Rolling Stones and George W
p2pnet.net News:- The cultural icons who are the Rolling Stones are rolling out yet another album, A Bigger Bang, and the accompanying tour could be the band’s final effort. The album is the first new studio effort from the band in nearly eight years.
One track is already gaining considerable media attention, although the album doesn’t even go on sale until September 6.
‘Sweet Neo Con’ is being called a cruel attack on the president by right wing pundits. Jagger has said the song isn’t aimed at anyone in particular. However, the lyrics appear to be targeted at the Bush administration.
“You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think you´re full of …”
“It´s liberty for all, democracy´s our style/Unless you are against us, then it´s prison without trial.”
Some people have speculated that the controversy could affect the mega tour due top launch on August 21.
Stones members have admitted there’s a certain amount of worry about a possible backlash in the US. It’s unlikely, however, that they’ll be hurt as much as the Dixie Chicks, who “decided to throw a sucker punch at President Bush while on a concert tour in London on March 10th”. Country music seems to be dominated by fans who lean hard to the right, whereas rock and roll has always enjoyed a much more liberal fan base.
Cory Higgins – Digitaltopia
August 15th, 2005 at 12:50 am
I wonder if Mick will come out as hard on Englands new policy Re: terrorsim/terrorists as he does against Pres. Bush. I find it laughable that a bunch of drug taking womanizers telling anyone that what they are doing is “wrong”.
But, you know what?….I still love the Stones. Now they need to just shut up and sing.
August 15th, 2005 at 1:27 am
I find it hilarious that Mick Jagger would be critical of the US for putting terrorists in jail when he vacations in BURMA-one of the most repressive regimes in the world today, universally condemned by the UN and all human rights organizations. Talk about being a hypocrit! But I guess anti-americanism is all the fashion…I’m not buying another Rolling Stones record…note the timing-he didn’t come out and confirm this in May, before the tour tickets went on sale. Now I’m stuck.
August 15th, 2005 at 1:56 am
The protest song was probably invented as a musical genre about 15 minutes after music was invented. (Patents Pending on ‘Music: An entertainment mechanism implemented by manipulating the pitch, frequency, volume and other attributes of sound waves through various devices’; by Sony BMG, Warner Music, UMG, et al…)
Most of these songs are quite topical on current events and wind up being rather ephemeral. Recall if you will how Vaughn Meader’s career wound up in the toilet after 22 November 1963.
In their hey-day, Peter, Paul, and Mary were reviled and despised by the ‘establishment’ and even made Nixon’s enemy list. Their works were certainly not ‘in your face’ protest songs. The messages were far more subtle, but clearly there to anyone who cared to think for a moment. Their major ‘crime’ was that their songs became popular enough to make the charts, get air play, and (Oh my God!) be sung by schoolchildren during music class.
Despite all of the controversy over them back in the 1960s, now some people’s grandparents can’t wait for one of their PBS specials to be aired again during pledge week.
While it might be a polarizing controversy now, in ten years this song will be looked at as a ‘cultural reflection of current of events of the day.” Woody Guthrie’s “This Land” was originally written as a protest song during the depression in the 1930s. Somehow it has morphed into something that now gets labelled as ‘Patriotic Songs.’ It then got another new life by the jibjab.com flap during the 2004 US Elections.
Strange things can happen over the years. If you’d told someone in 1985 that Arnold Schwartzenegger would be Governor of California someday, they probably would have wet their pants laughing.
–WRU
August 15th, 2005 at 4:24 am
Wow your stuck with tickets, you lost a couple bucks, think about this I was stuck with a president that lost the election for four years, and we lost democrocy.
August 15th, 2005 at 4:43 am
I can’t wait until the Stones new album comes out! Long live the Rolling Stones!
August 17th, 2005 at 2:04 am
good that’s one less dumb ass we have to see at the concert. If you agree with anything at all Bush has done the you are as screwed as all the other convervative JESUS freaks
August 18th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
Jesus freak? Hardly. Conservative? Yup. Do I agree with Bush? Yup. And, You will see my dumb ass at shows….SUPRISE!
August 19th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Oh, by the way….you can see my dumb ass at the Albany show and in Hershey Park…I’m working on Toronto too.