Kool Aid Served Daily

I've been really grooving on Bob Marley and the Wailers (Africa Unite: Singles Collection). I was slow to warm up to it, but the last tracks have been getting a lot of replay of late. On the iPod, when an album/artist is done, it shuts off. I had it hooked up to the laptop to recharge. On iTunes, you go to the next song on the list.

In this case it was Don't Argue by Cabaret Voltaire off of the Eurobeat collection CD I have (great deal, at least 3-4 one hit wonders). I was blown away by the style and presence. At first I thought it was a Marley track I missed or deleted, not because of the style or influence. I'd said more techno/house than anything else, but because of the political message. I've had to go through the entire CD again to see if there were any other unknown gems.

So, I wasn't that big of The Ramones fan growing up - just a tad too young and they didn't do MTV very well. I did buy Loud, Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits on a lark for my iPod Nano.

So I'm zoning out to We're A Happy Family:

"We're A Happy Family"

We're a happy family
We're a happy family
We're a happy family
Me mom and daddy

Siting here in Queens
Eating refried beans
We're in all the magazines
Gulpin' down thorazines

We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men

Daddy's telling lies
Baby's eating flies
Mommy's on pills
Baby's got the chills

I'm friends with the President
I'm friends with the Pope
We're all making a fortune
Selling Daddy's dope

Perhaps it is the ability to stand apart from the times, but the line "Daddy likes men" had to be a bombshell at the time. You still have to be pretty subtle about homosexuality and that must have been considered very socially deviant.

I had a tape, I have no idea where I got it or if I still have it, called The Batcave. I had never been able to track it down on the web, for some reason the Dark Knight always crept in to the picture. Anyway, yesterday I saw a George Clinton CD with a song Up For The Down Stroke. One of the songs I remembered from The Batcave was Coming Up For The Down Stroke. Sure enough, one google later, and I have a link to Batcave: Young Limbs And Numb Hymns.

Now, I can get some of the songs elsewhere, but I'd rather get a CD for keeps. If anyone finds a source, please let me know.

If you were to ask me before I got my iPod Nano what my favorite songs were by The Clash, I would have said, in no order:

• This is Radio Clash
• Rock The Casbah
• Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I got the Nano while away from the house, I didn't have access to my CDs. So I bought some at Fry's (Remember, all of your best returns are at Fry's!). One of them was The Singles. And now I see that I have a song I like more than the above 3 - Know Your Rights. What I find really interesting is that it really highlights for me the Open Source movement. You have the right to run the OS you want on your computer.

A lot of what The Clash promote is social commentary. Even though I wasn't born in the US, I am a son of middle class America. I'm an Oklahoma liberal, which makes me a California conservative. The first three songs I listed were popular, for good reason. Back when they came out, I couldn't appreciate them for what they were. But I'm not the person I was back then - I'm way more confident, way more independent, way more open minded (not that I was ever very closed minded), and a lot more willing to try different things.

One manifestation of that is that I'm not the die hard rocker I was back then. I happen to remember Disco and the whole "Disco must Die" sentiment. By the way, I still like songs like Funkytown, Play that Funky Music, Brick House, etc. I really appreciate the influence of that music style.

Back to The Clash, I was born in the UK and spent a chunk of my childhood growing up in Europe. I have all these experiences which don't translate into typical American culture. I laugh at jokes on shows like The Young Ones and sometimes can't explain why. But I'm also not your typical European - my father was in the Air Force. I still support a strong military presence.

I recall more of the social unrest in the UK than I do of Vietnam. My uncle died in Vietnam in 1968, but I never met him. Most of my father's brothers served in the Armed Forces. On my mother's side of my family, my cousins, aunts, and uncles, etc, lived in similar circumstances as The Clash. Just account for mostly being a bit more north, i.e., Scotland.

In Scotland, I was always taunted as being American. In America, I was always teased as being Scotish.

When I listen to songs like The Call Up:

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
'N' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown up?
Who knows the plans or why they were drawn up?

I can support their view to protest drafts/wars. But I also believe that nations should maintain standing armies. Look at Vietnam, we went in Gung-Ho and ended up not supporting our troops once public opinion went South. Now look at Iraq, we went in Gung-Ho and as backlash to the way the public treated returning Vets back in the Vietnam era, we say, "I don't support Bush, but of course I support our boys."

It is hard to balance liberal and conservative - and trying to explain it is almost as bad. Perhaps it is best to say that I consider and challenge my belief systems. As for our involvement in Iraq, I don't support the reasons we went there, but I do believe that as a society we must be willing to die for our belief system. I understand my uncle didn't want to join the Army, didn't want to go to Vietnam, and probably didn't want to die. But the society survived.

Perhaps I shouldn't mix my idealism with reality. I don't have the fervent support of the military as others I know, but I also don't condemn them as butchers.

I'm neither here to expouse a political view nor to argue that Open Source is your fourth right. No, I think the fourth right is your right to be able to apply music to your life. I laugh at RIAA attempts to control access to music recordings - it isn't the media which is important, it is how the music makes you feel. I've got Queen's Another One Bites The Dust playing and the Disco influence really comes through clear. But, what is really ironic is all of those white middle class teenagers in the late 1970s and early 1980s who denounced Disco, yet every weekend strode onto the football field with that song blaring out on the loudspeakers. The song meant something else to them, they owned it, and probably still do in their memories.

I'm driving back from the soccer coaches' meeting and this song comes on XM-Comdey - Cheney's Got a Gun. It snowed last night and the combination of that and the laughing almost caused a wreck.

Enjoy.

While watching The Fairly OddParents this morning, an ad for Devo 2.0 came on. The correct spelling appears to be Dev2.0. The funniest part was at the end, when the girl singer said "We are all Devo!" My son replied, "I'm not, Daddy isn't, and Mama isn't."

I had to tell him I was so Devo and so was he. I asked him if he knew why I called him "Spud" half the time and why his mother didn't like it.

Okay, I tracked them down to www.devo2-0.com which in turn becomes http://disney.go.com/disneyrecords/Song-Albums/devo20/.

Uggh, they put out the content on flash, so no copying it over. The CD retails for $18.95 with like $4.95 for shipping. The kids are not related to the original cast.

Looks like Disney is basically doing a remake the band project and next up is the Go-Gos.

Technorati Tag: Devo

Okay, I got an iPod Nano right before I left NetApp. I sucked in all of my music (and started garbage collection right away).

What really got to me though was that the iPod/iTunes combo does not support having a home machine, a laptop, and a work machine. I'd really like to have the same library on each and keep updated stats on all of them. I keep on returning to my AI roots and want to write some hack to determine if I like X, then I'll really like Y.

I found I couldn't do that - the iPod wanted to be married to one box and it was very monogamous. When I left NetApp, I left behind my desktop and my laptop. Sniff, I miss that laptop. But not the desktop (IBM Think Center), I don't miss it at all.

That also meant I didn't have day to day access to a box capable of running iTunes. So, rather than spend another day or two ripping my bought and paid for CDs, I backed my content off to an USB HD.

I just got my own laptop and I pulled my content onto it. I'm very happy to say that all of my stats were there and I was able to update the stats from the disconnected iPod.

I know the reason why Apple is doing this, it is digital rights management. But having an iPod is evil - I want to be able to add to it and keep track of stuff on it. And Apple has tied me to iTunes, which in turn has tied me to WinXP and OS X.

Okay, I could maybe learn to to like OS X, it does natively offer up a shell. I really would like it to run on Linux, FreeBSD, or best of all, OpenSolaris.

Anyway, I googled on DRM and Apple. I found the following: Convert from Apple iTunes Format. Have fun reading it.

Technorati Tag: iTunes iPod Music

I'm an Oklahoma liberal, which tends to mean I'm a conservative in most other states.

On the radio this morning was a NIN song, off of Pretty Hate Machine. I think it was Terrible Lie. As far as cutting edge, it is pretty old. But I was still surprised to hear it on public radio in broad daylight.

I think that reflects on the difference in being in Denver, CO versus Tulsa, OK. I've spent a lot of time outside of OK, I'm not a native, but stepping out of it is a shock. The San Jose Mercury once had a great series of ads about Chinese culture. In their paper, the Chinese section was an entire series of cultural events. In Lawton, OK, their paper had a section which was really a coupon for the local buffet restaurant.

I used to hate Black Sabbath's Iron Man. Why? It was the only Sabbath song that got played on local radio stations. I've only now started listening to it again.

I've got to pay more attention as I travel to see if I can categorize other states by the songs being played on local radio stations.

I got an Apple iPod nano in December. I added all of my CDs and then started trashing stuff I really had no interest in hearing.

As I listened to some old stuff, i.e., MC 900ft Jesus, I decided I wanted to hear some Beastie Boys. So, for my Bday, my mother-in-law got me License to Ill. As I don't have a box which can run iTunes right now, I don't have it on the nano.

I had a forty minute drive from the Denver Airport to the Sun campus in Broomfield. So I popped the CD into dashboard and let it rip. I almost lost it when I heard some of the lyrics again. Like:

I'm the king of the classroom - coolin' in the back
My teacher had beef so I gave her a smack
She chased me out of class 0 she was strapped with a ruler

I was in college when the album first came out - I probably still have the vinyl somewhere. With a background in Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, etc, I was very progressive listening to the Beastie Boys.

But now, all I can think of is what would happen if my 9-year old son heard that back-talk-ity anti-establishment lyrics.

All in all, I'm going to put the album on my nano. I'm just going to make sure my son doesn't get a chance to listen to it any time soon. For that matter, I wouldn't let him listen to much else I have on it.