Though I got to this demo late, the energy level was high. This was evidenced by it's effectiveness: the restaurant was empty, and the streets were clogged with cars. Someone was smart enough to bring music to dance to and there was radical cheerleading happening.

Talk about "praxis". The combination of radical action and participatory entertainment culminated in an effective demonstration of people power, and resistance through music.
Thanks for indulging my inner cornball photo fool. These photos suck, because they were taken with a $25 digital camera.

Let's make like Tiger Beat and play a game. List your three favorite political pop tunes, and three favorite protests (or protest forms, or acts of resistance).

Motor City Is Burning - The MC5 (written by John Lee Hooker)

"Just might strike a match / for freedom myself"


Kill For Peace - The Fugs

The title says it all.


Up Against the Wall Motherfucker - David Peel and the Lower East Side

ditto

Don't forget to list your three favorite forms of resistance.

Ugliness - in the marketplace of beauty, ugliness is resistance.

Farting - I have great respect for people who fart publicly; even if I disagree with the content of their expression, I will fight for their right to express it.

Calling in sick when you're well, and going to work when you're sick. Use the right physical condition for the right environment.

Although I agree with Bob Morris's overall list- compromising the holey trinity of sixtees nutball freak out my ass is/as cultural revolution, he is completely off in terms of his picks.

To pick Peels "up against the wall mother fucker" is a complete cop out. While the sentiment of yelling "up against the wall mother fucker" continues to be a treat to this day, the Lower East Sides treatment of the slogan as the meta- text for the song doesn't do it. It makes a great chant- but not such a killer song. In fact the "Have a Marajuana" album as a whole has nnnothing on the "American Revolution" album. That albums first side could be the tabla rosa for the whole genre. Like the Beattles Sgt. Pepper the album makes a wonderful suite- while each song holds up for itself. How can you pick one song from that album as being superior? Lets look at the tunes
(we are from the) "Lower East Side"- a song on NYC's Chiapas
our TAZ

"Legalize Marajuana"- Proto punk put tune-basicly gave birth to NORML

"OinK OinK"- lyrical geniuos "gonna roll myself a joint- everybody get my point- when you hear a cop you got to say oink oink"

"I want to get high"- A pre- Baffler ("commidify your dissent") song on the political economy of cultural radicalism.

nuff said- pure genious

okay I'll make the rest quick

For my money the Mc5's best song will always remain "Kick out the Jams"- saying anything else would be musical snobbery

The Fuggs best song? that's kind off not the point, now is it?

touche-bob morris

I know this seems improbable, but Gary Glitters "rock-n-roll" (yes, the one they play at football stadiums) sends chills up and down my spine. Its not because I love the Rams or the Chargers or whatever, Its because of another memory. In Seattle a day before the WTO protests we were dribing through BellTown realining "holy fuck, this is going ot happen."
We were blasting a mix tape of music out the windows yelling "general Strike! Dont go to work tomarrow." And when this tub-thumping anthem came on, we started pounding the side of our car so hard and the whole town, all the pedestrians with in earshot knew it and started cheering to, that tomarrow we were going to rock the world.

Another one that does it for me is "Jet" by Paul Mcartney. I fooled all my housemates once into thinking that I loved this song and that it was a covert ballad in support of Robbin Morgan's "Forget all that" proto-femiminist manifesto- either that or Simone DeBoviours writing. In the end, I tricked myself into believing it so...

Finally, Dog Faced Herman's "Jan 9." Nothing like a little science fiction, driving post punk noise that mixes in a peoples utopia and history into an amazing stoner back-ground of trumpets. "Jan 9, in future time, the day science clipped its wings. Nobody moved...."

I know that the politics behind these songs are rather suspect- but hey its pop music, it's all suspect....

I don't think we can over look the libertarian genre of heavy metal. What of "I can't drive 55" or "Where not gonna take it"? Than there's "Breakin the Law' by judas preist. Ozzy's "War Pigs" is at least as powerful as dylans "Masters of War"- and it kicks ass to. While we are on the subject of the Wizard of OZ, the controlled anarchy of "Crazy Train' smacks me up side the head every time I hear its baseline thumping off the rails.

Do you think that we would have had such US bread hesher madness as Ruby Ridge, Waco, or the militia movement with out these masterworks of self centered liberation/nihilism? And while we are on that tip, what of Woodstock 99- anti-social, anti-women, anti-corporate, megalomaniacal madness? This stuff seems more endemically political to the Rock in Roll Pop audience than the right on, but let's face it "foreign", Manu Chao. I mean its pop music- who'se got more sales right? The shits fucked up, but there's something going on their right? Curiously enough can't simular things be said about Hip Hops multiple and contridictory stances?

Thinking in this vein we can see Motley Crues 1980's as a breeding ground for the "anarchisticly styled" fascination with cases of casual cultural disavowel; calling sick to work, breaking shit just because it is pleasurable, reckless pursuits of pleasure. If Sinclairs White Panther party were still around- these metal kids would be the Lumpen which the Panthers would be creaming over.

Isn't the whole genre of Rock Music itself a protest song of sorts- positioning itself against something? That's what I hate about the limited view offered by standard "greatest hits of Protest music". Ted Nugent (ya' know the other "motor city madman") kicks ass- Wango Tango connects right with the kids in the same way that Rages "Evil Empire" or L7's "Shit List" does. The ideologies behind the form is the only difference. Guitars snarling to "fuck you I won't do what ya tell me"... can be interpreted in many differen't ways. It's the secondary step of contextualizing which rounds the identities of the bands out. I wonder how many of pops fans get that far, and if that all really matters all that much? Ted Shoots arrows on stage, Rage points arrows on stage- same form differen't targets.
Does McluHans media is the message have something to say here?

Let's not forget that we have as much to learn from David Lee Roth than we do from David Peal.