26. turn on the news

Turn On The News arrived in my life as one of those ‘you must hear this’ items. 1984 sometime, the dark middle point of Ronald Reagan’s reign. It’s a radio night, Bostock shouting everyone else down, elbowing his way to the turntable, demanding we pay attention to the first track on Side Four of Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, punk rock’s first truly epic album. Which, of course, meant Zen Arcade wasn’t really punk rock. It was too big, too beyond, and no question, Turn On The News was its most essential four and a half minutes.  A song of pain, a song of despair, and yet hope as well, because it’s a song of consciousness, of not turning away from the noise and pain of the world. And it forced a turn of phrase, in my life anyway. Some friend’s boring you to death with his girlfriend issues, or the details of the mortgage on his new condo. You finally just shake your head and say, ‘Turn on the news, man. There’s people out there with real f***ing problems’.” (Philip Random)  

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554. too drunk to f***

“Nasty rip of Dead Kennedy genius from 1981, assholism not just on the rise in Ronald Reagan‘s America, boiling over. Fortunately, we had the best west coast hardcore to help us focus our rage, antipathy, spite. Not at anybody in particular – just the general, clean-cut crowd. The so-called good kids, all dressing the same, looking the same, drinking the same shitty beer, getting too drunk to stand, let alone f***, puking their repressed, conservative, neo-fascist guts.” (Philip Random)

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