Lay Down Your Arms...

Infinity_Now wrote:

I do believe, you have to realize a lot of Metal bands usualy write songs based entirely in the narrative form we call, "irony."

So, when they say, "seek and destroy," - what they mean is, "...it's a shame so many people actually run around the world killing each other like homicidal maniacs and then come home calling themselves honorable soldiers and demanding respect for their evil and heinous deeds."

Except, "Seek and Destroy," is MUCH MORE METAL.

Metal bands tend to have a good sense of the world around them, well - they used to anyway, "flashback to Iron Maiden," even through the endless seas of beer cans and mullets I think Metal music can be quite socially prolific when focused on politics and such...

Just remember:

Irony

Iron Maiden

...METAL!

But I'm thinking 69Charger is a pro-war neo-con....and irony may or may not have applied to her post. She's a debbie downer, trust me.

don't gimme no wrote:

fuck that. if that's your attitude then fine, but post elsewhere.

cha cha cha

http://www.reason.com/links/links051303.shtml

Earlier this month, an Arabic dance track called "Longing Brought You to Me" hit Number 1 for the sixth consecutive week on one of the region's leading music countdowns, the Beirut-based Top 20. The song is a slickly produced disco throwback, a kind of track that often does well in the region's music market. What makes its continued success noteworthy, however, is that the woman who performs it, a Kuwaiti singer named Nawal, had recently taken an interesting political risk.

Even as nearly every other popular Arab singer was still bewailing U.S. "aggression"—the inevitable term—against the Iraqi people, Nawal had publicly congratulated Iraqis on getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime. She was able to break with the Pan-Arabist line on the war —that the whole Arab world had been under attack by Western imperialism— which had totally subsumed the region's pop culture, while not paying any price in popularity.

Does that have any meaning? Thanks to the manner in which the Iraq war ended, the Pan-Arabist paradigm is in apparent disarray at the top of the cultural ladder among journalists, essayists, and political reformers who are offering alternative narratives. If the same thing is true at the cultural bottom as well, it might actually matter more.

According to a Kuwaiti newspaper, "Nawal said that when she watched the joy in the eyes of the Iraqis after they broke free of Saddam Hussein's regime, she realized how much in need they were of freedom and a chance to live in a democratic country." She wished Iraqis the chance to live in peace, and hoped their new beginning is one that will prove to be prosperous and happy.

The pop context in which Nawal sent her congratulatory message to Iraqis is worth pausing over. When the war began in March, it brought much Middle Eastern entertainment activity to a standstill. Those singers who were touring, such as the Lebanese star Nawal Zoughby—who was actually in the middle of a North American tour—quickly cancelled their concerts. Others, like the leading star Najwa Karam, announced that they could not conceive of performing in public while their Iraqi brothers and sisters were under attack, and cancelled all appearances of any kind anywhere. Some performers, like the Egyptian Ehab Tawfiq, announced that under the terrible circumstances they would be unable to do any work on their scheduled future albums, and even ceased recording. At least one singer announced that she would spend the war in isolation in her home documenting American atrocities against Iraqi women and children.

In brief, many performers decided that it would be the better part of professional valor to make a public point of their sympathy with Iraq and then to disappear for the duration. Of those songs that were released during the war, quite a few seem to have been about the war, and were harsh in their criticism of the U.S. and its allies. Such wartime releases demanded to know by what right the U.S. was making war in the region, portrayed Americans as the murderers of Iraqi children, and asked if there was no limit to the American appetite for global aggression.

One such singer, Shaaban Abdel-Rahim, received serious attention in the American press; his anti-U.S. song, "The Attack on Iraq," was featured in The Washington Post as a marker of Arab outrage at America, and Abdel-Rahim himself was placed in a tradition of cultural activism stretching back to the revered Nasserist, Umm Kalthoum. He went to record such war songs as "I'm Going to Take Out My Gun," in which he portrayed himself as a warrior-protector of Iraq.

That's the context in which Nawal addressed the Iraqis not as victims of bloodthirsty American aggression, but as beneficiaries of a war that eliminated the Ba'thist regime. Of course, the fact that Nawal is a Kuwaiti national is a factor in her action, but not a deciding one. As the victims of Saddam's brutal 1990 invasion, many Kuwaitis were strongly behind the recent war, and the nation's press and cultural establishments intentionally removed themselves from the Pan-Arabist discourse so critical of the U.S. In the end, however, Nawal is not a Kuwaiti star; she's an Arab star with a career dependent on continued acceptance by audiences, the celebrity press, and even her fellow performers throughout the Arab world.

Of course, given that the war ended in scenes of Iraqi jubilation, very few of the Arab world's previously outspoken cultural figures hazarded much of any postwar comment at all. Performers who had abided strictly by the Pan-Arabist line, and who had expressed a literally immobilizing personal grief at the war, quietly resumed their careers. To her considerable credit, the Moroccan singer Samira Sayeed (who had also interrupted her career) did suggest publicly in mid-April that certain singers could now shelve their anti-American music and do something useful, such as "sign up with medical aid groups and give support where it is really needed." In general, however, while the spectacle of the wartime Arab culture industry was a testament to the power of the Pan-Arabist idea, the behavior of the postwar culture industry suggests Pan-Arabism's shortcomings.

Nawal's situation is all the more noteworthy because of the long history of public "punishment" for those Arab cultural figures perceived as having transgressed the Pan-Arabist political line. The Egyptian playwright Ali Salem became a shunned figure after writing a book arguing that Israel should be judged as a normal nation; the work of Tunisian film director Khaled Ghorbal was thrown out of regional film festivals last year after he expressed the hope for a region-wide "normalization" of Arab-Israeli relations; the singer Shireen Ahmad was harshly attacked as a "fake" by a rival singer when Ahmad allowed for the existence of "kind" Israelis. All of these examples involve Israel, but for many in the Arab world, so did the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. (According to the usual street conspiracists, U.S. actions were part of a long-term imperialist/Zionist plot aimed at Israel's enemies.)

The most spectacular recent case of public punishment involves Iraq's own biggest singing star, Kazem Al-Saher, whose career has tottered on the verge of ruin for several months. Al-Saher was touring the U.S. during the weeks prior to the war, and was widely criticized in the Middle East for traitorous behavior. In fact, Al-Saher had been planning a long-shot effort to break the Western market, and even recorded an English-language duet with Lenny Kravitz under the auspices of Rock the Vote. Under heavy criticism for being in the U.S., however, he returned to the Middle East (in fact, he'd been living in Europe for years), claimed he'd been teaching Americans the truth about Iraq, and that he'd angrily refused to sing any song that didn't express his loyalty and devotion to his native land. During the war, Al-Saher recorded songs about suffering Iraqi children, and led tearful anti-war demonstrations through the streets of Cairo.

When Iraqis celebrated the war's results, however, Al-Saher was stuck. Apparently deciding he couldn't switch directions yet again in such a short time, and under heavy pressure to react to the war's end, he threw in with the Pan-Arabist line. Among other things, he distanced himself from the anti-Ba'thist opposition, reportedly refused to sing any songs expressing a positive side to the fall of Saddam, and even suggested, in a now-disputed letter to a Jordanian newspaper, that the only possible response to the occupying Americans was "throwing an old shoe in their faces."

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

I don't get it...oh well

something they've added the few times they've played it live... well.. the crowd added it

don't gimme no wrote:

But I'm thinking 69Charger is a pro-war neo-con....and irony may or may not have applied to her post. She's a debbie downer, trust me.

I'm not a woman.

69charger wrote:

I'm not a woman.

So you're the top?

Trouble Every Day - Frank Zappa

Well I'm about to get sick
From watchin' my TV
Been checkin' out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it's gonna change, my friends
Is anybody's guess

So I'm watchin' and I'm waitin'
Hopin' for the best
Even think I'll go to prayin'
Every time I hear 'em sayin'
That there's no way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day

Wednesday I watched the riot...
I seen the cops out on the street
Watched 'em throwin' rocks and stuff
And chokin' in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin' 'round
Seen the smoke & fire
And the market burnin' down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn

And I'm watchin' and I'm waitin'
Hopin' for the best
Even think I'll go to prayin'
Every time I hear 'em sayin'
That there's no way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day

Well you can cool it,
You can heat it...
'cause, baby, I don't need it...
Take your TV tube and eat it
'n all that phony stuff on sports
'n all the unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head began to hurt
From checkin' out the way
The newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they'll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They'll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin' hard and doin' swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can't be beat

And if another woman driver
Gets machine-gunned from her seat
They'll send some joker with a brownie
And you'll see it all complete

So I'm watchin' and I'm waitin'
Hopin' for the best
Even think I'll go to prayin'
Every time I hear 'em sayin'
That there's no way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day

Hey you know something people
I'm not black
But there's a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I'm not white

Well, I seen the fires burnin'
And the local people turnin'
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob just turn and bite 'em
And they say it served 'em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it's the same across the nation
Black & white discrimination
They're yellin' "you can't understand me!"
And all the other crap they hand me
In the papers and TV
'n all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(no matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight
You know we gotta sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won't be many left
To see it really end
'cause the fire in the street
Ain't like the fire in my heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don't you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now's the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain't no great society
As it applies to you and me
Our country isn't free
And the law refuses to see
If all that you can ever be
Is just a lousy janitor
Unless your uncle owns a store
You know that five in every four
Just one amount and nothin' more
Don't watch the rats go across the floor
And make up songs about being poor
Blow you harmonica son!


AND


Better Way - Ben Harper

I'm a living sunset
Lightning in my bones
Push me to the edge
But my will is stone

Fools will be fools
And wise will be wise
But I will look this world
Straight in the eyes

What good is a man
Who won't take a stand
What good is a cynic
With no better plan

Reality is sharp
It cuts at me like a knife
Everyone I know
Is in the fight of their life

Take your face out of your hands
And clear your eyes
You have a right to your dreams
And don't be denied

I believe in a better way

Hey there pretty girl can I kiss you?
With all you've said to me I think I'll miss you
And she said, "No one can kiss me while people scream
They're screaming for me"

Chorus:

One gun added on to the one gun
One gun added on on on
One gun added on to the one gun
One gun added on on on

Hey there pretty girl what is with you?
Don't you know the love that wants to kiss you?
And she said, "You may dream believe I see
All the people who are in need"

Chorus

Hey there pretty girl I will let you
Do just what you want until I can get you
And she said, "One more gun set free makes people scream
They're screaming for me"

Chorus

Hey there pretty girl please take me with you
With all you've said to me I think I'll miss you
And she said, "Come on man with me and see
We will kiss all the people free"

Chorus