The Presidents of the United States of America


How have we not listened to The Presidents of the United States of America? The band, i mean. They made 6 albums, but i only care about their self titled debut. They were originally a punk rock busker duo whose schtick came from Sandman, a series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. No, i'm being told it was Mark Sandman, the frontman of Morphine. Morphine was one of those super famous and influential bands no one ever heard on commercial radio. Regardless, the gist is that you take one guitar and fit it with two bass strings, and another guitar and fit it with the 3 thickest guage guitar strings you can find. Tune it all down to C# so you have essentially one 5-string bass, write songs about the most mundane topics possible, and eventually hire a drummer. It's the 90s so you got Smurfs, obscure regional supermarkets, getting scratched by your cat, finding your pet lizard dead under the furniture, a dune buggy, and canned peaches. Oh, and an MC5 cover. Realistically, nobody wants to be naked and famous, and in spite of trying our damnedest to not make it, we seem to keep stumbling down the seemingly never ending, dramatically ironic Republican rabbit hole. 

To all my Republican friends, we already live and work in your ideological paradise. The things you are mad about are the parts that suck about that socio-political structure for everyone, but you're so busy fighting the people who want to make those parts suck less that you don't realize it will still suck for you too. You'll still have to sit at the little kids table and eat the same sun-baked, salmonella-flavored potato salad as the rest of us, while Uncle Harvey talks about space hookers and car parts. Apologies if you have an Uncle Harvey, i didn't mean him specifically.

As you might expect, this band tended to side with Democrat candidates; the dune buggy is little and blue, after all. Why? Because the Republican party is garbage. I hope you understand me well enough by now to not be personally insulted by that statement, but the party is feather plucking insane. Whether you like it or not, America is a decidedly right-wing country compared to the rest of the whole world. Please keep in mind, i'm way down in the lower left hand corner of the political compass with Noam Chomsky and the actual Marxists/Anarchists. Politically speaking, even Biden and Obama were too right-wing/authoritarian for my liking. Sanders (even though i dislike him for many other reasons) is barely left of center, with believe it or not Teddy Roosevelt. These are actual political compass rankings determined by analyzing actual speeches and policies, by the way. 

My point is that all that stuff about "the extreme left" and "cancel culture" and "oppressive political correctness" is an ideological war between the authoritarian right and the radical centrists. If that's confusing to you, then we'll just go back to Lord of the Rings and i'm back in the second age saying "hey guys, you just gonna let all of us over here on Numenor drown? Oh, ok, rings of power and whatnot? Well, have fun with that gurgle gurgle."

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more