1001 Albums Summary

This is music for a "Now That's What I Call Music" CD that you'd find at the checkout counter at CVS.

BuT iT's CuLtUrAL aPpRoPriATiOn!!!!!111 Does anyone fucking think on here? Does anyone know what they're talking about? Does anyone know anything about music? There's a certain type of idiot on here (and in life) that hears something like Graceland and sprints, whistle in mouth, to declare Paul Simon guilty of "cultural appropriation." These are the people who were hall monitors in high school and continue to look for infractions anywhere and everywhere in life. According to these assholes, Paul Simon didn't collaborate with musicians in South Africa, he only extracted their music and their culture. And they constantly ignore (or don't want to bother to look) that the music that's on this album shined a light on artists like Barney Rachabane, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela and Clifton Chenier. They don't want to take a minute to understand that this album brought these artists some notoriety and that these artists were appreciative. They don't want to admit, by these artists accounts, that the album was a joy to make. And these assholes just never want to acknowledge the most obvious point, that music has always been a conversation across cultures. Genres exist because cultures collide...rock music exists because of Black Americans. Elvis didn't appear out of thin air fully formed, he was drawing from Black gospel, blues and R&B. The Beatles were borrowing Chuck Berry riffs, girl group harmonies, basslines from Motown, American R&B, Indian sitars and the list goes on and on. Jazz is a mix of african rhythms, european brass band instruments, carribean influences and blues scales. Country is a blend of scottish and irish ballads, Black blues structures, mexican influences on Western swing and African banjo classics. Hip Hip was built on sampling funk, disco, rock and whatever else they could find. But the "cultural appropriation" assholes never worry about nuance. As long as they can plant their flag on some moral hill, they'll ignore everything else. They'll ignore the musicians that wanted to work with Paul Simon, the breaking of a cultural boycott in an effort to collaborate on music and the positive feedback from everyone involved. These "cultural appropriation" assholes have one argument, and it's this: Paul Simon shouldn't have made one of the best and most innovative albums of the 80s because it violates my sensitivities. In doing so, these "cultural appropriation" assholes flatten the South African musicians into props for a moral lecture. And in thinking they're somehow protecting them, it reduces them to passive objects rather than creative artists who wanted to collaborate with Simon and brought the world some fucking awesome music. The "cultural appropriation" assholes just ignore that music isn't pure and it's not supposed to be. Humans borrow from each other and cultures mix and to ignore it is to willfully ignore the way culture actually works. They want rigid boundaries when it suits them and they want rigid boundaries in art when art doesn't obey boundaries. So fuck the cultural appropriation warriors, this album absolutely slaps. If you want to downgrade it for farty bass lines and lyrics you don't like, that's fine. But if you want to get on your high horse and write a review about "cultural appropriation" while ignoring all the music you've 5 starred on this site and think you're some sort of a fucking genius you might want to sit this one out.

Not even Bono would have the audacity to name a U2 album "The Holy Bible." But what the fuck? I just had to listen to these dildos the other day, now I have to do it again? The second track is hilarious, it's some sort of a critique against American culture...you know, the rock n roll culture that these Welsh dipshits are glad to adopt. But yeah, nothing like a group of white guys from across the pond acting like they're morally superior. What a fucking eye-roll. Loved this verse from the third song: Mussolini hangs from a butcher's hook Hitler reprised in the worm of your soul Horthy's corpse screened to a million Tiso revived, the horror of a bullfight Ohhh, Hitler! Mussolini! Edgy! Wow, mom and dad won't like this! What are they gonna do next, put a painting of a morbidly obese woman in her underwear on the cover? Wait, they dropped Dahmer's name a few songs later, how much more daring can they get?! Calling Stalin bisexual, whoa!!! The eating disorder song 4st 7lb ends with the line: I've finally come to understand life Through staring blankly at my navel Which just summarizes everything about these assholes....navel gazing being confused for revelation. The most liked review of this album claims that "this is the greatest album of all time" which is complete bullshit. Just because it deals with a bunch of issues the pseudo intellectuals love it...but this is music for teenagers who think listening to it makes them profound and convinced of their own importance. Which is exactly who must have written that review; an idiot teenager. Fuck that guy's review and fuck this band. I never want to hear this shit again. I'm only giving it a 2 because I'll admit to liking some of the guitars, bass and drums....but as far as the lyrics, the singing, the "messages", the album title and the album artwork, go fuck off.

68 minutes. People that make punk music love to say what they're not...and what they're not, according to them, are musicians that are not into making bloated, self indulgent albums with extended song times and masturbatory guitar/drum solos. And that's fine, but I'd argue making an album of 20 songs over 68 minutes (and was a double album when it was printed on vinyl) is just as bloated and self indulgent. There are some songs here I really enjoyed like Ice Cold Ice and Bed of Nails and Tell You Tomorrow that were different enough from the rest. The last song, You can Live At Home Now is the best thing on here and definitely the most different. I'd probably like this album if it were 10 songs and 30 minutes...but hey, it's better than The Pixies and Surfer Rosa.

This shit slaps, just like I heard it when I was in high school. I remember I had a cassette tape someone burned for me, it was like 74 minutes on each side. One side was this album, the other side was Evil Empire. But plant me smack in the middle of the group of people that didn't pay attention to their politics or care about them. I just liked the anger, the guitar...it is music to have on while you're lifting and working out. It's just hard to take their politics seriously and it was hard to take their politics seriously back in the day. I remember some magazine article where these guys were out golfing...the hypocrisy was just evident from the start. And while I'm sure these guys really believe the shit they're yelling about, they're just cartoons, especially Morello and De La Rocha. They built their identity and messaging on anti-capitalism and anti-corporate power while becoming hugely profitable, major label stars that sold out arenas. They Raged Against corporate exploitation and then sold tickets through Ticketmaster and Live Nation at prices that the working class couldn't afford. Yeah, they've donated money, yeah they protested Ticketmaster at one point but at the end of the day they used the system. They signed with a massive corporation in Sony and always claimed some bullshit along the lines of "we're using their money to spread anti-capitalist ideas" which was just fucking hysterical. Sony didn't sign these guys because of their ideological messages, they did it cause RATM made them a shit ton of money and you don't subvert capitalism by becoming a platinum selling band inside of it. Morello lives a really comfortable, elite life. The rest of the band members do, too (De La Rocha's house that went up for sale a few years ago is very nice but not over the top extravgent, I will give him that, but it was still 3 million) but Morello's a bit above the rest. It doesn't invalidate their beliefs but it's hard to take their moral high ground seriously. There's no personal sacrifice here. In their own way, they're completely safe. They felt somewhat dangerous in the 90s and were always loud and angry about US imperialism, capitalism and policing. They are consistently quiet on authoritarian left-wing regimes, labor abuses in countries that are aligned with their preferred politics and censorship when it comes to their side. I will admit that they've donated millions to activist causes they believe in, they've platformed radical politics since the start, they've never pretended to be neutral on anything and I think they've read the books they put in their albums instead of pretending to have read them. That all said, the self awareness is lacking. They exist inside of capitalism but they think they're morally superior while they rage from the penthouse that overlooks the machine. It's a band that rallied around being dangerous to power but always embraced it, especially when it suited them best. Now... what they should have done was adopt the philosophy of Ian MacKaye. MacKaye didn't just say anti-corporate things, he designed his entire life and career around never having the message and behavior be in question. MacKaye is the anti-RATM. No major labels. Ever. He never had to explain that contradiction because he never got there to begin with. He capped ticket prices for decades. Never gave in to festivals...it was always 5 bucks. It was a moral obligation and he never strayed from it....and he never needed Ticketmaster. Yet, he still sold hundreds of thousands of records. Toured a shit ton. Influenced a lot of bands. He never went to sell out arenas, he never made the luxury leap, he never bought the big house and the fancy car. MacKaye's politics weren't slogans that he tapped into whenever he felt like he needed to...it was DIY or don't do it, keep prices low for all ages shows, no corporate sponsorships, no gouging on merch. He just opted out of the system/machine instead of trying to play some sort of a game that RATM did. RATM chose maximum exposure, mass culture reach...MacKaye chose sheer autonomy and limits. Neither of these ways are invalid or bad, but one avoids hypocrisy completely. If RATM went the MacKaye way, fewer people would have heard them, they might not have been icons and they wouldn't have filled arenas. But no one could roll their eyes at them. So...yeah, I hate their politics. I'm not reading Howard Zinn, I'm not reading Marx, or Guevara or Alinsky or Chomsky. And a big reason why I never wanted to, even as an idealistic teenager, is that in 1996 when I saw RATM's reading list inside of Evil Empire, I just rolled my eyes. So why am I giving this a 5? It's music to lift weights to. As much as they don't want to be lumped into this category, it's music for football players and they had to have known that when they were making it but they did it anyway. It's great rock music, maybe even slightly innovative rock music, it takes me back to a time where I'd blast this album, not give a shit about their politics, understanding that the guys were making the music were hypocrites and realizing that most people are. And that's the lesson to be learned from RATM, it's not revolution, it's not anti capitalist politics...the lesson to learn from RATM is that most people are hypocrites.