As a music fan, I couldn't help but notice a rather odd trend that has kept popping up over the past several months of civil unrest. Dumb ass white people in my age demographic that never bothered to pay attention to the lyrics of the music that they listen to.
It seems like every few weeks some flesh bag that lacks critical thinking skills takes to social media to go after Tom Morello, from Rage Against The Machine, to complain about his, or the band's, politics. I can't help but feel embarrassed for the person that tries to wage this needless war of words. As if it will have some sort of effect on anything.
These would be internet assailants never seem to bother to even check Tom's Wikipedia page. If they did, they would learn of the history of activism that he was raised with and that he also has a degree in Political Science from Harvard. Whether you agree with him or not, Tom Morello is no light weight in any sense of the word. The other weird thing is that they never seem to figure out until it's way too late in the conversation that he's Black and they don't quite know how to process that.
How people have missed that Rage Against The Machine skews slightly to the left for the past thirty years is beyond me. Especially coming from people that are my age and grew up with the band. That was during a time when it took effort to obtain music and we had to go out and buy CDs in order to listen. There were no smartphone applications that streamed poor quality sound to you and paid the artists fractions of pennies.
Rage put their intentions on Front St. from the beginning. From the name of the band to the Buddhist monk, Thic Quang Duc, burning himself in immolation on the cover of their first record, how was there any question? And I'm not sure how dense you have to be for the lyrics not to clue you in. The vocals weren't garbled or lost in the mix. These were not Fugazi records where the wisdom was hidden in the metaphor and turn of phrase. They were right there up front, loud and clear with their message.
The artwork on every album wasn't subtle either. There was a collage of books on the inside of Evil Empire that I used as a summer reading list once I had some form of income. I scoured every used bookstore in Pittsburgh trying to track those books down. That was the record that started to show me that there was more to existence than my white bread upbringing.
A similar thing also happened recently with Black Sabbath when they put out a “Black Lives Matter” shirt printed with the font from Master Of Reality. The “Keep Metal Stupid” contingent freaked out because, again, they never looked at the liner notes or paid attention to a word that came out of Ozzy's mouth on those first four albums. Was “War Pigs” not clear enough?
These dipshits also never bothered to learn anything about their supposed favorite band. The members of Black Sabbath grew up in a part of post World War II England that was hit very hard because Birmingham was a factory town. They grew up in the devastation left by war and were writing their songs during the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. They were writing about what they knew and what they saw going on around them. With that collected experience and their history of hooliganism and drug fueled antics, how would Black Sabbath be in favor of police brutality and overreaching authority? I guess that turns some people off when they discover that their musical heroes aren't bootlickers pushing faux rebellion that is easily marketable and spoon fed to the masses.
Of all the bands on the planet, Bad Religion and Anti-Flag have had to deal with this as well. Unless you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a child, there should be no confusion as to where either of these bands are coming from.
From the cross-buster logo to album titles like The Empire Strikes First, Bad Religion has always been very forward with their messaging. Did Greg Graffin use words with too many syllables in “American Jesus” for some people to understand?
And in a very forrest through the trees situation, some people couldn't figure out that Anti-Flag was a political band. Not only is it in the band name and every album title they've ever come up with, it's in every song and pamphlet's worth of information in the liner notes. I don't see how there is any confusion with “Die For The Government” and “Fuck Police Brutality” which are two of their earliest songs. They weren't hiding anything and nor should they have to.
If you don't like art that makes you think or challenges your preconceived notions and willful ignorance, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe go listen to Pennywise or Blink-182 or some other mediocre bullshit for dullards, like the Offspring. Clear Channel has several stations that are filled to the gills with songs about nothing that are readily available to provide extra mayonnaise to your bland diet of flavorless culture. All of this feigning outrage and pearl clutching is tiresome and these people are boring.
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