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I have a problem with something that just happened in my school. I play drums in band, and we're going to a national competition in April. We were playing a peice entitled "Dresden" and it was a memorial type thing for the city of Dresden, Germany where the Allied Troops bombed in 1945. The air caught on fire and it was a firestorm thing. We'd been working on this peice for months and it sounded really good. We played it in the school concert and got a ton of great reviews on it. But, then, the day after the concert, my band director told us to pass them in, "we're not playing this when we go to the competition". My brother and a few of his friends asked why and she said that the school had told her "you did a wonderful job on it, but you're going to be representing the school. We feel this song isn't patriotic enough." And all because before we played the song, our band director had us read an article about it to the audience and it said something to the effect of "the Allies ended up missing any sites in the city that could have been of any advantage in the War effort. Both the train station and the barrocks were left untouched, and mostly women, children, and the elderly were killed."
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apples |
02:52pm Mar 23, 2002 EST |
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wow sorry to hear that
what national contest were you going to??
i'm just wondering cuz i'm in band too and we're going to florida in april for a contest
we're going to Massachussetts. YAY!
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andrew |
09:29pm Mar 25, 2002 EST |
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You know that is really strange, about your band. I am in a singing group at my school. We sung Ohio. It's about the four antiwar protesters who were killed by the National Guard on a campus protest. Its words are "find the cost of freedom buried in the ground, mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down".
This is not a patriotic song, but, by being sung post sept 11, it took on a new meaning. I donŐt think I need to tell anyone where the cost of freedom is buried.
wasn't that song about Kent State? I think I've heard that before. Either that or it's a different song. Is it by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, do you know?
I agree. It should take a new meaning. This peice we did could take a new meaning, too. But I think my school had a problem with our band director making a comment that could be taken that the US screwed up on something. No matter how long ago.
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Sergei |
02:27pm Mar 27, 2002 EST |
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Ugh. I'm not even IN a school band like that, and that concept, that there's something wrong with a song that "could be taken that the US screwed up on something", deeply disturbs me. Gladly it hasn't touched the radio stations. I still hear songs with horrors-of-Amerika themes being played on various channels. (Does anyone remember the hoax about Clear Channel putting out a list of songs they were forbidden to play after September 11?)
I've also noticed the band named Anti-flag grow immensely in popularity after September. They're a group that was until recently indie, anyone heard of them?
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andrew |
07:23pm Mar 27, 2002 EST |
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To DrummerChick05:
Yeah, the song was about Kent State and it is it by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
To: Sergei
By 'horrors-of-Amerika themes' what do you mean, can you give me an example?
Yeah, I head about those songs, but that wasn't a hoax. I'll find the link and send you the list of songs I found. It was e-mailed to me from the group I belong to, "KidSpeak". I found that really...annoying to me, because they added System of a Down's "Chop Suey!" on there, and that song is about DOMESTIC ABUSE. What does that have to do with Sept. 11th?
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Sergei |
10:35pm Mar 29, 2002 EST |
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> By 'horrors-of-Amerika themes' what do you mean, can you give me an example?
I'm thinking of the "Kent State, the government has done something wrong, America sucks" genre. The song about Kent State or the types of songs by Peter Tosh that make a political statement, these fit into here. Much of Rage Against the Machine's songs could also be placed into this category. "Easy to Be Hard" and other counterculture anthems also come to mind, and indeed that song is still often played. How about "America" from West Side Story -- now that certainly counts as an irreverent, anti-patriotic piece of humor. (It's also really great to dance to.)
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Sergei |
10:44pm Mar 29, 2002 EST |
11 of 11 |
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Actually, it turned out that that whole list was indeed a hoax. After I heard about it, I went to the Clear Channel radio site to investigate what they were doing, and on the home page it announced as its latest news headline: ALLEGED "BANNED SONG LIST" DOES NOT EXIST.
It turned out that list was put together by people who were trying to amuse themselves, completely fooling people with its plausibility, and shocking people at the same time because the inclusion of certain songs was so outrageous. And they made it funny, too -- including songs because of one relevant word in the title (all the songs with "fall" in the title) or an ironically untrue or inapplicable title. Some of them you had to run all the lyrics through your head to get (Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" for example: nothing sounds fishy about the concept of the song, but yhen you remember there's the verse that begins "Mr. Play-it-safe was afraid to fly...") It started out when one OTHER radio station put a shorter list together and then someone else saw the list and ran with it. Adding everything they could think of and blowing up the story.
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