First off, I must state clearly that I would not know Pearl Jam or Eddie Vedder if they bit me on my sausage. I've of course *heard* of Pearl Jam, but I'm pretty sure I've never listened to a single tune in their oeuvre.
As for Lollapalooza, this also is Not Exactly Bob's Kind of Venue. For one thing, they don't have vendors who sell Geritol or other popular laxatives for senior citizens.
(I have moshed, however, and have a pretty good record:
Bob knocks down 3 people
2 people knock down Bob
I am a very talented slam-dancer, I'm the Fred Astaire of moshing.)
A few months ago, when Vleeptron posted the announcement of a reunion concert series by Rage Against The Machine, Agence-Vleeptron Presse's Mensch-in-the-Mosh Pit, A-VP's Contemporary & Popular Youth Music Correspondent PatFromCH, called me some vulgar names for saying nice things about Rage Against The Machine, which he claims *everybody knows* are Sell-Out Phonies.
Not *everybody.* We don't get much Rage Against piped thru the speakers here at the Old Sixties Hippies Retirement Home.
Anyway, that's pretty strict and uncharitable, I think. I personally am deeply grateful for ANYBODY, however lacking in musical talent or Big Brains, who screams FUCK YOU to George W. Bush Jr., mega-amplified and podcasted, in front of 50,000 or 500,000 or 5,000,000 people.
So hoorah for Eddie Vedder, hoorah for Pearl Jam, hoorah for Lollapalooza, and hoorah for Rage Against The Machine.
I really want this fucking War To Stop Now, and popular music (however musically inspired or uninspired) played a huge part in stopping the Vietnam War. Don't ask me how that works. But psycho pointless American wars slow down and stop far more because of Jimi Hendrix and Pearl Jam and the Dixie Chicks than they slow down and stop because of Noam Chomsky and the Political Science Department at Wesleyan University.
Those deep-thinking Ph.D. good spellers say all the right anti-war things, too. To all 400 people who listen to and read them and subscribe to the Journal of Political Scholarship and Foreign Policy.
But the guys who scream FUCK YOU actually do slow the wars down and eventually stop them. (HINT FROM VLEEPTRON: They'd do it faster if the 500,000 kids at Lollapalooza registered and voted.)
Meanwhile, here's the Corporate Telecommunications Market Infrastructure that webcasts our anti-war music to the masses, and here's how Bob feels about them.
===============
Subject:
AT&T pisses on Free Political and Artistic Speech, AT&T pisses on America
to: Michael Coe
Corporate Issues
mcoe@attnews.us
cc: Necole Merrit
Corporate Citizenship
nm2208@att.com
Susan Bean
National Broadcast Media
sbean@attnews.us
Dan Gugler
Corporate. Small Business and Consumer
dgugler@attnews.us
==============
Dear Michael Coe and the creeps you work for:
Couldn't be clearer: AT&T stands for political and artistic censorship. AT&T censors to protect Bush.
AT&T is un-American and anti-American.
If I have ANY choice for the rest of my life, I will NEVER pay a dime for any AT&T product or service, and I will try to convince everyone I can to do the same.
You're flushing the best things about America down the toilet for profit. You and your bosses are just un-American pigs. AT&T can't tell the difference between making money in the USA and making money in Russia or China. It's just all about the money.
Bob Merkin
Massachusetts
SP5 US Army 1969-1971
================
================
The Associated Press (newswire USA)
Saturday 9 August 2007
Censoring of Song Was
an Error, AT&T Says
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Lyrics sung by Pearl Jam criticizing President Bush during a concert last weekend in Chicago should not have been censored during a Webcast by AT&T, a company spokesman said Thursday.
AT&T, through its Blue Room entertainment site, offered a Webcast of the band’s headlining performance Sunday at the Lollapalooza concert. The event was shown with a brief delay so the company could bleep out excessive profanity or nudity.
But monitors hired by AT&T through a vendor also cut two lines from a song to the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. One was
“George Bush leave this world alone,”
and the other was
“George Bush find yourself another home,”
according to the band’s Web site.
The AT&T spokesman, Michael Coe, said that the silencing was a mistake and that the company was working with the vendor that produces the Webcasts to avoid future misunderstandings.
He said AT&T was working to secure the rights to post the entire song — part of a singalong with the audience — on the Blue Room site, www.attblueroom.com.
Blue Room offers live concerts, sports interviews, video game advice and other entertainment.
2 comments:
Not intentional. If I have offended or insulted Vleeptron in any way on a personal level then I bow and apologize, it was just because I never liket RATM.
I just missed the main point at the time. It is time that the kids get up, notice what is going on and speak up and in speaking up aganist this so-called war it does not matter if you are a fake Punk band or respected artist. The time is ripe I rekon
no no you didn't offend me in the slightest, Different Musical Tastes are mother's milk to me! And your particular range and variety of musical interests have always amazed and fascinated me!
I meant to grunt something about your comments about RATM at the time, but i got distracted.
But actually this is Political Taste much much more than it is Musical Taste. Which singer is TRULY politically enlightened? Which singer is just a Faux Political Poseur? Everybody gets to decide these questions for himself by choosing which mp3s to download.
For me during this miserable new war in Iraq, ANYBODY who sings FUCK YOU against the war -- well, that's Beautiful Music to my ears!
Years later, after la Guerre Est Fini, I can deconstruct the Musical and Aesthetic content of Rage Against The Machine and the Dixie Chicks and Pearl Jam.
(And the Doors and Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane and ...... well, those are the bands who play thru the speakers in my Old Age Home.)
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