Missed a couple of days there. Perodically I'm obliged (privelged actually) to contribute a piece to the in-house AMG organ, and I was struggling to get it before deadline. I can't reprint it in full here - it belongs to the client. But I may modify parts of it and feed it back to those in bloggerland who may wish to read it.
I note Madonna has oficially retracted that stupid video entitled "American Life". I wrote a song by that name back in 1979 and briefly aired it out with the first three-piece 11,000 Switches - I think in the handwritten catalogue it's Uncle Dave song No. 42. Although I believed in the number, it wasn't in our book very long because it was obvious the tune fell flat with the audience, and at that time we didn't have very many that did. I do have a good recording of it though.
As far as Madonna's adventure with her video is concerned, I only partly believe her story about how she voluntarily pulled the plug on it. I do believe that it was made before the war broke out, but it was made during the time when war was imminent (which seemed to drag on forever.) I also believe that she tried to tone it down, but I don't agree that it is her "most controiversial work ever". There was no one stepping in this time to say "Madonna's always on the cutting edge, and if her work makes you uncomfortable than that is what she intends, blah, blah, blah..." It was more like "Madonna, you need to get your sh*t off the air." And so it came off, with word that the star is "frustrated at being misunderstood". Well, I'm misunderstood too, but it should would be a lot less frustrated if I had all that money.
But in a way this does disturb me, and I find myself at sympathy with Madonna, as in this climate not even she can push the envelope. The war, homeland security, terrorism and the much-maligned concept of "freedom" are all concepts/buzzwords that are becoming both sacred cows **and** taboos. It is clear in the last few days that the military is trying to quash any reasonable dissent to the spin they'd like to see on how their field operation is going. I don't mean things like Geraldo giving away the co-orindinates to his position on the field - I saw that when it aired, and I thought "when is he going to stop?" He didn't; it was clearly wrongheaded to report it, and he should've been fired for doing so. He wasn't. Peter Arnett was, however, for giving to Iraqi television the notion that their resistance was hindering the Allied assault. C'mon - the Iraqi Republican Guard is 80,000 men strong, and they're a lot tougher and smarter than they were in 1990 - did anyone think it was going to be easy?
I have a lot of problems with this war, and had them well before the war itself started. I did not begin this list as a forum to go into my observations on that - besides, it will upset some of my family members, whose sympathies go well beyond supporting the troops down to supporting the war, the President, and everything else that goes with it. But I'm still not one to lie down in a busy intersection and wave my arms around screaming "I'm dead! I'm dead!" One of the problems with objecting to the war in concientious way is that you don't want to alloy yourself with the bunch of freaks who do things like that. Yet I'm still trying to find the words to voice my dissent.
What I'm mostly upset about is the general and subtle abridgement of domestic freedoms under this administration. In the past Madonna had the freedom to burn crosses and/or make softcore sex videos to show on MTV, and we had the freedom to change the channel to Andy Griffith or something - anything. Now even Madonna is censoring herself, no one is getting the real story on the war and once-naturally-proud Americans are nervously glancing around corners being careful to not say anything that might seem unpatriotic, to avoid loss of job, loss of friends and associates, and even to avoid arrest. That's not a free society, but a paranoid one. It isn't like we haven't been here before, but those times have hardly gone down in history as "our finest hour(s)."
Moday Playlist will appear here tomorrow. Thanks for putting up with this.
Uncle Dave Lewis