Beat the Old Boss

This dead-horse whipping of poor old Bruce Springsteen reminded me of the pointlessness of Protest Music as a genre. Protest Music's object is a specific kind of political action and, as such, is wholly dependent on the listener to actualize the narrative, or some shit like that.

Good thing Julian came along to explain why protest music is an entirely different deal. If the state of the world has you mighty pissed off and you make some mighty pissed off music, that's good. Or bad, depending on your abilities as a songwriter.

Green Day has just released a jaunty little number called "American Idiot" which is angry enough in that detached Bay Area way, but the song's chief virtue is a shout out to the Buzzcocks. (One can never shout out enuf to the Buzzcocks.)

Better sustained anger can be found on Ministry's Houses of the Molé album, which just about lives up to the classic title while proving that not only is there life after heroin for Al Jourgensen, but that blasting the Bush clan can be a nice decade-long career.

The single best anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-damn-near-everything track, though, would have to go to Otep's "Warhead." The bit about the gas masks and innoculations is pretty rich, until you recall we lived through that and may yet again.