a two-disc set of Broadway tunes, from 1932 to 1997. It looked interesting, so I picked it up, and we listened to it on the way back to Seattle.

As it turns out, that set was just one of twelve in the series Sony Music 100 Years: Soundtrack for a Century. Sony has dug into their vaults to compile an absolutley astounding collection of music — ranging from an 1890 recording on wax cylinder of John Philip Sousa conducting the United States Marine Band in “The Washington Post March” up to Lauryn Hill’s 1998 pop hit “Doo Wop (That Thing)” — across all genres, and encompassing a ton of songs, both popular hits and little-known gems.

I’m slowly working on collecting the entire collection, and so far have picked up four of the sets (Broadway: The Great Original Cast Recordings, Pop Music: The Early Years 1890-1950, Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975, and Pop Music: The Modern Era 1976-1999), have two more held for me at Barnes and Noble (Rock: The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and Folk, Gospel and Blues: Will the Circle Be Unbroken), and will be picking up the rest of the series as I can and where I can. Great collections, and I’ve really been enjoying going through these.

The Tide is Turning

by

This is a song originally from Roger Waters’ album “Radio K.A.O.S.“, though I first heard it as the finale to the 1990 live performance of The Wall in Berlin. Posted here as a message of hope — something that’s all too rare these days.

I used to think the world was flat,
rarely threw my hat into the crowd,
I felt I had used up my quota of yearning.
Used to look in on the children at night
in the glow of their Donald Duck light,
and frighten myself with the thought of my little ones burning.
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning…
The tide is turning.

Satellite buzzing through the endless night,
exclusive to moonshots and world title fights.
Jesus Christ — imagine what it must be earning!
Who is the strongest? Who is the best?
Who holds the aces, the East or the West?
This is the crap our children are learning.
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning…
The tide is turning…
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning.

Now the satellite’s confused,
‘cos on Saturday night
the airwaves were full of compassion and light,
and his silicon heart warmed
to the sight of a billion candles burning
I’m not saying that the battle is won,
but on Saturday night all those kids in the sun
wrested technology’s sword from the hand of the war lords.
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning…
The tide is turning…

The tide is turning.

Lizette&

by

A while back, while digging through my friend Kory’s mp3.com page, I stumbled across a remix he did of a song called “Breathe,” by an artist going by Lizette&. I downloaded his mix and liked it a lot. Curious by that point, I decided to see if I could track down the original version to see what Kory had started with.

So, I downloaded the original version, and was very pleasantly surprised to discover how good it was. Even more curious now, I bounced over to Lizette&’s page, downloaded everything I could find, and was blown away by her music. Excellent stuff — one other person described her as a cross somewhere between Tori Amos and nine inch nails, and that’s not really far off at all (think Tori-ish vocals over nin-ish music), though I’m not sure that that description quite does her justice, as she stands quite well on her own.

Having gone into mild obsession mode (you know, the safe kind, where you’ve just discovered something cool and want to find out as much as you can — not the freaky scary mode where you stalk someone for months and end up getting carted off to the funny farm with the nice young men in their clean white coats and they’re coming to take me away, hee hee, ha ha…anyway…[ahem]), I then found my way over to her website, where I found out that she hails from Sweden, and got her start as a studio singer and writer, at one point contributing both her vocal and writing talents to one of my guilty-pleasure groups, the Rednex (of the country-techno song “Cotton-Eye Joe”). Now she’s got her own studio and is working on putting together her first full studio album, which I’m definitely looking forward to hearing.

Anyway, very cool stuff. Go. Listen. Enjoy.