British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne had no place to hide when the boos rang out around the Olympic Stadium today in London. It’s allegedly the first time boos have been heard inside the stadium, which says much about the loathing for the ghastly Osborne and the current Con-Dem Government. As Channel 4 News reported:
‘The first boos of the day ring out in the Olympic Stadium for George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was presenting medals at the 400m T38 victory ceremony.’
Surprisingly, there was cheers for former Labour PM Gordon Brown, which suggests the public do have short memories.
If you’re like me, you can’t resist a good piece of moral panic red-baiting propaganda, especially when it’s directed at a social phenomenon that seems so chaste by today’s standards. As luck might have it, I recently came across the 1974 opus, The Marxist Minstrels: A Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music, by the good Reverend David A. Noebel.
Evangelical tracts denouncing rock ‘n’ roll, especially as related to either homosexuality or “race mixing,” aren’t hard to find if you scour antique shops in middle America, but as something of a connoisseur of the genre, I have yet to find a piece of literature that so succinctly combines the collective fears of old, white, crazy, Christian dudes. David Noebel, ordained in 1961, started his illustrious career with the above pamphlet, Communism, Hypnotism, and The Beatles. He saw the rise of Beatlemania as the result of Communist indoctrination via hypnosis (yup, just like the title), a thesis he developed more thoroughly in his 1964 book, Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, the Communist Master Music Plan. The book transitioned from The Beatles to folk artists, focusing on Bob Dylan, his colleagues, and their earlier influences. This is at least slightly more understandable, when one considers the political leanings of the folk movement, frequently with explicit anti-racist, pro-labor lyrics.
The Marxist Minstrels: A Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music however, synthesizes all of his previous work, citing children’s records, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll as being part and parcel to some elaborate integrationist, free-love, Communist conspiracy. As a rock ‘n’ roll propaganda collector, I’m used to trudging through a lot of this stuff, and the majority of it is incoherent ramblings—the sort of thing you’d read in a madman’s personal manifesto. Noebel is compelling because he’s intelligent, coherent, and well-researched, despite being absolutely paranoid and utterly mad. Aside from some inconsistent use of the Oxford Comma, he has a clear, if discursive thesis: rock ‘n’ roll is turning kids into gay, Communist, miscegenators.
Some of his “evidence” is fascinating. For example, Alan Freed’s “payola scandal”—who was paying him to play all those rock ‘n’ roll records to unsuspecting teenagers? Communist record companies invade the airwaves by bribery, infecting the youth with music that is ““un-Christian, mentally unsettling, revolutionary and a medium for promiscuity.” He cites psychological studies, sociological statistics, numerology, etc. to scientifically “prove” the moral degradation incited by popular music, causing everything from sky-rocketing “illegitimate” birth rates to sexual rioting. Lots of sexual rioting. The appendices are incredibly dense and well-cited.
What follows his strange assessment of rock ‘n’ roll is an (actually, semi-accurate) account of the American Left, including some background of the American Communist Party and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Then of course, Noebel posits that folk artists were inspiring the youth to instigate a race war. He believed acoustic musicians like Malvina Reynolds (her “Little Boxes” is the theme music to Weeds) and Pete Seeger were instructing white students to join with “radical groups of Negro racists” so that they might revolt and achieve racial dominance in America. The weirdest part of all this is that by 1974, integration was (at least, on paper) complete. The folk artists who were most explicitly leftist or Communist weren’t a particular focus of pop culture, The Beatles had already long been broken up, and he never quite explains how these two very distinct fanbases are somehow connected (except that they’re obviously both very Communist). One can only imagine the lovely psychosis that The MC5 would have brought him.
Noebel is still living today, and I recommend checking out his extensive collection of YouTube videos and blog, if you’re looking for a laugh. These days, he’s much more on the “Obama’s a Socialist” train and decrying “Warmism” (Noebel’s evocative name for climate change) than he is into denouncing rock ‘n’ roll. Hell, even Paul Ryan loves Rage Against the Machine. Still, his older words bring an odd comfort, when we read his treatise on rock ‘n’ roll, comparing it to a children’s record that supposedly contained subliminal messages only audible when the record is played in reverse; “the noise that many of our youth call music is analogous to the story tape played backwards. It is invigorating, vulgarizing, and orgiastic. It is destroying our youth’s ability to relax, reflect, study, pray, and meditate, and is in fact preparing them for riot, civil disobedience, and revolution.” Dear god, I hope so.
In the week Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography goes on sale, some wit, or more likely some journalist or PR person, has started a Twitter account for NaomiWolfVagina (sensitive flower). Only 3 tweets so far, but I suspect this will increase towards the date of publication.
Working class heroes GG Allin and The Scumfucs perform songs you know and love, including “Drink, Fight and Fuck,” “Out For Blood,” and the holiday classic “Cock On The Loose.”
Take a break from the doldrums of the workaday world and let GG light up your life.
Roxy Music own the stage at the Musikladen studios, as they showcase 3 songs from For Your Pleasure, and one from their self-titled first album.
There is a book to be written on how Roxy Music are a key component to so many teenage evolutions (my own included), and the touchstone for so many bands, from Chic to Siouxsie and the Banshees. There’s also a major tome to be written on Bryan Ferry, that suave, sophisticated, cool-as-fuck genius who progressed through so many musical styles yet always maintained essentially true to his own vision.
Add to that the fact Roxy’s music is a fresh and as vital today, as it was forty years ago.
Track listing:
01. “Do the Strand”
02. “Editions of You”
03. “In Every Dream Home A Heartache”
04. “Re-Make/Re-Model”
Sun Myung Moon, who crowned himself “humanity’s savior,” has died at the age of 92. The cause of death was complications related to pneumonia.
Can the Unification Church survive without the all-powerful Moon at the helm? Moon seems irreplaceable. I mean who else can claim, as he did at a congressional reception in 2004, to have connections to Hitler and Marx in the spirit world:
Many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons,” Moon told the crowd. “Emperors, kings and presidents who enjoyed opulence and power on earth, and even journalists who had worldwide fame, have now placed themselves at the forefront of the column of the true love revolution…. They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”
Here’s a fascinating documentary on Moon and his disciples. It originally aired on Channel 4 in Britain earlier this year. Moon believed that producing a race of sinless children was part of restoring a Christ-like consciousness to planet Earth. Arranged marriages among his followers was a path toward the realization of his vision.
This revealing film takes us inside the world of the Unification Church, the religious movement nick-named the Moonies and branded a brain-washing cult.
We follow three British youngsters as they travel to Korea to be blessed by their Messiah Reverend Moon at one of the world’s biggest and most controversial mass weddings.
If you want to read a lengthy fawning obituary check out The Washington Times, the conservative newspaper that Moon founded.
I highly recommend you watch Mitch Schultz’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule. It’s thoroughly engrossing, well-rounded, deeply insightful and goes directly to the folks who know the subject well for perspectives that are informed by experience, both scientific and metaphysic.
Drawing information and inspiration from Rick Strassman’s research on DMT and psychedelics and utilizing lysergic imagery created by Scott Draves, The Spirit Molecule takes us close to the edge and let’s us peer into an almost unfathomable mystery…one that ultimately must be experienced to be appreciated. Consider this film a springboard toward the infinite.
With Joe Rogan, Alex Grey, Rick Strassman, Terence McKenna and Ralph Metzner.
The Looters. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Ray Winstone, and Paul Simonon. Photo: Caroline Coon.
Here’s a little something from the DM archives:
These are fictional music groups or solo acts that were created for film or TV. Some are quite excellent.
1. The Mosquitoes - “Gilligan’s Island”
2. Android - “Buck Rogers In The 25th Century”
3. The Looters -“Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains”
4. The Flowerbuds - “Carry On Camping”
5. Drimble Wedge And The Vegetations - “Bedazzled”
6. Steven Shorter - “Privilege”
7. The Bugaloos - “The Electric Company
8. Tom Monroe - “SCTV
9. The Queen Haters” - SCTV
Their 2012 reunion tour is getting praised up the yinyang and their stature has deservedly grown to legend status since they broke-up back in 2001, so it seems like as good a time as any to visit At The Drive-In during the year in which they were peaking, crashing and burning, all at the same time.
Here’s a live performance in Germany from 2001. The venue is small (Zwischenfall club, R.I.P.). The camerawork and sound is excellent. At The Drive-In…in your face.
Here’s a very cool documentary about mods that aired on French TV show Seize Millions Des Jeunes in March of 1965. Includes live performances by the Who as well as interviews with the band and their managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.
You may have seen segments of this documentary on Youtube over the years, but this one is complete and has subtitles. If you want to own it, buy the Blu-ray version of the newly and beautifully restored Quadrophenia. While I’m not a big fan of the movie, Criterion deserves accolades for doing a brilliant job (along with the Who) of polishing the sound mix (in its original stereo and a fresh 5.1 version) and cleaning up the original film elements and transferring them to digital. The results are stunning.
