James Brown - I'm sticking with rock music because it is music largely outside of any significant social movement. Folks singers propelling strikes in the 1900s, blues players carrying social narrative in pre-Civil Rights America and soul singers in the 1960s were pieces of epochal change. Rock music has not been so intrinsically married to a movement for social change.

JohnH. I'm glad that's happened to you, really. I think that something similar has happened to many of us on this board. Now go get into a serious car accident, spend four months in rehab learning how to walk again and then resubmit your post.

And rock music has changed the world. Made a huge cultural impact that has given emotional and cultural meaning to probably 1 billion people.

Nursing has changed the world much, much more profoundly. If you're 16 years old and trying to figure out how to change it - rock isn't it.

Who's LKJ?

Why Neil Young?

I may actually take Biafra back, because he would have been a fucking incredible nurse. "HEEEEYYY! I hear your leg was BROKEN!!! HEEEEYYYY!"

= Justin

Justin from Queens wrote:
Why Neil Young?

I think Neil's worthy. He may be the real flip-flopper (backing Reagan, the invasion of Iraq) but when he's on my page, he's made me think about the world in a progressive way.

examples:

Rockin' In the Free World
Cortez the Killer
That last record
Southern Man

etc...

Compare and contrast with other artists from those eras:

Lynryd Skynrd: fucking hee haw redneck, insidiously racist bullshit
Eagles: fucking retarded, non-thinking music.
Jimmy Buffett: what-the-fuck-ever.
Led Zeppelin: Great band, but Immigrant Song wasn't really Pro-immigration. I can't call them lyrically challenging from a social justice standpoint.
Grateful Dead: Created generations of pointless hippies, drug addicts and noodly, nastacious music. Did they ever even play a fucking benefit? Probably not, unless it was for LSD, or junk food.

Justin, I'm not trying to pick on you, but, this is probably not an appropriate forum in which to make jokes about serious car accidents occurring to fellow posters.

A lot of activists will ask themselves the same question at some point: how much change have we actually made? But if one musician inspires someone to not just be another musician concerned about social concerns but to be an activist, that is really important. So yeah, Jello Biafra, Ian Mackaye etc, but also a million people whose bands never did anything on a big level but who at one time gave a shit about how things were and how some things weren't right, and who are now getting on with their lives, not as ageing punk rock stars to be but as people in the world. It's the music that's the changer. We listen, our hearts are filled, we go home and look at funny coloured walls and talk shit to each other. But we're there because our hearts can be filled by each other. One band or another do not mean a fucking thing without the rest of us, in bands or not, feeling that. We're changing the world now, just being here, talking to each other like this.

punk rock

Justin from Queens wrote:
Why Neil Young?

Southern Man and Ohio ( whatever that song about kent state is called ), too

mr. arrison wrote:I think Neil's worthy. He may be the real flip-flopper (backing Reagan, the invasion of Iraq)

I didn't know about those positions. Even if they were briefly held, those positions suck.

Justin from Queens wrote:Who's LKJ?

Linton Kwesi Johnson, dub poet.

I want to add Fela Kuti also. Served time, fought the power.

clocker bob wrote:

Justin from Queens wrote:
Why Neil Young?

Southern Man and Ohio ( whatever that song about kent state is called ), too

mr. arrison wrote:I think Neil's worthy. He may be the real flip-flopper (backing Reagan, the invasion of Iraq)

I didn't know about those positions. Even if they were briefly held, those positions suck.

Yes, he was quite forthgoing in his political beliefs. I just read a short essay about him by Nick Kent. Somehow, I get the feeling that old Uncle Neil was just being his old crotchety, contrary self.

Sebastian J. wrote:punk rock

ethic

As always Seb is on the money, see you at Cafê Tortoni for a Tango and Churro.

Gramsci wrote:

Sebastian J. wrote:punk rock

ethic

As always Seb is on the money, see you at Cafê Tortoni for a Tango and Churro.

are you coming? keep me informed