718. revolution

“It’s 1969 and Nina Simone, one of the great voices (and souls) to ever descend upon music, delivers the closest thing she’ll ever have to a pop album. Artists covered include Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, even the Beatles (sort of) with Revolution less of a cover, more of a rousing riff on John Lennon’s call to consciousness (if not arms). Music to change the world either way. Or as a friend once put it, if this is what a political meeting sounded like, I’d join a f***ing party.” (Philip Random)

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760. general strike

DOA, original Vancouver punks, deliver the theme song to the great general strike of the mid 1980s, wherein the people finally just got so disgusted, they all rose up simultaneously and shut the whole stupid system down. The asylums were emptied, the schools burned, the banks blown to smithereens, the various politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders strangled with each others intestines. Or maybe it was just a dream.” (Philip Random)

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928. they aren’t the world

If We Are The World is the worst record ever released, then it’s entirely plausible to argue that Culturcide‘s assassination of it is the best. It’s certainly the purest response to it. Just take the original, sh** all over it and otherwise make an ugly-beautiful mess of things. Maybe you just had to be there to understand. Ronald Reagan‘s trickle down economics in full effect, the rich getting ever richer, pissing from their penthouses on everybody below, nobody really noticing as they stood in line around the block for Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwartzennegar, Michael J Fox movies. There is an alternative history of the past twenty-five where the revolution did happen. The ravenous masses rose in unanimous disgust and ate the rich. And it all started with Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America (the album).

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1000. time

The actor (aka David Bowie, David Jones, Ziggy Stardust) is starting to crack here. We all were in retrospect. Even if you were a thickheaded suburban kid barely into puberty – the whole 60s thing just wasn’t playing out as anticipated.  Revolution in our time?  Maybe. But by 1973, it was clear it wouldn’t be an old-fashioned political revolution.  No, it was all going to be much weirder than that.

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