The potential audience is busy playing video games such as Grand Theft Auto...??
Cheers, Ken Hanly
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9245.html>
>
> Silent treatment: Anti-war songs fall flat
> By: Richard T. Cullen
> March 28, 2008 06:22 PM EST
>
> "Yo George," sneers Tori Amos, outrage flowing from
> her lyrics. "Is
> this just the madness of King George?"
>
> "Yo George," follows the next verse. "Well you have
> the whole nation
> on all fours."
>
> Amos' bitter indictment of President Bush in "Yo
> George" is a clear
> sign of the times.
>
> But so is the fact that — if you are not part of the
> songwriter-
> pianist's loyal cadre of fans — you probably have
> never heard the song.
>
> An unpopular president, an unpopular war, a restless
> young generation
> eager for change — all the elements of a mass
> protest culture would
> seem to be present in this election year.
>
> One thing is missing: a mass culture.
>
> The Vietnam era produced an entire genre of anti-war
> and cultural
> protest songs, the best-known of which became
> anthems of the age.
>
> Iraq and the Bush presidency have inspired lots of
> music in this
> tradition — but nothing that has gained a large
> popular audience or
> is vying to be a generational anthem.
>
> Music, say some sociologists, is just one
> manifestation of a more
> fundamental trend. Opposition to the Iraq war, which
> commands strong
> majorities in the polls, has not produced mass
> marches on the
> Pentagon or shut down college campuses.
>
> The reasons are varied, including the lack of a
> military draft and
> much lower casualty figures than were suffered in
> Southeast Asia 40
> years ago. But another big factor is the fragmented
> nature of how
> Americans live and communicate — with no clearer
> example than how we
> listen to music.
>
> The trend was highlighted this month when Warner
> Music's Sire Records
> issued a 30-song soundtrack for the anti-war
> documentary "Body of
> War," the release timed for the fifth anniversary of
> the invasion of
> Iraq. The album includes musical heavyweights like
> Bruce Springsteen,
> Eddie Vedder and 62-year-old Neil Young, who has
> contributed to the
> anti-war songbook for both Vietnam and Iraq.
>
> Despite the project's star power and its appeal to
> multiple
> generations, its format — the concept album — has,
> for the most part,
> been left for dead. People today download their
> favorite songs from
> multiple albums at a time, unlike in the '60s, when
> an iPod would
> have looked like something from the set of Star
> Trek.
>
> Back then, says Robert Thompson, founder of the
> Institute on Popular
> Culture at Syracuse University, protest music was
> inescapable.
>
> "Those songs, whether you were listening to them in
> your dorm room or
> whether parents were upset that their kids were
> listening to them in
> the basement, you were hearing them," Thompson said.
> "Those songs
> were the soundtrack of that period. They were in the
> air literally,
> and people had to come to grips with them."
>
> In today's culture, Thompson added, music
> consumption tends to take
> place in a narrow channel.
>
> "Now it's completely possible for songs that are
> getting huge
> distribution one way or another amidst their core
> fan base to remain
> completely unnoticed to a fully intelligent and
> aware American,"
> Thompson said. "Back in the pre-digital, network
> era, we all fed from
> the same culture trough, whether you liked it or not
> ."
>
> The biggest reason why today's protest music is
> failing to echo
> broadly, some cultural critics believe, is not just
> a shortened
> attention span on the part of music fans, but the
> move to an all-
> volunteer military. Compulsory military service
> during Vietnam meant
> millions more families felt they had a stake in the
> debate.
>
> "If you're at risk of going to a foreign country and
> getting your
> head blown off, then you take a very personal
> interest in what's
> going on around you," said David Fricke, senior
> editor at Rolling Stone.
>
> "Let's face it, people are distracted, they are
> distracted by reality
> shows, none of which have anything to do with
> reality," Fricke added.
> "They spend more time watching 'American Idol' than
> they do voting in
> the last couple of elections."
>
> Without a draft, it's easy for the public to lose
> sight of the war,
> especially when the media and presidential
> candidates turn their
> focus to the economy and other issues. The mission
> of rock activists
> against the war, then, becomes part of the
> subculture straining to
> reach the masses.
>
> "Just because we're not hearing as much about [Iraq]
> in the first 10
> minutes of every news broadcast doesn't mean that
> antipathy and that
> feeling of protest against the war has gone away,"
> Thompson said. "A
> lot of people out there still feel as strongly as
> they did before."
>
> For the activist group Iraq Veterans Against the War
> (IVAW), who will
> be receiving the proceeds of the "Body of War" album
> sales, the
> disconnect between mass culture and the war is
> particularly frustrating.
>
> Tomas Young, who enlisted in the Army two days after
> the Sept. 11,
> 2001, attacks, had been in Iraq for less than a year
> in April 2004
> when a bullet severed his spine and left him
> paralyzed. He later
> joined IVAW. It was the degree to which protest
> songs helped him deal
> with his rehabilitation and constant frustration
> that inspired the
> album's title "Body of War: Songs That Inspired an
> Iraq War Veteran."
>
> "These songs are not flower-and-hugs protest music,"
> Young said.
> "It's meant to incite anger and frustration in the
> listener that they
> need to make change."
>
> Along with Tomas Young, musicians featured on the
> "Body of War"
> soundtrack are confident that they still play a
> significant role in
> American culture.
>
> "Body of War" contributor Tom Morello, a lead
> guitarist for the
> mainstream rock bands Rage Against the Machine and
> Audioslave thinks
> that politically inspired music can still inspire
> action.
>
> "It was certainly the mixture of music and politics
> in groups like
> The Clash and Public Enemy that helped spur me into
> becoming an
>
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