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Nothin' new, sound of breaking glass
A peppy little number about real anarchy, not the Disney version that Libertarians pretend can save the world. Our British cousins had an ugly taste of it last week. The conscious agenda of the rioters was "smash and grab"; nothing overtly political motivating it, and nothing sympathetic to say about it. But both of those remarks are beside the point, I think: riotous anarchy is an emergent phenomenon that explodes forth when a certain set of social, political, and economic conditions is satisfied. It has root causes that can either be mitigated or aggravated. In Western democracies we have sparks that are being fanned into flames by an international nest of motherfuckers. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if I have more to say on the subject sometime. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass, Nick Lowe (1978, from "Pure Pop For Now People," Columbia 35329), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
Editor's note: The UK release of this album was called "Jesus of Cool," but Lowe's US label wouldn't stand for such heretical cheekery in the title, so my original purchase of this music was called Pure Pop. But Lowe reissued "Jesus" on CD a few years ago, which I also own and highly recommend for the bonus tracks.
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"I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames." -- Jim Morrison
ReplyDeleteOh I think it was political, it's just that those who looted didn't know it. But the ruling classes it and it has shaken them to their boots.
ReplyDelete59er: I could say pretty much the same thing as Morrison except that I'm not getting any fucking kicks. I hope you are, though.
ReplyDeleteMarginalia: I agree. I stated my idea clumsily but was trying to say the same thing. There was no formal or recognized political agenda, but the emergent phenomenon of mob anarchy is definitely a political reality. One interpretation of US political history is that the Democrats ran the ultra-blueblood Franklin Roosevelt for President in 1932 to politically engineer a way around a bolshevik revolution, on the one hand, and the emergence of a populist dictatorship on the other hand. Back in those days we had more rich elites who understood that both anarchy and totalitarianism are bad for business.