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Posted on 09/20/2005 7:38:56 AM PDT by frankjr
At first glance, Eric Paone does not seem your typical conservative true believer. The 35-year-old guitarist of the New Hampshire thrash metal band Candy Striper Death Orgy (yeah, no typo) has a flowing mane of hair, swears like he’s in a Make-the-Sailor-Blush contest and cackles as he relates dirty jokes. His band’s odd name was inspired by an…um, adult feature Paone and his friends checked out once in college, which is appropriate enough, actually, since the thrasher’s day job consists of running a string of adult bookstores christened "The Moonlight Readers."
When he’s behind that counter selling “marital aids” and creatively titled magazines, however, Paone’s always wearing either a George W. Bush hat or button along with his Nuclear Assault T-shirt and Napalm Death shorts. Contradiction? Hypocrisy? Paone doesn’t see it that way.
“The commies have closed more porno stores from us than the Bible thumpers ever did,” he said authoritatively. “There are people on both sides that want to take away everyone’s fun, whether it’s for the kids or the environment or whatever. They’d have no porn stores and we’d all be riding horse-drawn buggies to work if it were up to them. Still, nobody believes me, but the Republican party really is the party of tolerance these days.
“I’d never start in on guys in my store wearing Kerry shirts or Howard Dean pins the way they start in on me for my Bush gear; for thinking different than them, basically,” Paone added. “I’d never stoop that low. Never. But liberals do it all the time.”
As one might imagine, supporting Bush in the last election cycle wasn’t exactly a cause celeb in the underground music scene and Paone took more than a little guff for his politics at shows and on online metal gossip forums. He’s been mocked and blacklisted, but never defeated, only emboldened. In fact, the worse he’s treated the closer he assumes he is to the truth, he said.
Paone’s experience speaks to a larger truth: There always has been a delicious-yet-maddening irony in anarchists and punk rockers — for who the individual is supposed to be supreme — vociferously supporting candidates that want to expand government and narrow the ability of individuals to function as they choose.
“These bands and kids are dumping on government all the time, talking about all this conspiracy theory stuff and how we’re like this Nazi fascist state, and then when it comes time to vote they fall for this mindless talk and vote liberal,” Paone said. “They vote for more government. They fall into the trap. They hate the government but they’re basically asking for it to run their lives.”
In order to make as clean a break with that way of thinking as possible (and to further enrage the people who wanted him to shut up), Paone recently went back and rewrote the lyrics to several older songs from the band’s 15-year oeuvre to take away any sort of lefty slant possible, turning some older bits on nuclear warfare and environmental devastation into ruminations on terrorism and a call to arms to fight it.
“I don’t want people thinking I’m liberal because I’ve got long hair and play guitar,” Paone lamented. “So I got to be careful to be very clear. I don’t want to get lumped in with these Rock Against Bush idiots.”
Paone talks about politics like the uncle who just discovered the Drudge Report, reeling off a litany of Clinton missteps and shortcomings from the 1990s and rejecting the Democrats’ desire to fight the War on Terror by “sitting around the U.N. building and feeling sorry for crazy terrorists.”
“People say to me now, ‘You’re starting to sound like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh,’ and I just have to tell them, ‘Fine by me. I like those guys,’” Paone laughed. “I want lower taxes. I am all for cleaning up that mess in the Middle East. Try telling that to anyone raised on this Hollywood garbage, though. It’s impossible. They want everything handed to them and they don’t care if some working stiff has to pay for it all.”
A self-described right-leaning independent, Paone said he never liked John Ashcroft and was open to voting for a Democrat in the last election — he looked seriously at Wes Clark — but ultimately stuck with Bush when the “insanely liberal” Kerry was nominated.
“In the middle of a war they want me to vote for a guy who crapped all over his brothers when he came back from ‘Nam?” Paone asked incredulously. “I don’t think so. I never knew what he was talking about. His wife had more of an agenda than he did. I could vote for a Democrat in the future, but not any like of liberal like they put up this last time. And if it’s Hillary? Forget about it.”
It can be surreal to have a guy you once heard bellow “God bless nuclear warfare” at a dirty beach club explain his theories on skyrocketing gas prices.
“Look at the EPA,” he said. “We haven’t built a refinery in years. They know where the oil is in Alaska and how to drill for it without making a mess, but the tree huggers won’t let us go get it. GPS is good from something other than spying on ourselves, you know.”
According to mainstream-media mythology, Bush pulls the wool over voters’ eyes by playing the average guy, not by convincing them his policies are right. So, if that’s true, what does an adult-bookstore-owning thrash-metal guitarist have in common with our in-bed-by-10-P.M. president?
“I don’t want a president exactly like me,” Paone answered. “You know, I’m all for screwing or whatever, but I like that Bush has always been with Laura and is kind of boring. Clinton was a party animal who worked in as many ladies as he could, and look what that got us: A nuclear North Korea, Saddam spitting in our faces and Osama bin Laden having plenty of time to do whatever he wanted. Thanks, anyway. I’ll take boring any day.”
Thanks for the ping RG, good article.
What I want to know is, how come pro-lifers aren't considered "socially conscious"? There's no doubt that they are. I mean, the lefties can't honestly say that they are "socially unconscious".
Maybe "socially conscious" really means "consciously socialist".
The next time you see that guy all tatted up with long hair don't automatically assume he's a liberal. Many of these cats are Anachists at heart and believe the less governed the better. Usually they're closer to conservative than they are librul.
Thrash metal is closer to classical music than it is to pop.
Stay within your genre. It's safer for you there.
The key word there being thinks. That says a lot.
I'm a South Park conservative.
I'm also pro-life and anti-homosexual agenda. How much more "socially conservative" do I have to be?
Me either, but man are those unique licks somethin'. Totally profound guitar work. At first I thought it was a synthesizer.
Never bothered to listen to them.
There are other bands.
What about Metallica? I've heard different things...
There is more to metal than guitars.
Danny Carey, Lars Ulrich, Dave Lombardo, David Draiman, Bruce Dickinson...
My former roommate in Boston graduated from an art school up there. One of her projects was a "study of black" and that consisted of all these tiny little canvases, each painted black, but with different textures, sheens, etc.
The many shades of black: shiny, dusty, matte, textured, lumpy...
I kid you not. I had to call upon the Gods of good taste and tact not to burst out laughing when she showed me.
What are you talking about?
As far as Metal is all showbiz vaudville pop.
Big empty make believe cabaret.
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How much of this metal have you listened to?
Lars and Kirk are liberal. Dunno about Rob.
Fortunately, James is a libertarian/anarchist. He's an avid hunter.
Dull. And silly in an adolescent way.
And totally packaged.
I'm listening to Krokus right now on Itunes.
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