credit where credit isn't due....

Rage Against the Machine always left a bad taste in my mouth. This was not due even to the music or the message of particular songs, but the name of the band itself. The phrase "rage against the machine" is a convenient way of blaming others. Whenever anyone on either side of the political system whines about "the system", I get quite bored. It is a good technique for demagoguery, but if one actually wants to solve a problem, bland generalizations, and an unwillingness to take responsibility, will not lead to any resolutions. Yet Rage were a bunch of Commies so they must have been rebels and therefore bored critics everywhere started talking, especially after the concert at the Convention before the 2000 presidential elections.

oops system before "system" equals spectrum

and for the record, I am a commie too.

Damn, I thought it was a thread about being thanked on people's albums. Isn't this going to be another over/underated thread? Can we have a list of who all these mainstream critics are? ANd a definition of how to calculte the amount of rating something deserves? In the UK at least I don't think there are mainstream critics actually. Oh and if I start using this thread to have yet another mithering moan about Simon Reynolds' review of the streets just shoot me somebody.

BTW I'm thanked on albums by Orlando, Rothko and The Dudley Corporation. Not deserved in any of those cases though, and nothing to do with shagging the guitar player either.

! But it means yer cool or something, surely. :-)

I like Al Blair's idea for thread better. I think it may have been the Hoodoo Gurus who thanked Mr. Haney (of Green Acres fame) on the back of one of their albums.

Isn't this going to be another over/underated thread?

No that is not my intent, so maybe I phrased the question badly. I probably shouldn't have mentioned music above, so ignore that comment. This is more about the message. I wanted this thread to be more about lyrics. I was thinking about this thread in relation to an I Hate Music column on freakytrigger in which "What's Going On" is summed up as meaning "It's bad when bad things happen." The question is not whether Marvin Gaye is overrated, but rather whther more meaning is invested in the song than actually exists.

As for "mainstream critic", I wrote that out of laziness, and maybe the more abstract but more appropriate term is "received knowledge" which encompasses much more. By received knowledge, I just mean things that the uninitiated seem to assume about music. If one reads the newspaper or watches a TV special on, say, soul music, it is assumed that "what's going on" is a deeply powerfull political statement, and a description like the one above is usually buried in a subordinate clause, and not even discussed.

As for a scale, I tend to think that the more explicit the lyrics are, the more they can become food for political thought. Any alienated teenager can buy into the down-with-the-system attitude, but a message like "don't spend your money at McDonalds because they resist unionization" may alienate some, and cause others to think harder about where they spend their money. Of course, commands like that one also create the herd mentality, and too much preaching and specificity can make for boring music, so maybe there is no objective scale by which all can be measured.

I didn't say that I was communist to be cool, just to clarify that my criticism of Rage had nothing to do with their belief in communism, and... FINE... we can switch this thread to the following...

"Liner notes are sometimes overflowing with praise. Many times, the general listener will have no idea who those thanked are. Utilize this thread to discuss credits, including ones directed at yourself, obscure thank you's, and especially those who DO NOT deserve to be thanked. We DO NOT want this to be another overrated/underrated thread!"

I would like to thank Asia Argento.

Imagine/Give peace a chance by john Lennon.

I always found something slightly trite about Ian Curtis. For fucks sake he's still alive and living with his mum in Salford creaming in Joy Division money and scrounging off the state. I don't care what Barney says, "Job's a gud'un", eh, Curtis?

So aaron, this is basically a thread about how vacuous politics in pop music is, because the pop medium can't handle the complexity of real political discourse?

If so, I'll disagree. There's nothing wrong with sloganizing. If all politics is reduced to sloganizing, clearly something's wrong. But sloganizing as a feel-good, psyche up the troops / kids dimension to a political cause ... why not? You might as well complain that pop love songs suck because they never give you the low down on the complexity of real romantic relationships.

You might as well complain that pop love songs suck because they never give you the low down on the complexity of real romantic relationships.

Well, yes. Or at least so it seems when you realize that 'our song' isn't all that anymore.

Not that pop can't handle the complexity, just that many times it doesn't when it pretends to do so. Part of this is due to the fact that pop music does not usually attempt to exclude great segments of society in political terms. The more specific the music is, the less people there are who feel included. As for slogans, I find them quite problematic. Having worked as an activist in the past, I realized that slogans really are a stand-in for more complex understanding. Yelling "Save the Trees", as we did everyday in the office, never caused anyone to understand why they were being cut down, and many people didn't. The best slogan I ever heard: SLOGANS ARE FASCIST (because they reduce understanding and aid conformity. kind of like the reduced vocabluray described in 1984)). This is getting off-topic, so I should just say that I am a leftist who gets frustrated by other leftists and their slogans, etc. because many times, the people who are doing the yelling are putting the blame on someone else. Pop music, by being inclusive, will implicitly place the blame on others. Certainly there are exceptions...

I should add that I am speaking in America, where I feel that the political landscape is a little more frustrating. Every time I have ever been out of the country, I have felt more connected with what is going on in the world. This is due to the newsmedia being a little more competant in Western Europe than here, at least regarding what gets covered on TV.

If I was little hard on sloganeering, it is only due to the cynicism caused by many bad experiences. I am sure that there is some value to the excitement cause by the hyping of the crowd using slogans, and I am sure I will see it someday, but until then...

Said before and I'll say again: wars are fought with sentences, revolutions with sentence fragments.