The Mothers Of Invention’s “Trouble Every Day” provides the perfect soundtrack for a riot. Zappa’s lyrics couldn’t be more prescient.

Seen the smoke and fire
And the market burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn

And I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ‘em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day

You know we got to sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many live
To see it really end
‘Cause the fire in the street
Ain’t like the fire in the heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don’t you know that this could start
On any street in any town”

“Trouble Every Day” from the album Freak Out!
 

 
According to The Guardian’s live blog covering the rioting in Britain, sales of aluminum baseball bats have risen dramatically in the days since the riots began, but clearly it’s not the rioters who are buying them—they’d just nick them, of course—but the shopkeepers.

One thing that’s frightening to contemplate is how much worse this would all be if firearms were legal in Britain. It’s one thing for rioters and looters to improvise clubs, quite another with an army of wild boys armed to the teeth moving through the nation’s city centers.

Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 
Darcus Howe, well-respected West Indian-born intellectual, New Statesman columnist, TV host and political activist, is interviewed on the BBC about last night’s rioting and he eloquently states what a lot of people in the country must be thinking right about now.

“I don’t call it rioting. I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it is happening in Liverpool, it is happening in Port of Spain, Trinidad.”

Instead of listening, the BBC newsreader keeps interrupting him with nonsense until, in the end, he just goes off on her in the most hilarious way. This clip needs to be passed around, please tweet and share.