quare id faciam?

Oh, please ...

Heard, while working today, Neil Young's whirlwind-studio-session recording "Impeach the president", on Annapolis station WRNR – caught only snatches of lyric, but didn't bother to stop what I was doing for a better listen. (RNR's also been playing lately an "I am the walrus" sound-alike that works up, more or less cleverly, an actual recent Bushism, "I'm the decider" – Bush, sound-bited, asserting his authority to hire & fire cabinet members according to his own lights.) I like RNR's indie-flavored approach to radio, generally, and I like Neil Young's sound, generally. I've enjoyed Young's "Then I won't be far from home", which has been on the air a lot around here (especially on great Baltimore station WTMD) since release last year, quite a lot. But all gratuitous over-simplifications, right & left, of political & social matters disgust me. And what but over-simplification, in environments like the present one, are you going to get from material that suits rock radio play? This is a medium terribly resistant to, and the circumstances besides are unfavorable for, any real acknowledgement of politics, its sources & its fallout. Anyway, I certainly can't see how this particular strikingly bland piece of old-man-rock that Young's tossed off can claim to be so much as the shadow of a substantive address to the political moment: in my judgment it's altogether a waste of Young's creative energy. And it's an abuse of air time for a station that's supposed to be all about music. I get to muttering (or yelling) sometimes, when it's evident the notion of their own importance in the arena of social/political conflict has again bitten the programmers on one of my 'good' stations, "Stop playing around, and play some damn music!"

(I should say, I suppose, that one beneficial effect of the recent yammering here & there about impeachment may be that it helps somewhat to bring into perspective the conflicting sentiments & the great ugly scene of the more politically efficient, but probably no more really publicly meaningful, effort to impeach Clinton a decade or so ago.)

Well, I'm no great admirer of President Bush – or of any prominent political players of our times, as far as I know them. But I don't think George W Bush is an idiot or a criminal; in fact I still am inclined to think that his exercise of the presidential role, although undoubtedly diminished in dignity by serious errors of judgment (and of how many presidents, by the way, can the same not be said?), has been genuine and capable. And I do like Chris Muir's take, though it's a gimme, on Young's glib, musically stillborn contribution to current public dialogue:



LATER: You can listen to the whole album Living With War here. I have no sympathy with Young's point of view, from the overall attitude of knee-jerk anti-interventionism to the particular notion that 'Bush is [comparably, in relevant history, at his level of official power] a liar'. And the wish manifested on this album to tie, in simple terms, general American cultural malaise (or global warming, or whatever generational/multi-generational concern) to the Republican party or the current administration is especially grating. Sympathies aside, however, I think some of the songs on the album are pretty good; they're enjoyable as what they are, classic-style rock tunes – especially e.g. 'Back in the days of shock and awe', 'Flags of freedom'. (My loose usage above, 'old-man-rock', shouldn't necessarily be taken as a slur.) I'll continue to believe, nevertheless, that the one song that's demanding the principal media attention now merits, in fact, none.

posted by paul bowman @ 10:33 PM