while i don’t subscribe to the whole message of this song (equality is not something that should be aspired toward), i still very much like it. what’s especially unique about the chili peppers is that they appeared right when all the whiggers started popping up in the music industry… trying to form a bridge between cRap and cRock (think ‘limp triscuit’… or biscuit, rather), and yet when kiedis rapped, we didn’t get the feeling he thought he was Ice T. moreover, they never compromised their signature sound. the cRap they did was very rare and only a gesture to attract the mainstream audience.
Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”
To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.
Elie Wiesel
“Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and ‘regular’ throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only ‘good guys’ in it, or eating cottage cheese.” - FZ
^^^ the techne of the automated machine and the music it produces in the modern age could never be classed as ‘master’, and neither could those who are drawn and attracted to its substratum of artificiality. with the exception of a few who escaped the homogenizing force of the technologies and capitalist modes of production that would monopolize and put to slow death the spirit of music, our age marks the beginning stage of the descent into a mediocrity the human species will never again be able to rise out of en masse. but this is the result of a dialectical logic that has governed our relationship to music in the west; the process involved a finite number of general possibilities being realized over the course of a few hundred years… eventually to reach a maximum point of creativity and then begin its gradual descent into banality.
the master musician’s last stand, or i should say epic battle to forestall the imminent destruction of the spirit of music in the west, might best be portrayed in this last valiant attempt to hold the gates against the untermusician, the post-modern artist and his complacence to artificial intelligence. pay close attention to the voice of howe’s guitar in the opening part leads… the insane cackling and violent madness of its berserker rage as it slashed and stabbed at the enemy. this should give you a picture of the intensity of the battle.
in any case the ‘master class’ of musicians is still possible - our four heroes, howe, moraz, squire and white, didn’t lose the battle - but its numbers have been greatly reduced and forced to go into exile (you’ll rarely find them on the radio).
(one thing plato was absolutely right about was that you can judge much about a people/culture by its music)