shall we perish unjust, or live equal as a nation

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." – Martin Luther King

It’s Martin Luther King Day, and as I’ve been checking the various tributes to and commemorations of the man and his legacy, I’ve noticed there is a tendency to gloss over or ignore the more radical elements of King’s message.

The March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech were very important events which have unfortunately been transformed into idiomatic Riddley Walker-esque elements of America’s national mythology. The context has been forgotten or oversimplified into victories over symptoms of a diseased social environment (“Buses and lunch counters are no longer segregated! The battle is won!”) without mentioning that the underlying illness has never been cured.

Prior to his assassination in 1968, King had turned his attention on what he saw as the root causes of inequality. He saw parallels between America’s short-sighted, self-interested foreign policies and the lopsided way wealth was distributed domestically. As long as the system was set up to benefit a few at the expense of the many, there could be no real equality, either inside America or abroad. In speeches like “Beyond Vietnam,” King argued for the nation’s actions to live up to the ideals its leaders claimed to profess.

For his efforts, King found himself accused of being a communist dupe and insurrectionist by the mainstream media. It’s one thing to attack a backwards and ugly regional legal system; it’s another to turn one’s sights on the status quo of the self-congratulatory, “enlightened” establishment. Egalitarian aspirations are fine and all, but any talk of the “s” word (socialism), no matter how mild, is verboten. It reeks of “class war,” don’t you know. Besides, the doorman at my Central Park West apartment building is a Negro, and he gets paid a very fair wage….or he did, until he was fired for passing out union literature.

So on this day let us think of Dr. King, the goodness he helped this nation accomplish, and the greatness we should never quit striving towards.

The Impressions – This Is Our Country (from This Is Our Country, 1968) – Here Curtis Mayfield sings some smooth, sweet soul that carries as much righteous power as the most ferocious Crass composition.

The Rascals – People Got to Be Free (from The Very Best of the Rascals, 1993) – Progress, as illustrated by Billboard’s year-end Top 100:

#5 in 1968 – The Rascals – “People Got To Be Free”
#5 in 2006 – Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean – “Hips Don’t Lie”

The G.R.O.D.D. Initiative - Day 2: Anyone can see, she made a monkey of me

While Kevin Church continues his hard hitting series of posts dealing with anthrophobia in comics books, I’d like to use this opportunity to discuss similar trends in music. Case in point: Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution.

When the cast members of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp were offered the opportunity to perform musical interludes between sketches, they had little idea of the creative constraints the network would place upon them. The members of The Evolution Revolution were extremely progressive and eclectic in their musical tastes. Lance drew his musical inspiration from the avant-garde rock of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, and Mata Hairi’s love of The Velvet Underground and Nico was well documented. (Some detractors have since insisted that this affection was merely due to the album’s cover art, but their assertions should be dismissed as barely cloaked anti-simian hate speech.)

The fruits of the band’s recording sessions were played to the network executives, who were horrified by the raw, jungle-inspired, primal beats they heard. The suits then went behind the band’s back and called in legendary bubblegum producer Archie Andrews to remix the tapes into something more friendly to middle America’s homo sapien-centric ears. The band’s more experimental sounds (ambient fecal impact noise and atonal screeching vocals) were either buried in the mix or discarded entirely. Legend speaks of a lost acetate pressing of the material from the original recording session, but its existence is still unconfirmed as of this writing.

It would be another three decades before the raw power of simian music would reach the listening public, and it would take a quartet of (non-ape) cartoon characters to make the those infectious beats acceptable to the listening public. While the members of the Gorillaz chose not to incorporate the more radical methods of their simian predecessors (i.e. no ambient fecal noise), one has to admire their rather excellent efforts all the same.

(Editor’s Note: Please do not confuse the above ravings of a fever-ravaged lunatic with anything remotely associated with “the facts.”)

Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution – Yummy Love (from Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution, 1970) – In truth, this group was pretty close to a Grass Roots (“Midnight Confessions”) side project, using material (including rejected GR songs) by the same songwriters and session musicians employed by that band.

Gorillaz – Tomorrow Comes Today (from Gorillaz, 2001) – When I listen to this track, or anything off of Daft Punk’s Discovery, it triggers bittersweet feelings of nostalgia to the summer of 2001, before 9/11 gave G.W. Bush the opportunity to graduate to “dangerous idiot” from “pathetic joke.” It sad how much this country has changed since then; that horrible tragedy brought out the worst in a lot of people…or rather, it emboldened them to go public with their ugliness and find a receptive audience.

poetic justice will come in time

I had another post planned for today, but after spending the better part of this morning swearing at the TV, the local paper, and various internet newsfeeds, I decided to work out my anger here instead.

What’s got me all riled up? The results of the gay marriage vote in the Massachusetts legislature, which means that a constitutional ban on gay marriage in the Commonwealth is one step closer to becoming a reality. The issue will now be voted on in the next legislative session, and should it pass again, it will be decided by ballot question in 2008.

It appalls me that a question of basic human rights and equal protection by law is subject to a referendum by lumpenproletariat, most of whose members I wouldn’t trust to know how to wipe their own asses. Rights are rights. They are not “earned,” they are not “given,” they should not be subject to the whims of popular opinion…unless we open up the whole shebang to that process. If the government is going to get into the business of legislating relationships between two consenting adults, then I want to be able to weigh in on every pending union, gay or straight. “Sorry. You have a beak nose, and she has beady eyes. Your children will be hideous-looking. Petition denied. And you two? He’s a bore and you drink too much. Denied. Next!”

As committed as I am to the idea of participatory governance, the initiative process of legislating via referendum has been corrupted by the basest, ugliest sort of populism. Originally intended as a way to bypass the graft-ridden political machines and their self-serving patrons of ages past, it has long since become a tool of the same special interest groups it was designed to thwart. The public interest takes a back seat to demagoguery and hidden ulterior motives, and even on the rare occasions when a nobly intended progressive measure passes, it ends its life as an ignored, unfunded mandate or gets reshaped as a post-dated Trojan Horse on behalf of some moneyed concern, at the expense of those it was posited to supposedly benefit.

So a coalition of out-of-state groups working alongside their Bay State counterparts wants to use the initiative process to strip a group of their rights, and for what? To “preserve the sanctity of marriage”? Because heterosexual marriages are special and wonderful and doesn’t crash and burn more than half of the time? What kind of insecure idiot bases the worth of his or her marriage on those of others? I’m a straight, white male who married his partner of thirteen years in 2004. The only parties that matter in our marriage are my wife and I, and rightly so. If the rest of the world doesn’t like it, they can fuck off. There is no just reason why that “club of two” status shouldn’t be enjoyed by same-sex couples.

It’s not about the “sanctity of marriage,” it’s about sanctioning bigotry by enshrining it in the state constitution, and there is no religious sleight of hand that can hide that ugly truth. If people were really serious about “saving marriage,” then maybe they need to start looking into legislation to criminalize divorce, or to rescind tax benefits for anyone who remarries...

…or we as a society could put these useless distractions behind us and get on with living our lives without feeling the need to persecute others. Seriously, this culture war bullshit has gotten tiresome.

In lieu of footnotes, please accept this little sampler of relevant tracks which span several decades and multiple genres. Diversity matters.

Neal Ford and the Fanatics – Shame On You (from Garage Beat ’66, Vol. 1: Like What, Me Worry?! 2004) – This one’s dedicated to all the state reps who voted in favor of the gay marriage ban, including that one asshole from the next town over who was the only rep from this area who cast a “yes” vote.

L7 – The Masses Are Asses (from The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum, 1997) – Indeed they are, ladies. Indeed they are.

Dead Kennedys – Religious Vomit (from In God We Trust, Inc. 1981) – It's a mix of cheap red wine, stale crackers, bile, and half-digested lumps of hypocrisy.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Ain’t Nobody’s Business (from Feast of the Mau Mau, 1988) - Damn right. It ain’t.

The Caravans – Know Your Rights (from This Is Rockabilly Clash, 2003) – It started off as just three, but the list keeps getting longer and longer as time passes.