Jesus Christ, the Unicorn, and Other Mythological Creatures

One of the main selling points of the Christian religion is that it is a religion based on an actual human being, a man who had both a divine and a human nature, a man who existed on our planet roughly 2000 years ago. There is very little actual evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ, however--the New Testament notwithstanding, of course. Roman histories of Judea during the time of Christ's life make no mention of him personally, and the sources that are usually cited to verify his existence (like the history of the Judean conflicts by Josephus) suffer from spurious interpolations that were entered into the original text hundreds of years after they were written. The most solid evidence of his existence are the four gospels in the New Testament, yet all four were written anywhere from 40-150 years after the death of Jesus. Not really an eyewitness account here.

In the early days of the Christian experiment, historians and scripturalists often involved themselves in embellishing existing texts to verify the historical existence of Jesus. Far from being guilty about this, early church father Eusebius publicly praised the virtues of tampering with scripture in an essay entitled "How It May Be Lawful and Fitting to Use Falsehood As Medicine, and for the Benefit of Those Who Wish to Be Deceived". The result of all of this was to create a religion that based its veracity on lies.

The hazy smoke covering the truth of the Christian religion has obscured many of the strange similarities that exist between many mythological heroes and deities and Jesus Christ. Both Attis (from Phrygia) and Mithra (from Persia and India) were heroes who triumphed over the finality of death by rising on the third day; additional eerie confluences between the three figures include a birthday of December 25th and the sharing of the divine and human natures in their persons. Mithra was even called "the Logos", which was a term applied to Christ as well as the Titan Prometheus. But most significant is the fact that all of these heroes were involved in some form of blood-atonement for the overall benefit of mankind. Other figures in myth who died to redeem the world include Krishna (India again), Horus (Egypt), and Dionysus (Greece). Mysteriously, this trio of self-sacrificers also shared a birthdate of December 25th.

The search for the historical Jesus was a movement that began in Europe in the 19th century. The movement was initially supported by the various Christian sects in existence in the Europe of the time, but they withdrew their support when the historians began to report contrary and difficult information--namely, that the historical existence of Jesus Christ could not be proven, and that he was little more than a pastiche of the mythic heroes mentioned in the paragraph above. The blame for the insistence on the historical reality of Jesus must fall on St. Paul, whose fancy syncretistic tendencies helped establish Christianity as the ancient world's fastest growing religion by the end of the 2nd century of the Common Era. Rather than holding to the more traditional visions of Hebraic religious purity (circumcision for males, strict dietary proscriptions regarding pork, etc.) Paul decided to take his concept into the mainstream of existing pagan religious philosophy by assuming many of the traditions of the different pagan cults of the time. The birthday of December 25th is a classic example of such syncretism--there was no reason, rationally speaking, to pick such a date for the birth of the founder of the faith unless those who chose the date knew that there would be some sort of resonant familiarity with that particular day within pagan communities. In the middle ages, this syncretism manifested itself in the feast-days of the various saints of the Christian Church, as the Church found it more effective to co-opt existing pagan holidays into their tradition than to try to stamp them out completely. Legendary figures like King Wenceslas and George the Dragon-Slayer became saints despite showing little saintly behavior during their lives--or despite not being real human beings at all.

Viewed in this light, both the Christian Church and the latter-day Christian religion can be seen as what they really are--repressive structures that attempt to control the behavior of their worshippers through guilt, punishment, and social ostracization. The ludicrous Pentecostal movement of our times can also be sneered at as some sort of fantasy projection of an anthropomorphic Daddy-in-the-Sky who never misses any of his children's important social events, and involves himself to such an extent in his worshippers' lives that nothing that they do (no matter how trivial and boring it may be--God helped me with the ironing today! God cared enough to make the traffic light go green! God ensured that I got this big pay raise while he punished this idle crackhead!) ever passes his notice.

The one thing that is truly repulsive about Christianity is the way in which it has been adopted as part of the societal power structure. Christianity became the religion of the oppressor by assuring its believers that their ultimate reward would be found after their current existence ended. Social injustice was not something to ever be addressed--the punishments of the afterlife served as the great leveller in situations of great financial or social inequality, although some of the more cynically-minded among us might interpret the Church's stance as being a tacit approval of the societal status quo. It also holds the distinction of beng history's first recorded example of a secret police force during the years of the Inquisition, when the pursuit of orthodox belief excused any number of horrible physical tortures and killings. People were detained and punished in extralegal circumstances that rival the Soviet gulag tactics of the 20th century in terms of their savagery. In addition, its doctrine of the Resurrection has done more to harm the development of rational human thought than any of the ideas of Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx. How can anyone believe that out of the trillions of creatures that have existed on our planet since the beginning of time that one solitary human who existed in a sun-scourged desert land 2000 years ago was allowed to circumvent the laws of life and death? Beliefs like these encourage totalitarian thinking because they encourage the acceptance of impossible occurrences. It's a short distance from saying "yes, he died, but then three days later he was walking, talking, and eating" to saying "two plus two equals five" or "this particular ethnic group must be punished for their rumored involvement in the death of the founder of our religion".

For those who would offer the gospels as proof of Jesus Christ's historical reality, I offer this as a response: during the 13th and 14th century respected French scholarly monks created a scientific study of the unicorn, despite the fact that nobody involved in writing the book had ever seen one. The "evidence" of their existence came from the myriad of legends and fables that involved unicorns; the logic was that so many stories could not exist without some counterpart in reality. Specious reasoning, at best--and this type of reasoning is what is usually offered by believers to "prove" the reality of Jesus Christ's existence. All organized religions are harmful, but no religion has the shameful record of Christianity in terms of both the amount of bloodshed it has caused along with its ability to restrict and condemn the inquisitive mind.

And for those who would offer the timeworn cliche of their "personal relationship with Jesus Christ"--I have the name of a good psychiatrist for you. And if that fails, I know a few people who sell the right sort of drugs for you to do. For those who offer up Jesus Christ as the self-proclaimed Prince of Peace I give you his own words from Matthew 10:34--"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." This comment holds the secret key to the religion of Christianity--its reality can be seen in the viciousness of the Christian armies in the Crusades, the Thirty Years' War, the Inquisition, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the persecution of the Jews throughout all of Europe, the Irish-British conflict, and in the simpleminded good vs. evil template of GW Bush. I could go on, but these atrocities are a good place to start.

this spiel is for Acharya S.--a great writer and thinker.

Arrest the President. Now.

GW Bush is a criminal. I'm not talking about his stolen elections in 2000 and 2004 either. Simply put, he is a felon--and his felony was committed in the full light of day. During the runup to the Iraq war Bush appeared before the US Congress to give his "reasons" for going to war. He was not under oath but he lied to the houses of Congress in 2002 when he claimed that Hussein and his regime possessed chemical and biological weaponry. Lying to Congress is a felonious act. This statement is not an equivocation. It is a fact.

After letting down the entire nation in 2002 and 2003, the American press has awakened from its self-imposed slumber to finally begin questioning the rationale of Bush and the chicken hawks in his administration as they rushed us all into war in Iraq. This sudden interest in the biggest governmental fraud in American history comes too late, of course, as Bush and his cronies are ensconced in the office until 2008--but later is better than never, I guess. So here we are in 2005 and the splendid little war promised to the nation by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Powell et al. is now dragging into its third year with no end in sight.

As a matter of fact, the once-optimistic defense secretary Rumsfeld has now stated that the war will probably last upwards of 10 years (see above link). These are the same folks that lied to the world and said that the war ended back in May 2003. And even now, the gang can't keep its stories straight--VP Dick Cheney said a month ago that the "insurgency is in its last throes", yet it seems that for once Rumsfeld might actually be telling the truth about the duration and intensity of the conflict. These wildly divergent assessments of our latest foreign misadventure point to one thing--that the Bush boys are making things up as they go along. There has been no planning--as exemplified by the body/vehicle armor fiasco--and little attention paid to the reality of Iraq's history as a nation. Once again a white Christian US administration has entered into a conflict with a seriously motivated and seriously misunderstood opponent, while assuming that their basic value system (capitalistic/oligarchic democracy) is easily exportable to a nation that has demonstrated no affinity whatsoever for the Western style of governance. Perhaps if this war had occurred in a vacuum it might be more understandable, but coming a mere 30 years after the embarrassment of Vietnam, it is inexcusable that an administration would so casually march off to war. So inexcusable, in fact, that the only remedy to this situation is impeachment.

Impeachment is supposed to be a last-ditch response to a criminal administration. The Republican party managed to ruin this procedure with their malfeasant and politically tainted impeachment of Clinton back in 1998. Now the logic in 1998 was that Clinton was a felon because he lied under oath, and as a felon was deemed worthy of impeachment. So my question is then "why not George W.?" It's all a matter of scale, I guess--Whitewater involved illegal profits in the neighborhood of $172,000, whereas Enron's bankruptcy totalled in the billions of dollars, as did the default of BCCI and the American savings and loan scandals of Bush the First--so perhaps the Clintons were guilty of not setting their sights high enough. The grander the scheme, the greater?

So logically then George W. Bush should be impeached. In 5 years' residence in the highest office in the land, he has presided over the two largest corporate bankruptcies in American history (Enron and WorldCom); he was the sitting President for the worst military attack on American soil in our history (September 11, 2001); and he baldfacedly lied to the US Congress about Iraq's capability to manufacture and deliver weapons of mass destruction to the Western Hemisphere. Additionally, he lied to the American public at large when he and his organized crew of liars attempted to connect Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 attacks. In my opinion there has never been a stronger case to impeach a sitting President in American history.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz should all be in jail today. Each one of these men is guilty of treason by putting the interests of fascist multinational corporations above the interest of the nation at large. They have set the course of American democracy back to the wacky days of the post-World War I era, when the press conspired with the government to demonize the emerging Socialist/Communist/Labor movement in this country. Not since then has there been such a willingness to believe the lies of the government among the populace of the US. I don't know which is more shameful in their conduct--their attempts to wrap themselves in the flag and portay themselves as world liberators, or their incessant code-worded statements of religiosity. Either way it shows that the Bush administration is willing to embrace any hypocrisy, as long as it suits their perverted interests.

What Do You Want for $16?

I was really looking forward to the Comets on Fire show at the Bowery Ballroom last week. I'd seen them 3 times previously and they were consistently excellent, and as much as I liked their recorded material, I found their live show to be more entertaining. Particularly appealing was the chance to see them in a good room with great sound. The bill that night also contained NYC sonic terrorists Sightings and doomy ambientists Growing. It seemed a recipe for a well-spent evening.

The chance to see Sightings in a good room was something I couldn't pass up, so I arrived a little after 9 PM to see their drummer trying to get his girlfriend past the security at the ticket desk. Even though Sightings was due to hit the stage momentarily, the door people made him wait for 3 or 4 minutes while they struggled to read the guest list for the band in order to demonstrate their authority over all who came to their club. After he was able to get her in, I heard Sightings' singer say into the PA "Has anyone seen our drummer? We're looking for him..." As usual, a New York City club went out of its way to make life difficult for those who bring their night's revenues in. Despite this annoyance, their drummer was onstage by the time I got my drink and got up to the front of the stage.

Sightings played a great set, opening with "Sugar Sediment" from their most recent Load Records release Arrived in Gold. After that, they played all new material--7 more songs in all. Very impressive stuff that was both noisy as shit and really well-thought out. The second to last song in their set was incredible--bassist Richard pounding on the bass like it was a drum while guitarist Mark layered shards of trebly noise around like broken glass. This newer material seemed to mix in a healthy amount of improvisation as well. I am more impressed with them every time I see them.

Growing was next. I saw them open for Khanate back in the summer of 2004 at Northsix, and I was unimpressed even though I knew what I was getting since I owned a copy of their first release on Kranky. I found them to be meandering (which is usually a strength in the ambient music genre) and on the whole quite uninteresting. Most of their best sounds were being produced by a digital 8-track recorder that night. Ironically, this set has been released recently as a live disc by Growing...I read a review of it somewhere (maybe on Foxy Digitalis...I forget). Anyway, I was trying to keep an open mind for them but was not optimistic about their set. Their first piece was pretty, as looped e-bow parts circled around a massive bass drone, but really didn't go anywhere. The second piece was awful, as the bassist put on a guitar and they proceeded to play pretty much the same melody as the first piece, with the same drone going underneath. The last piece was more to my liking, as they droned a crushingly heavy guitar chord for about 10 minutes. It ventured into the territory marked off by bands like Earth and Sunn0))) but had its own unique twist to it. Guitar feedback crested around the looped riff while the bass droned along with the main chord. It was tactile and pure, a really cool piece of music.

After the sound subsided, Comets on Fire took to the stage. Trouble surfaced as soon as they started playing, as the soundman didn't know what to make of them--the Echoplex delay was cranked up louder than both guitars, and for the entirety of the first song there was no guitar in the mix at all. A band with two outstanding guitarists like Ethan Miller and Ben Chasney, and there was no guitar in the mix....I'm really unsure as to how an absurdity like that happens. After the first song was done, many voices were hollering at the soundman to turn the guitars up. He decided to ignore the advice of these listeners and proceeded to absolutely ruin the band's set....a blind person would have thought that Comets on Fire contained a drummer, an effects guy, and a bass player, along with a singer--the mix was that awful. Occasionally Ethan Miller's guitar would surge to the surface of the band's sound, but that was it...Ben Chasney was visible onstage but missing completely in the mix. Even when the drummer stepped to the piano and the Echoplex guy stepped to the drumkit things didn't change with the guitar mix. I was shocked.

Now, Comets on Fire does have a sludgy, noisy sound that can veer into the direction of incoherence. But I cannot understand how a professional soundman could not have fixed the problems with the band's mix; after all, he saw the same two guitarists onstage that everyone else saw. Things were so dismal out in the crowd that there was little energy going back towards the musicians...they picked up on the vibe that something was wrong and began to play poorly. There were lots of confused looks exchanged between the boys as things ground to a slow halt. It was a shame.

This was the second straight bad mix I'd seen with a headliner at the Bowery. The last time I saw Do Make Say Think there the soundman had similar problems. Maybe he can't handle any 2-guitar bands, or bands with a lot of varied instrumentation--but for sixteen dollars it would not be beyond expectations to assume that the bands will receive a good mix. I'm sure Comets on Fire played a better show at the Narchitect house in Brooklyn the next night, and I'm sure the sound was far superior, even though the band room at the Narchitect is concrete and the bands only use a vocal PA. So bigger is not better, and the venue doesn't matter anymore when it comes to bands performing in NYC. Let the Bowery book shit bands from here on out to simplify matters, or they should get a new soundman. Either way they're not getting my sixteen bucks again.

Civil War Semantics and Secret Society Pacification

We've all heard stories about the patriotism, the willingness to give their lives in combat with all varieties of the US military, the tradition, the mint juleps, the lilting drawl, the gentility, the awareness of history...but the stories we northerners hear are biased and slanted, a history told inaccurately. The southern states of the USA are not the hot, lazy, verdant landscapes that you see in the tourist manuals or the sanctioned history books; rather, they are a prime locus in the USA for divisive, racist, hyperreligious, and separatist ideologies. It is my belief that this pugnacity and tendency towards violence is characteristic of Southern society itself. Slavery left a huge bloodstain on the South's regional soul, obviously, but what is often overlooked or underemphasized in Civil War histories is that the Confederacy was formed to protect that "peculiar institution" and for very few other reasons.

Defense of an immoral and brutal institution like slavery is softened now into defense of homeland and tradition, and rarely are indications given that the idea of secession was not necessarily a hugely popular one among the lower-class whites of the South. James Loewen's book Lies Across America (Simon and Schuster, 1999) is a handy resource to find how much of a positive spin the South puts on its actions in the 1860's and 1870's. Organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy began to rewrite the history of the conflict in the South, while the Ku Klux Klan's terror campaigns helped to re-establish white supremacy in government and economy throughout the region. These activities were presented as the right way to respond to the "scalawags and carpetbaggers" that trooped in from the North (and, ironically enough, from the Republican Party) to exploit the victimized and defeated South.

Eric Foner's excellent history of the post-Civil War era South (Reconstruction, HarperCollins 1988) also paints a vivid picture. Reconstruction brought unprecedented levels of civil disobedience to the South, and inculcated a tradition of violent resistance to state or federal governmental intrusion. A statistic from the era records over 2000 murders between 1870-74 in Texas alone, most of the victims being freed slaves and their families or governmental officials attempting to enforce the decrees of the state or federal governments. With heartwarming stories like these repeating themselves all over the region, it is small wonder that the federal government (under Presidents Johnson and Grant) was intimidated into allowing the South some measure of autonomy contrary to the articles of Reconstruction. Every state in the Confederacy fought against Reconstruction and every state had its own bouts of political assassination. Blacks were attacked by mobs, by klansmen, by police, and even by the courts--there were actual pitched battles fought between black US Army Civil War veterans and whites in Virginia, Texas, and Oklahoma. Foner's book relates the story of a black woman brutally beaten by a group of whites in 1870 Alabama (one can only imagine what she did--or didn't do--to incur such treatment) who was then charged a $16.45 fee to have her complaint heard in court. After scraping the money together she got her day in court. She then saw her assailants released by the judge, who warned her that further pursuance of the matter would result in a jail term for her. Levels of harassment were thorough indeed in the Reconstruction Era.

I mention all this as a background to the story of Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted of manslaughter today in Mississippi. The aptly named Killen did some killing, or at least helped organize and direct it, and will now pay his price for his racism. Most entertaining to me, however, was the former mayor of Philadelphia, MS saying that he viewed the Klan as "a peaceful organization" that "did a lot of good up here". A statement like this shows these redneck bastards for what they really are--violent racists whose repugnant philosophy runs counter to their professed religiosity. The problem is that these men reproduced, and ideas like these will never die in these communities because of that fact. Too many children grow up in an atmosphere of racism--they carry it like a virus with them through their lives unless they are smart enough to reflect upon it and reject it. Incidents like the Cheney/Goodman/Schwerner incident have been repeated (James Byrd, anyone?), clearly showing that the psychology that caused the murders to occur still exists in the South.

The Civil War was supposed to have ended this bullshit; here we are 140 years later still dealing with its fallout. Perhaps if the whole South was coerced into paying slavery reparations it might change, but that is unlikely--they've gotten away with treason and civil war, along with rejecting the Constitutional Amendments pertaining to slavery's abolition, so why should they be affected by the specter of reparations? Until their schools teach that the Civil War was fought to preserve a conservative slave-based economy, these mental habits will continue among Southerners. No self-respecting teacher should ever teach the Civil War using the appellation "the War of Northern Aggression", yet 33% of the region still refers to the conflict as such.

The semantic trickery involved in describing the Civil War in such a fashion has no place in history. The creation of a lawless secret society to keep the peace has resulted in the creation of a region where guns are plentiful and ready to be used, where tobacco is grown to addict and kill its customers, a region where dollars still outweigh any ethical and moral considerations. Economic concerns are the primary concerns of the South, and it still holds its laborers in contempt, though not as harshly as it did in the 19th century. What I despise about the South in general is its reputation for decency, friendliness, and piety--this region viewed mankind through the darkest lens possible, interpreting the horrific violence of slavery as an ennobling experience, one in which the "savages" were saved by the mercy of a mercurial Jesus. In addition, its vaunted historical consciousness is barely conscious at all...it may no longer be deliberate, since children taught lies will propagate them throughout their lives, but in the 50-year period after the Civil War the attempt to distort its own sordid history was performed as well as Josef Stalin's rewritings of Communist Party history in the USSR.

Patriotism and piety. Such noble concepts, yet in the case of the American South they are invoked to hide a tower of skeletons that still wear the shackles of their servitude.

Stop Using This Word

Proactive. It's an ugly word, both in sound and appearance. In its strictest definition it means dealing aggressively with an impending difficulty, performing some action in advance to prevent catastrophe. It also can be considered the opposite of the word "retroactive". Despite its eschatological implications, this word is bandied about in business and politics as if it is some form of punctuation. Simply put, the word itself is used in situations that it is unsuited for. Stripping words of their meaning (or diluting their true representational idea) sucks--it cheapens the language and makes us all dumber for it, while it devalues the essence of what the word is supposed to express.

In perusing the news today, I found the word used in a story about the massive computer information theft that occurred with US credit card users; it was also used in a story about how the US congress is prepared to force the issue with the administration as far as bringing the troops home from Iraq. Any Google search will give the searcher untold conceptual permutations of the word, but strangely it seems that regardless of the application the result is the same. Basically the word is now some sort of linguistic band-aid or space-taker, giving the impression of gravity and seriousness while not explaining anything at all.

Proactivity is usually associated with oppression or oppressive people--it's a favorite concept of military assholes the world over, and it's also a big hit in the world of finance. Since these two professions spend more time crafting disinformation strategies than making true statements, it's easy to see why such a non-specific buzzword like proactive can find so many useful applications in these worlds.

It's no big revelation that George Orwell was onto something when he came up with the concept of Newspeak in 1984--but what is insidious about words like these is how many different mental associations now arise in conjunction with the use of the word. Proactivity can now be interpreted as a positive concept due to its constant misuse, instead of the pessimistic original meaning of the word. It has become a weird substitute and synonym for preparedness and foresight, when what the word really has to do with is control and prevention. A word that might best be described as "pre-emptive reactionary action" now is offered to us all as a word that implies a patient and thoughtful solution to a looming problem.

Say it with me--proactive is a stupid, stupid word. Somehow it has mutated in the current of the river of language, leaving behind some half-formed conceptual morass that now implies that the person or thing described as "proactive" is now firmly in charge of its own destiny and fiercely protective of itself and its interests. Sounds to me like the word is now the equivalent of headstrong selfishness. No wonder Republicans like this word so much.

Fragging--A US Military Tradition

Last week two US officers died in a mortar attack in Iraq--in the city of Tikrit, to be exact. They died, ironically, inside one of Saddam Hussein's opulent and secure residences. After an initial statement of disinformation that claimed the mortar fire was random, the Army has announced the opening of a criminal investigation into the deaths of Capt. Esposito and Lt. Allen. To me, it's obvious what's really going on here--there's been a sudden reappearance of an honored military tradition among the ranks of US enlisted army personnel. That tradition is called fragging, which is military shorthand for attacking your commanding officer with the intent of killing or seriously wounding them.

Fragging first drew attention in the 1960's and 1970's during the Vietnam conflict. It even developed its own catch phrase--"frag the lieutenant". Statistics of these incidents are obviously hard to come by, but I found some at this link: http://www.eugenelinden.com/Fragging_and_other_Withdrawl_Symptons.html).

It seems that in the two-year period of 1970-71 over 360 incidents of violence by troops against superiors were discovered, along with another 118 "suspicious incidents". In these attacks 45 officers were killed. Things were so bad in Vietnam that platoons would place bounties on some officers, paying a reward to whoever had the honor of killing their commanding officer. The act itself functioned as a leveller to the power a CO could exercise over his troops, and made sure that enlisted men had a voice in their fate in the jungle. In fact, all of the 20th-century conflicts enjoyed by the US featured some level of these types of incidents. In earlier wars these acts occurred as enlisted men tried to protect themselves from incompetent commanding officers; in Vietnam it surfaced as an act of personal revenge disguised as a protest against perceived injustices.

War is sold to us in this country the way detergent and mustard and juice is. The picture presented to us is a smooth, clean distortion of the reality. Instead of seeing terrified, uneducated young men and women panicking and firing off the world's most sophisticated individual weaponry at shadows in the sand, we are shown video-game styled ads that show ancient knights being transformed by lightning (and ideological belief, I guess) into brand new modern Marines that appear obedient to their master's voice. But this incident in Tikrit shows that humans with access to weapons can really do some strange things. So what we have here in Tikrit is probably an isolated incident; there's too much religion and propaganda in the heads of the current troops to ever disobey on the scale of the troops in Vietnam. Years of uncritical thinking and immersion in the biases and pro-US cheerleading of the television news culture have done their work well. But if fragging were to even reach 10% of the levels seen in Vietnam, perhaps then they'd stop the fucking war.

Aaah, probably not.

Give Me A New Trend, Damn It

I am a music fan and a musician...these two terms can be mutually exclusive when encountered in real life, but I find that a good musician is usually a good listener, and a good listener is usually a music fan. What never fails to amaze me is the way in which thoughtful music listeners are consistently fooled by the business end of music. Lately, no genre is more guilty of the constant shifting of trend and focus than the indie/punk/noise world.

As a highschooler in the early 1980's I gave up listening to the radio by the time I was a sophomore. The creeping death of classic rock radio had just begun. Real, vital, creative rock music had disappeared from commercial horizons and word-of-mouth began to be the way in which true believers shared their knowledge and love of new bands. Fanzines were always a good way to get tipped on a new band, or maybe you'd discover a good band opening for a band that you already liked. The crowds in US cities for adventurous bands like the Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du, the Butthole Surfers, and R.E.M. made journalists pay attention to the scene that was growing in size and influence--and that's where the problem began.

Athens, GA was the first place that I can recall being considered "the place where ALL the cool music is coming from now", on the strength of R.E.M., Pylon, the B-52's, etc. all attaining prominence, and in some cases, cash...this would've been back in 1984 or so. Its picturesque Southernness helped win the attention of the music media, who instantly raised the town to mythic status. Even bands like the Butthole Surfers were fooled and moved to town (see Atzerodt's Our Band Can Be Your Life) to soak in the coolness. After a short time the town became glutted with music and people's focus had been steered elsewhere, due to the rise of some more interesting music. That city was Minneapolis, where the Replacements and Husker Du were tearing things up--so bands like Soul Asylum and Trip Shakespeare managed to profit in the inevitable wake of the media frenzy growing around town by scoring major label deals.

And after Minneapolis, there was New Zealand--after New Zealand, there was D.C.--after D.C., Seattle--after Seattle, Japan--after Japan, Chicago--after Chicago, NYC--the pattern repeats itself. The labels from each locus become huge--Twin/Tone, Flying Nun, Sub Pop, Dischord, and Thrill Jockey. And in each city/country their music scene was hyped to the skies as the greatest ever, etc. etc. Now it's 2005 and it seems that nothing is hotter than Finland and Rune Grammofon Records. I saw on Dusted's site last week an article talking about Byron Coley and Thurston Moore and the Avanto Music Festival and Byron Coley even says "Finland's burning, baby". So I guess it's official now. No more Scandinavian black metal--now it's time for musical eclecticism, Finland style, as their hardcore/jazz/film noir/neoclassical melanges begin to conquer the listening world.

I hate this shit. It's so transparently stupid. Bands are bands, cities are not bands, nor are countries. It's as if the American music scene has turned into a British scene where everything must be bigger, newer, and therefore better than what went before. For the record--bands like the Strokes, the Bravery, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs--they aren't music, they're indie-rock marketing plans....

I heard a good story from an acquaintance--who will remain unnamed--about a big indie rock band who likes his band a lot, to the point where they've opened for them in NYC and Brooklyn in years past. When this band (hint--they had the misfortune of playing N6 on the night of the 2nd stolen Bush election) was planning on cruising through the area the next time they were basically forbidden by their own management to have the band they wanted on the bill. Aesthetics be damned--there wasn't enough new product out on the college radio charts by my friend's band to justify them appearing with the bigger band. This mentality shows you that the major-label mindset has survived the internet's destruction of the music industry...rather than go find jobs in a new industry the shit has flowed downhill into the indie label world. So the shifting trends that circle around the indie world will probably become more numerous. In a way I guess I'm glad--I really can't stand most of this freak-folk stuff that's currently making the critical community swoon (like Devendra Barnhart, Espers, etc.), so I'm actually eagerly awaiting the next trend now. They've even got me now....and by the way, Animal Collective is a great band, but they aren't a folk band...that's why they're good.

So now the metal trend has passed, the ambient trend has passed, the post-rock trend has passed, the post-punk rehash disco trend has passed, and we are near the end of noise-rock's 15 minutes of fame. What will be next? What will you follow?

We Are All Heroes, Every One of Us

There are certain words in anyone's language that get misused. Right now in the USA perhaps no word is so consistently misused as the word "hero". The word gets tossed around as cheaply as a bar rag these days, applied to such unworthy professions as our soldiery and our police, while also being used to salve the injured conscience of victims of violent crime. In its purest meaning, the word "hero" refers to the central character of a myth or epic poem who is notable for their levels of virtue or their hot-wired connection to the divinities of their time. In a Western sense the word also implies self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, usually involving some aspect of physical courage or daring.

The heroes of the Greek, Roman, and Scandinavian myths were knee-deep in blood at some point in their various stories. They were assassins, sorcerers, and valiant soldiers but mostly involved themselves in feats of stupendous violence, whether we are speaking of Theseus, Aeneas, or Cuchulain. Even though the myths and sagas were filled with stories of heroes, they emphasized the rarity of such figures--implying that a society would be lucky (or cursed) if more than one hero per generation ran around on the face of the planet. The ancients were onto something here, as their concept of hero was often an uneasy one. The hero's special relationship with the supernatural was something that challenged ancient concepts of universality in human experience and implied a certain moral relativism.

In the past five years, a post-9/11 meaning has descended upon the word hero, making the word less imposing and turning it into a concept that is synonomous with suffering a variety of violent acts or dying a sudden, unexpected death. A literalist might argue that people who suffer violence and sudden death are victims, not heroes--and certainly those who died in the towers qualify as victims. The relentless flag-waving in the wake of the WTC disaster helped solidify the mutation of victim into hero, as if by qualifying those killed in more epic terms the Bush administration was then more justified in its military response to the 9/11 attacks. But the semantic change wrought upon the concept of the word hero had begun years earlier, as the US government attempted to co-opt the word for its own use.

Did you ever wonder why there are so many cop shows on television? From an early age, the government attempts to inculcate a subliminal belief in the righteousness of the police with the proliferation of these shows. Questions about the necessity of the existence of the police are never raised on such programs, of course--instead viewers are treated to stories about "hero cops" struggling with the supposed ugliness of their jobs as they merrily beat and threaten their way through life. If the cause of the police is right and just, then so is the aim and purpose of the government they serve. In this fashion subtle mental habits are formed in the all-too-impressionable minds of American TV viewers which then extend into their everyday realities. With the help of the news media, a pessimistic outlook towards fellow members of society has been openly encouraged by the government. Media emphasis on violent crime has fooled people into thinking that we live in a dangerous society, and it has allowed the police and the government to gain unprecedented power over our daily lives. Rather than being cast as a potential threat to individual liberty, the police have been declared to be sanctioned intercessors between the citizenry and the horrible daemons of crime and terror. In short, the police are now "heroes", from Justin Volpe to Michael Dowd to Stacey Koon, from good cop to bad cop.

And if all police are heroes, it logically follows that all soldiers are heroes too. Especially Ilario Pantano, whose head was so stuffed with American media that he decided to act like he was in an action movie, riddling dead bodies with extra bullets and then displaying them with a sign attached. He was simply behaving like an ancient hero...skipping over 2000 years of Judeo-Christian morality with extreme prejudice and getting in touch with his inner pagan. Which of course earned him the support of rightist Christians everywhere in the US. But I digress...

Along with the oppressors, the oppressed began to drift towards heroism themselves. A culture of confessionalism grew out of the rise of psychotherapy and that continued downwards into society until it found expression in the TV talk shows and tabloid media of the late 1980's and early 1990's. Suddenly living through any sort of trauma and being able to dress yourself afterwards qualified as heroism. Heroes were everywhere--driving our buses, delivering antidrug sermons in urban communities, repairing our damaged heavy machinery, working with the mentally ill/mentally challenged, engaging in athletics--and we were the better for it. Everyone now could finally have their own movie. This was democracy.

The obvious result of a nation full of heroes is a nation that believes that no one has the right to tell it what to do...a nation that brandishes its weapons at the slightest provocation...a nation that feels that individual perceptions are the basis for a shared vision of society. In short, a nation filled with egotists of all shapes and sizes. A heroic nation, if you will--a nation drenched in the blood of innocents from every corner of the world, a nation that will fucking kill you if you piss it off. So the syllogism runs like this:

1. All heroes are blood-soaked killers.
2. All Americans are heroes.
3. All Americans are blood-soaked killers.