Right On!

Ani Defranco's "Make Them Apologize" gives me an incredible urge to forget the girlfriend's birthday and instead spend it in a lap- dancing club wolf-whistling.

This is a real song, not a caricature from 'Doonesbury' - Mark Farner, "Ban the Man"

Bruce Cockburn, "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" - great song. He's just telling us he's pissed off, not saying everybody else has a duty to be. And BOY is he pissed off. Cockburn is the only singer of this type who DOESN'T make me want to run out and buy a huge Old Glory.

"Conscious" hip-hop, being incredibly unfashionable (Common, the Roots, Blackalicious = much respect, sales not so much), even among rappers who shd know better, is of course now due for a comeback. [mm.. cough.. Kardinal Offishall...]

It's about Sonic Yoof's 'youth against fascism' innit? It's allright but too blunt old-skool 'Me angry' for my taste. It doesn't work in the end, all yr Tom Robinsons, yr Consolidated...it's all so goody- good, so ineffective in comparison with, say, 'Under My Thumb' :)

David van Driessen - "Women Are Better Than Men"

"Great White Buffalo" by Ted Nugent. Conservation, the buffalo also representing the Native American. Is it good? YEAH. "2+2=?" by Bob Seger. Anti-war & conscription. Good? CERTAINLY IS. "After Forever", Black Sabbath. Plea for religious tolerance. Good? VERY. "Sin's A Good Man's Brother", Grand Funk Railroad. Plea for (vague concept of) political unity. Good? YO MAMA.
Just 4 examples of how Heavy Metal (yr standard jughead&archytype of LICENTIOUS & OFFENSIVE popular music) is just as good for protest music as, say, reggae (which i guess was the main genre for political songs that don't suck, but every politically-correct tom dick or harry knows that & it's all horribly tainted with the dull reek of the ineffectual & well-meaning).
I can't think of anything recent right now,any genre, boy these are cynical times alright.

& i guess those songs i mentioned are LICENTIOUS/OFFENSIVE in about equal measure to their being POLITICALLY (sorta) CORRECT - all the better! both worlds!

Best argue-with-that! line of all time: "If left is right then right is wrong..."

Tom Robinson = completely useless in all incarnations. "Glad to be Gay" = moaniest dirge ever written.

hey c'mon. what about "Grey Cortina"?

Super Furry Animals! The Man Don't Give A Fuck is the main one, but they've been fairly consistently planting 'right on' messages in their songs without taking it too seriously. The new single, 'Juxtaposed With U', is fantastic for that too:

'You've got to tolerate all those people that you hate/ I'm not in love with you but I won't hold that against you'

nnn-19, Paul Hardcastle, maybe. Tracy Chapman, Paul simon - diamonds on the souls of her shoes,

But most of all probably Racist Friend by the specials, which is utterly terrible despite the right on/pc sentiment.

ooh ooh, just say no by the cast of Grange Hill

Anything by Crosby, Stills, Nash - AND Young - qualifies as the most sanctimonious, grandstanding, solipsistic, trivial, offensive boomer bullshit ever. "Almost Cut My Hair"? What, almost jerked off into a jar and gave it to Melissa Etheridge? "Ohio" makes me wish I had an balcony seat with binoculars at Tiananmen Square. Nash even did a song insulting Vietnam vets, "How does it feel being a baby murderer?" type of thing (make the bastard listen to Funkadelic's "March to the Witch's Castle" on repeat play until he learns some fucking compassion), before moving onto "Barrels of Pain", about nuclear power (What, uranium has feelings too?) As for Stills, even "For What it's Worth" now sounds like the theme song for every paranoid idiot going. Timothy McVeigh probably listened to it every morning.

Anti-homophobia statements from unexpected sources - Funkadelic's "Jimmy's Got a Little Bit of Bitch in Him" and Ice-T's "Gun Tower", both far, FAR superior to Disposable Heroes' "Language of Violence", which is so simple-minded and schematic that even Jeffrey Archer fans can see the 'punch line' from miles away.

By 'punch line' I of course meant 'twist ending'.

pt 1: The Billy Bragg collection, esp No amount of poetry can mend a broken heart, but you can put the hoover on if you want to make a start. Pt 2: Springsteen's Tom Joad was pretty up there. and of course, RATM: Turn that shit up!!!!

"war pigs" by black sabbath might be the rockingest protest song ever

sly stone's "don't call me nigger, whitey" manages to be righteous and bad-ass at the same time -- plus it's got one of the best ever is- it-a-guitar-or-a-voice riffs ever

The Style Council's most obviously start-a-revolution-kids single, "Walls Come Tumbling Down", is for me one of their worst.

Whereas the follow-up, the much more subtle / descriptive "Come To Milton Keynes", is for me one of their best.

I think that goes some way to answer Tom's question: for me people like the Style Council and Billy Bragg who were obv. very well-known for being right-on in the 80s were at their best when they *weren't* being quite so worthy.

The Yeastie Girls - "You Suck"

This pro-cunnilingus wannabe-anthem used to get played religiously at the local indie disco by one DJ - a guy - and loads of dancers - all guys - would all go onto the floor, thrash about, and sing along while kind-of-kind-of-not making eyes at the indie girls. Message being, of course: "I suck too!". Which I'm sure they did. In every sense. The problem of course was that the song was ATROCIOUS.

Somehow I doubt Eve or Foxy Brown get the same treatment.

Duane, I'd say you were a fair way off target with your reference to reggae above: there's surely as much licentiousness in the history of reggae as there is righteousness.

Not sure what you mean by "the dull reek of the ineffectual and well- meaning": the music (most of the politics I hear in Jamaican music is *fierce*, and the music scene in Jamaica has historically been much more closely associated with real-world politics than in, for example, the UK or US) or some part of the audience?

The Yeastie Girls - "You Suck" This pro-cunnilingus wannabe-anthem used to get played religiously at the local indie disco by one DJ - a guy - and loads of dancers - all guys - would all go onto the floor, thrash about, and sing along while kind-of-kind-of-not making eyes at the indie girls. Message being, of course: "I suck too!". Which I'm sure they did. In every sense. The problem of course was that the song was ATROCIOUS.

I had actually had that song in mind as my answer. What a hideous little story! I have had the misfortune of hearing this song, but not under such alarming circumstances. Eurgh.

Rev, Carl Bean's "Born This Way" is my favorite anti-homophobia song-it's so happy-go-lucky and guilt-free. I've never heard "Homophobic Asshole" by the Senseless Thing..is it any good? Boy George's "No Clause 28" was pretty kickass. The only recent stuff I can think of is awful-like Rage and all that crap, blech. "There'll be no shelter here", my ass.

Tears for Fears: all good except for "Woman in Chains".

Can't believe no ones mentioned Consolidated, pretty much everything they've done is infused with politics, especially animal/vegan rights. There most 'right on' song, how about 'The sexual politics of meat' one of the few pieces of music in my collection which features the words patriarchal, objectified and empowered. If you want confrontational check out 'Dominion', in which they argue with a fired up audience about vegetarianism, the bible and the Gulf war. I'd bet that in Genoa next month it'll be on a few anti-capitalist protestors CD Walkmans.

The Yeastie Girls track was produced by Consolidated! (Which is why it was rubbish). Unity of oppression!

Consolidated, oy. I think I remember them quoted as saying that if you didn't like "You Suck", you were just a sexist bastard who secretly despised women, etc.

Unsurprisingly, I went off of Consolidated almost immediately after hearing this song. (Up until that point I'd successfully ignored the fascist left-wing politics.)

Even THE FEDS hated "You Suck".

Actually the first Redskins single, Lean On Me, isn't terrible, in a kind of pell-mell gumby-punk-tries-"soul" sorta way. Did any ILM-er brave the LP, Neither Washington not Moscow? My guess = sales didn't make out of three figures (I'd say two, but even Trots have loving mums and dads).

The Ex are often top, esp. Scrabbling at the Lock.

Johnny Clegg's unbelievably awful Savuka I think managed to embody what Duane was getting re the bland multi-culti PC vibe w/o being reggae (more to the point, white "reggae", since — as TimH notes — actual political reggae is often hardcore).

BUT there is another group of this ilk from the mid-80s which lurks round the corner of my unconscious who were PURE CONCENTRATED EVIL in their inoffensive eclectic world-music lib-sloganeering. Alan J*ckson did the NME feature on them (which will mean dick to anyone...)

"Actually the first Redskins single, Lean On Me, isn't terrible": perhap I shd have played it (first time in 34,567 years) before I posted. It IS quite quite terrible, as to words and to X.Moore's=Chris Dean's a-fuckwit- attempts-passion phrasing: BUT something abt the biscuit-tin drums and the speed it's played it (it's sounds like it's written in italics, it's so fast) and the sheer not- got-a-clue GOOFINESS of the horn charts (this was that moment mentioned elsewhere, where everyone suddenly did soul horns...).

Not to blow me own trumpet: but i mentioned Consolidated, i mean they own this thread. Actually Tom's description of "You Suck" in the indie disco is on the money, i've seen it too. Always filled the dancefloor with men. Go figure ;)

Come on Mark, name the guilty party. I'm sure I'd hate them too.

I really really really can't remember, Robin: it'll probably pop into my head in the next day or so. It's a two-word name (I think) and kinda like ANIMAL MAGIC, but almost certainly *not* that (tho there was an Animal Magic, surely?)

They must have had a hit, tho, c.1987, or NME wouldn't given em such space.

ps I can now reveal that the better side of the Redakins single is the second, despite its put-the-entire-galaxy-off title "Unionise!" They sound like the Muppet band trying to be Bow Wow Wow! Dean's singing is if poss.worse than on the A., with his bogus Tony-Cliff-sed-yelp-so-I'll-yelp yelps, there are lines like "The bosses have the money and the workers have no rights but our muscle is our labour and we flex it when we go on strike" — HOWEVER it has a sort of bent inadvertent excellence.

I quite like "Lean On Me" - solidarity-sentiment songs are always a winner with me and the bellow is effective. More effective certainly than "Lean On Me" by RED BOX, poppin' Christians who sung this awesomely witless all-hands-together minor hit which was - notebooks out Robin ;) - BIG AT BOARDING SCHOOL for some insane reason. "From the very very up to the very very down, everybody now say aye"

I bought a Billy Bragg CD this very day.

Animal Nightlife?

McCarthy - Malcolm Eden's fey voice, and the sub-Byrds C86 jangly Rickenbackers, contrasting starkly with hard-left lyrical content. Very 80s, bedsit socialism, paisley shirts etc, but they could be quite affecting. Deserve to be remembered more than 'the band that became Stereolab'.

"Dickie's Such an Asshole," "When the Lie's So Big," "Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel," "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk," "Rhymin' Man," "Heavenly Bank Account," "Who Are the Plastic People?", "Trouble Every Day" -- all by the lovely and talented Frank Zappa.

"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" by the Ramones.

tim - *obviously* i meant the audience, yeah.

mark s: is it Latin Quarter you're thinking of?

Dems was some bad shit.

VENGA YOU ARE RIGHT!!

Now I know why alien-abduction recovered memory feels so bad.

More 'No Nukes' shit - John Hall, 'Power' - "Please, take your poison power awaaaaaaaaaayyyy!"

Pt 2 - Pansy Division

in the fine-artists'-embarrassing-moments category:

the smiths - "meat is murder"

patti smith - "power to the people"

Dude, there's NOTHING embarrassing about "Meat Is Murder". The hisrtionic ranting and swirly guitars are BEAUTIFUL and I will not stand for anyone knocking them!

Melodrama is your friend, sometimes.

The song "Meat Is Murder" certainly isn't one of the Smiths' finest moments, but the real dog on the album Meat Is Murder is "Brutality Begins at Home." Morrissey goes disco? I DON'T THINK SO!

Barbarism, I think, rather than Brutality. Always liked the track myself.

The best song to fit your question would have to be "Pathetic Humanity" by Aus Rotten. It's all about vivasections and how bad they are. Its deffinatly a great song if you like hard crust punk style.