I ain't no joke

Eric B. and Rakim's lead track off the classic Paid In Full seems a proper response to this disgusting suggestion by the Bush administration. But what might my answer to Alyssa's political soundtrack look like? Here, in no particular order, is one attempt.



1.No list of "political music" (and i'd argue that all cultural production is "political") woudl be complete without Operation Ivy's "Freeze Up," in which lyricist/vocalist Jesse Michaels offers a powerful critique of the ravages of deindustrialization, the informatization of production, and the Reaganite ordering of global difference

One nation stands the tallest radiating blinding light.

Plastic and fluorescent energy robbing us of sight

Set in our way content with our decay

We wave the flag of freedom as we conquer and invade

Ever ask yourself wheres my place in this hell?

But no one's there to tell you cause they dont know that themselves

The well-rehearsed lines from our elated politicians

No longer offer solace we can see the self destruction.

2.Talib Kweli: "The Proud." This one seems to obvious, dealing with the failures of the Civil Rights Movement and the racialized brutality of bi-partisan "zero tolerance" policing initiatives.

It's just the beginning, the first inning

Battle for America's soul, thedevil's winning

The President is Bush, the Vice President's a Dick

So a whole lot of fuckin is what we gon' get

They don't wanna raise the babies so the election is fixed

That's why we don't be fuckin with politics

They bet on that, parents fought and got wet for that

Hosed down, bit by dogs, and got blacks into house arrest for that

It's all good except for that - we still poor

3.The (International) Noise Conspiracy - "Bigger Cages, Longer Chains" and "New Empire Blues" (I'm still waiting for Armed Love to be released in the US. When it does, this list may expand.) The former is a searing indictment of reformist politics with a killer saxophone intro. "Let's get together, get organized, and baby, let's set ourselves free." The latter is a rocking and insurrectionary Negri/Amin/Spivak-inspired interrogation of imperial power.

4.Sleater-Kinney, "Call The Doctor." The republican attempt to define personhood and citizenship through the institution of heterosexual marriage, and the democrats' refusal to demand that love, (and ballots, and unions) be recognized regardless of gender have been troubling elements of this electoral contest. Luckily, we have Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein (Janet Weiss had not yet joined the band when this, the lead track for their second album, was released.) Tucker and Brownstein's rage against the scientific categorization of bodies and attempts to control women's sexuality is a call to resist legislative attempts to excise queer relationships from the constitutional definition of citizenship.

5.Sleater-Kinney, "One Beat." Perhaps the best Sleater-Kinney song ever, 2002's lead-off track for what may be America's best rock band's sixth CD links concerns over imperial scientific discourse, the construction of gender, and imperialist war machinery in a single verse which asks:

If you think like Thomas Edison, can you invent

a world for me?

Now all that's on the surface

are bloody arms and oil

fields

could i turn this place all upside down

and shake you and your

fossils out

6.The Clash, "Washington Bullets." Alternatively, "Police On my Back" provides a welcome analysis of America in the age of "Infinite Detention," and "Career Opportunities" gives the lie to Bush's claims of job creation. But Sandinista's "Washington Bullets" takes a systematic look at how certain imperial efforts to instantiate global stability have resulted in bloodshed and terror.

and if you can find a Afghan rebel

That the Moscow bullets missed

Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist

Ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of

Tibet,

How many monks did the Chinese get?

In a war-torn swamp stop any

mercenary,

and check the British bullets in his armoury

Que? Sandinista!

7. Dead Kennedys, "terminal preppie." Bush's Theme Song. Probably Kerry's, too, for that matter.

8.The Coup, "Underdogs," and "Lazy Muthafucka" because tens of millions in this country live in poverty without health insurance, while the Joe Zaccagninos, David Swensens, Roland Bettses, Theresa Heinz Kerrys, Kenny Boy Lays, and Rupert Murdochs hold untold billions which they never toiled to earn.

to be continued