Posted on 12/30/2007 8:42:46 AM PST by originalbuckeye
In music, as in politics, timing is everything. In early 2003, just six weeks after performing the national anthem here to kick off Super Bowl XXXVII, the Dixie Chicks became national pariahs after its lead singer, Natalie Maines, told a London concert audience the Texas trio was “ashamed” to be from the same state as President Bush.
Result: derision, death threats, charges of sedition and worse. The group's music was virtually banished overnight from country radio and its album sales plunged. In 2006, the same year the Dixie Chicks released an album that won multiple Grammy Awards despite being almost uniformly ignored by country radio, Neil Young put out “Living With War.” Young's album featured such brash songs as “Shock and Awe” and “Let's Impeach the President” (sample lyric: Let's impeach the president / For lying and leading our country into war / Abusing all the power that we gave him / And shipping our money out the door).
Result: cheers from some fans and grousing from some conservatives. But, ultimately, a loud silence greeted these musical broadsides from Young, whose 1970 protest song “Ohio” remains one of the most visceral anti-war anthems of modern times.
In the past few years there have been anti-war songs by everyone from Pink, Pearl Jam, Molotov and Eminem to Nanci Griffith, R.E.M., jazz great Charlie Haden and even country-music icon Merle Haggard. (That's the same Merle Haggard whose 1970 song “The Fightin' Side of Me” ripped into hippies and anti-war protesters with zingers like: If you don't love it, leave it / Let this song I'm singin' be a warnin' / If you're runnin' down my country, man / You're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.)
Bruce Springsteen's new album, “Magic,” features songs that vividly chronicle the grim human cost of the war in Iraq. He timed its release to coincide with the ongoing presidential primaries. Other artists who have weighed in on the state of this divided nation include Bright Eyes, Trans Am, Calle 13 and such veterans as Steve Earle, John Fogerty, Toby Keith and ex-San Diegan Tom Waits.
An even broader array of artists – Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Madonna, Linkin Park, Keith Urban and dozens more – teamed up to perform in eight cities around the world this summer as part of Live Earth, a series of international concerts designed to raise awareness of global warming. And a growing number of musicians – among them U2, Green Day, The John Butler Trio and Jay-Z – have sung out on behalf of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and against the bumbling government response.
Clearly, they aren't shirking the opportunity to weigh in on timely issues, pro and con, here and abroad, be it ex-Fugees mainstay Wyclef Jean working on behalf of his Haitian homeland or Lenny Kravitz and Iraq's Kazem El-Sahir collaborating on the song “We Want Peace.”
That's the good news.
The bad news is that the era when a song – any song – helps unite large numbers of people to rally on behalf of a common cause seems to have passed. In this digital age of information overload and corporate monopolies, ring-tones and widgets, it is easier than ever to be heard by millions but far more difficult to make a lasting impact.
True, some 4 million-plus YouTube viewers have watched the video for the R&B-flavored “I Got a Crush ... on Obama” by the lip-syncing Obama Girl (in actuality, a busty model and actress named Amber Lee Ettinger). But it's hard to believe she'll have any more impact on the presidential election than Barbra Streisand throwing her support behind Hillary Clinton or Oprah Winfrey stumping for Obama.
Perhaps we've simply reached a point of oversaturation, or we're just taking a breather before next year's onslaught. Or, maybe, while the causes being espoused now are just as compelling, the music that results is not.
Maybe he should listen to and observe the crowd when "Proud To Be An American" is played/sung, before he writes this stuff. To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy- we're Conservatives...we get up for work, we get up for church and we get up for war when necessary. The author is obviously referring to HIS compatriots with this drivel.
The last song that brought large numbers of like minds together was aptly titled “We are the Weird”... right?
Did Bruce “vividly chronicle” the war in Iraq like he did the battle of Khe Sahn,
where his “brother” fought not the NVA but the Viet Cong?
Maybe we want entertainers to be entertainers instead of political hacks for the left.
Poor Bruce has hit the skids. Just don’t tell him or the music reviewers that still find him relevant. I, too, used to enjoy his work. No more.
Agree. I’m totally fed up with all the politics infiltrating everything. I find that celebrities who endorse Dems are no longer desirable watching/listening for me. Few celebrities endorse Conservatives so that’s not usually a problem for me.
...meaning the awards charade is transparently political and not artistic. shocking. not.
Great point!
But there’s nothing like a rousing rendition of Springsteens “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” , to press that one little nerve that so few can reach.
Whitney Houston
Maria Carey
Celine Dion
I’d rather be waterboarded
I don’t get it. I just looked up Viet Cong. Weren’t those the commies?
The sciatic nerve maybe. What an awful screetchfest. And the tone on the sax is equally screetchy and bad. You want to hear real talent, listen to Ray Charles' "Santa Clause is coming to town."
Too bad. So sad.
This guy has his good news and his bad news mixed up.
I like the E Street Band’s version of that song, because it’s a rare reminder of the days when Bruce and the gang were listenable, before some dirty lying so-and-so told him he could be the Woody Guthrie of our era.
*yawn*
My thoughts exactly. The Nobel Peace Prize can be added to that list. Several years ago I started boycotting the awards shows (after I watch the red-carpet walk. I do love to see the dresses!). After all, all the celebrity awards shows are just them giving awards to themselves.
I think it is telling that if Josh Groban had one of the best selling album for 2007, Noel. A CHRISTMAS album. They are all songs I have heard before, but I have the CD in my car and bought a copy for my housebound Aunt. Interstingly, this is music that “helps unite large numbers of people to rally on behalf of a common cause.” It’s just not a cause the MSM likes to rally around.
VC were local commie guerillas who operated in the south. Khe sahn, near the border with North VN, was attacked by the NVA.
Can someone tell me what anti-war song Merle Haggard recorded?
As a musician, I used to like Bruce, Neil, and even the Chicks. But no more. I will still listen to the ‘old’ stuff of Bruce and Neil, but NONE of their recent drivel.
i noticed this doofus failed to chronicle the fact that toby keith’s patriotic tunes were huge hits on country radio and with the troops themselves...
They like Hag here:http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html
That plus the sheer idiocy of their expression of their views, so that you not only don’t want to hear their views but cease to want to hear their music.
But wait, to people like this writer, Toby Keith, country radio and the troops really are not important.
Or watch their movies/TV shows.
Thanks. I never bothered to check out the lyrics til just now. Not a fan. Wouldn’t have known or noticed or comprehended the inaccuracy.
The Viet Cong (VC), were communist *rebels*, within South Vietnam, who pretended they spoke for the *South* Vietnamese people. The left pretended the whole thing was a *civil* war, *within* South Vietnam, and we should therefore stay out of it.
The reality was the already independent *North* Vietnamese state, was waging full fledged conventional war *against* South Vietnam. In the end, the VC were defeated. The North Vietnamese Army invaded South Vietnam with ten divisions of Soviet heavy armor. Which is rather different than a few disgruntled peasants with AKs.
Springsteen wanted a line that rhymed, no doubt. But he did not care that he thus distorted the reality of who the Marines at Khe San were fighting, and thereby propogated one of the left's central lies about the whole war.
Khe Sanh was NVA in large numbers mounting a conventional assault of a fortified US position and airstrip
and satellite US special forces community action camps which even involved Laotian partisans
very few VC involved.....just south of the border
I had a buddy who was there by accident visiting pals in his last two weeks before being sent home...he was normally a REMF.....he loves to tell that story as his accidental bump into combat from an air conditioned quonset hut in Da Nang.....for 11 months he was a decrypter and not even allowed to leave base except to Hong Kong once
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, hes all gone
The correct answer is no, the Viet Cong aren't still there. Although some VC vets are still alive, they were decimated during Tet, ceased to be an effective fighting force and were absorbed into the North Vietnamese Army.
Why do my heroes always seem to end up with feet of clay?
The article says he has not released the song yet--maybe there's still hope. Otherwise, I guess I'll have a lot of CD's to smash.
Oh SCREW Bruce Springsteen!! Who gives a damn if he ever was better or worse! Screw him then and screw him now, traitorous leftist scum that he is.
“...But who’ll be the last clown
to bring the House down?
Oh no, please no
Don’t let the curtain fall...”
well, perhaps because even the most rabid liberal in their heart knows that if the US loses, the jihadis will be able to kill them.
And of course, the music is lousy. YOu just can’t write a protest song to be popular; it has to be a good song.
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