Trouble Every Day
Trouble Every Day—
A Column on protest and censorship within and around music, and ideas, technology and your mind. Yep, personal, my thoughts, to be challenged, refuted—never censored.
For most of us it usually takes experience to really understand a thing. Soul/R&B for example, it didn’t resonate with me, not until one late night driving home after working another countless double shift, missing seeing my family and with little hope on the horizon, floating in over KRCL came the sounds of the Temptations, then Marvin Gaye, Aretha… Motown was speaking to me for the first time. And so it is with a lot of our responses, you gotta live through a thing, or at least “…rise above our own shit.” to paraphrase George Clinton reframing the large ideas of, I think, therefore I am, into the language of the street. Hell, I think George distilled the bulk of ‘Method within one hell of a song (Maggot Brain). There are all kinds of Protest songs, and most don’t really motivate us without experience, unless of course you have risen above your own shit, or it’s one hell of an honest and brilliant song, something better than the Beatles Revolution 1. Who fucking says it’s gong to be “all right” because things are rarely right. In fact, most of everything humans have said and done is wrong. All save Zappa of course, and Feynman, he played bongo. Besides, “All music is political.” isn’t it? When Tom Morello said that did you really get it? I didn’t, not in the moment anyway. But yeah, of course! We must questions authority, norms, leaders, systems, laws… your own shit.
WARNING GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conservative political organizations violate your First Amendment Rights by attempting to censor [music, speech and ideas]. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American. As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant), Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary. The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of the video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us.
“None of the kids at my school like these Mothers…specially since my teacher told us what the words to their songs meant.” —Suzy Creamcheese, Salt Lake City, Utah. Circa 1965