The tides of change keep leaving shit on my doorstep

So, I’ve been listening to the liberal radio shows all day (this isn’t something I do often, but I’m still waiting for news about this Virginia thing) and I’m just getting more and more annoyed. They’re gloating and playing “we are the champions” and all sorts of other ridiculous shit. It’s really frustrating. We won the house and maybe (probably?) the Senate. True, this is big, but it’s no reason to start going nuts. Nothing is over right now. We’re still in Iraq, we’ve still got a lame congress that’s gonna make everything a pain in the ass for the newcomers, and we’ve still got Cheney and Rove in positions of power. Be happy about John Conyers and Henry Waxman getting put in important positions, because right now that's the best news of the past 2 days. Be happy that we’ve got something of a leash on Bush now. But don’t forget that he’s still got teeth. In fact, he’s probably going to try to expand his political power now that he’s got to meet so much resistance.

And lets not forget who some of these people are. Are you really gonna count on Lieberman voting with the party all the time? Seriously, ten years ago, about 15 of these guys would be considered Republicans, easy. If the GOP wants to get some of that power back, they’re going to soften their image and go after the exact voters that kicked out the last batch of neocons. Yes, Rummy is out, but is Gates any better? Not really. And do you think that Nancy Pelosi will do anything but polarize the house? Trust me, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. And we’ve got a fucking mess to clean up before 2008 before we can even think about making any change that’ll last longer than a year or two. IT will take about two bad steps to hand this shit right back to the GOP for another decade.

I mentioned this in my phantom post last night, but my ipod was wiped clean again (I feel like this happens weekly), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it sucks when I count on having enough music on the thing to not have to pick out CDs on my way to work in the morning. So there’s that.

So last night as I was finally wearing down and getting ready to go to bed I decided to throw on some old Dylan to make me feel like something had been achieved. It didn’t work, but if got me a little weirded out that I instinctively reached that far back for what I considered protest music. So I brushed my teeth listening to “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and trying to think of the best examples of protest music since Dylan, and it was a lot harded to think of stuff than you’d think. Sure, there’s a lof of artists with a social conscience, but I mean does it matter? Does Ani DiFranco have the same impact on the movements of dissent that Dylan did before he got the Beatles stoned, then went electric, then introspective, then got in a motorcycle adccident, then found jesus, then rediscovered his inner Jew, then found Jesus again, then was “back”, then touring with Ronnie Wood, and then in Victoria’s secret ads? Probably not. Do the Last Poets count? Doubtful. So this limits my search to a group with themes of dissent that had enough of a following that it galvanized something of a movement in its listenership. Yeah, pretty slim pickins.

But then I remembered Public Enemy. It’s so hard to think about it now, expecially when Flav seems to be more well known than Chuck D (I still don’t understand how this is physically possible). But these guys lit a fire under the ass of a lot of the hip hop community. These guys were seem as such a threat for so long, it’s funny to listen to their records now and think about how common their message is today. When Kanye said that George Bush doesn’t care about it didn’t seem like that big of a deal (at least not in this part of the country). But this was only because of people like Chuck D who was voicing his concerns with inequality and racism when hip-hop was still mostly about drinking and grabbing asses. No, he wasn’t always right. He said all sorts of stupid things that came off as homophobic and anti-Semetic. And he’s had to pay for those. And not that this excuses any of this, but it was rap in 1989 or whenever. Remember the shit Cube used to say? And he’s in children’s movies, now. It ain’t right, but he’s also come a long way since then.

But still, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to make things better in his community. Which is more than most of us get done. It’s like he managed to pick up exactly where Gil Scott-Heron left off. He was anger. He’s mellowed quite a bit since then, but he still remains an activist and a father figure to any urban political activist. I don’t know, I guess it just pisses me off that Flav makes strippers fight each other for TV while Chuck is on Air America. That said, I’m glad he’s still fighting the good fight, and I’m glad he’s become an approachable and positive minded man and remained one for this long.

Anyways, I always hated this album because I thought it sucked when put up next to It Takes a Nation. And maybe it still does, I don't know. But I’ve been getting pretty into it all this past week and it makes for better protest music than anything else that comes to mind. And can you imagine trying to clear some of these samples nowadays? awesome. So here’s some PE and I’ll post some newer stuff soon.

“Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” – Public Enemy

“Welcome to the Terrordome” – Public Enemy

“Fight the Power” – Public Enemy

Buy Fear of a Black Planet here.

PS It's a lot harder to find a pic of just the S1Ws than you think. hmm. But then here you go: