Spend your summer in the hometown of Mumia Abu-Jamal with youth from around the country at the seventh annual Philly Freedom Summer from July 23 - August 3 2001! In housing projects and suburbs, high schools and college campuses, on the streets and in our communities, our generation is looking for a way to FIGHT BACK. Inspired by Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, Refuse & Resist! initiated Philly Freedom Summer in 1995. PFS brings youth from across the country to Philadelphia, the home of Mumia and the city notorious for police brutality and corruption, to fight for Mumia and the future he represents.
At PFS we rage against societies' injustices through determined actions, door-to-door outreach, postering campaigns, street theater, and cultural events. We stand with Mumia, fight for his freedom, and defiantly declare that MUMIA MUST NOT BE EXECUTED!
Join the growing struggle against the death penalty, against the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, against the rising prison industry, against the criminalization of Black and Latino youth, and for a future far different than the one that's shaping up today!
Call (212) 713-5657 or emial info@refuseandresist.org to sign up today! Additional info at www.refuseandresist.org.
04/29/2001 Tom Wins a CMA!
It's a dynasty. For the fourth year in a row Tom Morello was voted Best Guitarist at the 24th Annual California Music Awards. Tom was presented his award by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Tom also presented the Outstanding Punk/Ska Album which was won by Green Day.
03/20/2001 Upcoming Actions in Support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Here is a list of upcoming events in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal:
March 24th
"Mumia is All of Us" Youth Conference
Philadelphia, PA
March 30th
Rally for Mumia
Washington, DC
March 31st
Organizing Conference
Washington, DC
April 4th
Rally and March to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
New York City, NY
May 12th
International Day of Support for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Events TBA
If you want to attend, or help plan an event in your area, email iacenter@iacenter.org
For more information about the movement to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, click on the links above, or visit www.mumia2000.org
Also, make sure to read about Tom Morello's recent visit with Mumia below!
03/13/2001 Tom Meets with Mumia
I just returned from a visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal. It was an amazing visit with an amazing man.
SCI Greene, the prison which holds Mumia, houses 1600 inmates. The prison is a sprawling series of one-story buildings, connected by long corridors, and surrounded by two huge fences draped with razor wire. There is also razor wire many feet below the ground, to prevent inmates from tunneling out. In the seven years that the prison has been open, no convicts have ever escaped.
The prison is built on a piece of flat land in the midst of hilly country in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, in the old coal mining town of Waynesburg. Most of the miners in the area were fired from their jobs during the Reagan era, and there is a tremendous amount of unemployment. Now the chief industry in the region is SCI Greene maximum security penitentiary. Most of the guards are white rural Pennsylvanians; most of the inmates are African-Americans from hundreds of miles away, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. It is a model of the 90s and early 2000s corporate jail. Rather than mining black coal, the new product is black men.
I arrived at the prison and was met by a young rebel by the name of Adam, who was to shepherd me through the very complicated and often antagonistic procedures that one must go through to meet with a prisoner on death row. Adam has a citizen's license to monitor the prisoners to make sure that they're not being abused. He's friends with a lot of the prisoners and a lot of the guys on death row. He was sort of stalling in the waiting room to hang out with me to make sure that everything went alright. They were trying to force him to either go visit someone or to get the hell out of there. He managed to stall for a while before finally having to go to visit one of the other prisoners. There's all sorts of rules there; you can't use a cellphone, or a pager, or a laptop computer in the waiting room, presumably because you're going to be tapping into the mainframe of the prison and finding out where all the air ducts were and things like that. They kept yelling at people for trying to do that.
The first guard that we encountered was really a dick. He was doing everything he could to make my visit as difficult as possible. When I arrived, he said "Well, Mumia's meeting with his attorneys, so you can't meet with him." I said "I understand that visiting time is until 3:30, so that gives me four and a half hours. He's expecting me, and I'm sure he'll soon be done." He then said "are you on his visiting list?" "Yes, I am." I could tell that he was crossing his fingers and hoping like hell that I was not on the list, but he finally dejectedly said "I guess I see you there." Like a crabby-ass hall monitor, this mustachioed guard kept chastising us, telling me and my new friend Adam that we had to keep it down.
I befriended one of the other guards. These guys are people from poor coal-mining families now making pretty decent money from these relatively well-paying jobs keeping the blacks at bay. It's sad in a way, because the class backgrounds of both guards and inmates are probably very similar, and yet… I learned a bit about this guy and his coal-mining background, since the Morellos were Illinois coal miners. And since both he and I were football fans, we kind of made connections over that, and that ended up helping facilitate my entry into the prison.
After you complete your paperwork and pass through the metal detector, you wait for the first electronic iron door to swing back, at which point you pass the threshold of terror. You can look out the windows in the hallway that you're walking down, and see the point where you pass the razor wire-covered fence, meaning that now you are on the Inside. Clark Kissinger had cryptically warned me to make sure that I did not go to the prison alone, and to make sure that whoever was waiting for me had a contact number, just in case I disappeared Guatemalan-style. So it was really a weird moment when you finally crossed that threshold. I thought "my fate is now in the hands of a guy that I hope will one day open that door so I can return. But right now, that is not in my control." And that is a very, very scary feeling. At each exchange, you show a guard behind bullet-proof glass your paperwork, and are allowed to proceed past the next set of scary doors. In the deepest recesses of the prison is death row.
I passed through the waiting room area, and entered the visiting room, where at long last, through thick glass, I got to meet Mumia.
The thing that was most striking about the whole experience was how vital, alive, intelligent, humorous and free Mumia Abu-Jamal seems after having spent 23 hours a day for nearly 20 years, in a cell smaller than the average bathroom. We spoke for two hours about matters of great and small importance, and treated each other like long-lost friends. Mumia remained handcuffed throughout the entire visit.
The night before I was to visit Mumia, I called up JK, and requested that he put a message on the Rage website asking if any of our fans wanted to send messages to Mumia. What followed was an amazing outpouring of feelings and well wishes from Rage Against the Machine fans, in a very short period of time. From Serbia, Ireland, Canada, Australia, England, Germany, even Mumia's Philadelphia, messages of support came flooding in. Sadly, I was warned in advance that I would be unable to bring the messages in, even to read them to Mumia. So I jotted down some of the highlights on a small piece of paper and smuggled it into the visiting room. As I unfolded the piece of paper, I was sure that some secret camera was videotaping me and soon I would be dragged away. But I managed to get some of your messages through verbatim, and Mumia was tremendously touched by the sentiments expressed by Rage fans. It's clear that this man, through his struggle, has touched many of your lives, and as one person wrote, Mumia has already won the war, even if they may win the occasional battle, because he has struck a spark from which thousands will spring and fight injustice. So thank you for your messages, he was very touched by them, and we will be mailing all of your messages to him in their totality to his address at the prison.
Mumia was very grateful for all of the support that he has received from RATM fans. He said that he receives letters every week from people who have found out about his case via the band, and that at every pro-Mumia demonstration Rage fans can be counted in large number. He sends his thanks and deep appreciation for all of those people's efforts on his behalf.
Mumia and I talked about many things, including several of the columns that he has written recently. We talked about the heroism of the American revolutionary Tom Paine, and how he was the Che Guevara of his time-fighting injustice in the American colonies, in Great Britain, and in the French Revolution as well. One of the things that Thomas Paine wrote about-which was rejected by some of the Founding Fathers who were from the slave-owning aristocracy-was about the importance of a social safety net, that part of guaranteeing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was making sure that there would not be any who were destitute or poor. There are echoes of that today. Corporate welfare continues to run rampant and millionaire owners of corporations are bailed out when there's a dip in the stock market, while people in rural America and in the inner cities who cannot feed their children are forced to find some way to do it, through crime or prostitution or whatever. This is a gross injustice because, as Mumia pointed out, there is no greater fear, no cop's gun pointed at you, no horror movie in existence, that is as scary as not bringing home a paycheck when you have mouths to feed. And it is that kind of fear that eventually lands a lot of people in jail, and that is perpetuated by an economically unjust society.
We talked about the police in Philadelphia, and how they had responded very differently to three recent incidents. They diverted a gathering of African-American fraternities away from yuppie-esque South Street, to the ghetto. They stood by with a "kids will be kids, whaddya gonna do?" attitude when predominantly white Mardi Gras revelers looted and flipped over cars on that same street a few months later. And most pointedly, the police arrested by the hundreds and bashed heads when a mixed race gathering of people of a leftist political orientation let their feelings be known at the Republican National Convention. Those who are sworn to serve and protect, clearly function as agents to maintain the economic and political status quo, by any means necessary.
We talked about Mumia's current legal situation, which is in flux. He has asked the court to allow him to dismiss his current legal council because one of the junior attorneys was on the verge of publishing a tell-all account of Mumia's trial, while it's entering one of its most critical stages. He feels that this is a tremendous conflict of interest, and will be seeking to handle his own legal affairs the rest of the way.
We talked about history. Because of our education system and consumer culture, history is presented to kids as nothing more than boring statistics-dates, facts, and the aberrant military behavior of white men-and how this is one of the major crimes of our educational system, that young people are not taught that they themselves are historical agents. A tether is not drawn between those who have fought for, and achieved progressive, radical, and even revolutionary change in the past, and young people today. Mumia brought up the example of Harriet Ross, a slave who one day had had enough. She was harboring a young man who was to be beaten by his owner. She squared off against one of the slave masters, basically kicking his ass, and then rode off to freedom on the back of a cow. This woman was Harriet Tubman's mother. Clearly, Harriet Tubman, one of the greatest Americans and founder of the Underground Railroad, knew her history. Mumia and I bemoaned the fact that young women today see as their role models people like Gisele, or Christina Aguilera, or Destiny's Child. Those are the doors that are left wide-open and ringed with neon lights for women to dream about entering, while the doors of our radical past are kept hidden from view.
Mumia is tremendously well-read and made several book recommendations to me which I will pass along to you: "The Black Jacobins" by C.L.R. James, "The Many-Headed Hydra" by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, and "Rogue State" by William Blum.
He was very kind and thanked Rage Against the Machine for the work that we had done on his behalf, paused momentarily and said "you've got balls." I thanked him, but reminded him that if anyone had balls, it was him, for his ceaseless struggles for justice from behind bars, as well as those within the movement who had continued to fight at the grassroots, not only for a fair trial and for his release, but for continuing his struggles against injustice in every quarter.
One of the things that was most impressive about Mumia is that he seeks no pity. It seems to me that the hell on earth that is death row, has not damaged his spirit in the least. He pointed out that Amadou Diallo was not on death row, and yet he met his end as a "free man." This message was driven home to me later that day when I heard from my mom that a childhood friend of mine, Larry Jones, a black man in his prime, had OD'd on drugs and died that day, on his birthday. He was faced with the kind of hopelessness and dead-end options that one can face in the ghetto, circumstances that are insured by economic and social injustice. Larry Jones was not on death row, yet he too, met his end, in part, at the hands of a fucked-up system.
We talked about figures that have been inspirational to us, like Bob Marley-who Mumia had actually interviewed (and shared a big fat joint with) during his days on the outside as a journalist-and Muhammad Ali, and what a tremendous inspiration they were to both of us. They were two people who had found loopholes in the system. Bob Marley's talent and spirit were able to transcend race in order to bring a message of freedom and solidarity across the globe. Muhammad Ali, through his athletic prowess, was one of the principal reasons for putting and end to the US involvement in the Vietnam War, by galvanizing blacks and whites alike, with his reminder that "no Vietcong ever called me 'nigger.'"
We also spent a lot of time laughing and joking about the irony of Rage Against the Machine winning a Grammy, about some of our musical tastes, and just having a really nice time chatting like old friends. I told Mumia that through the tremendous impact he has had on people around the globe, that through his amazing insightful articles that he continues to publish (available at http://www.mumiabook.com), his ongoing struggle against the corrupt American legal system, his effervescent spirit and the fact that his voice continues to challenge, and change the world, makes him a person who is much more free than many of us who walk around in society, drive through the KFC, numb ourselves with cable TV, and live our lives without our hands on the wheel of history. With a rich laugh, broad smile, and light in his eyes, Mumia paused, looked at me square in the face, and said "I know."
When the guard came in and said that my time was up, we pressed our fists together through the thick glass (his still in handcuffs), exchanged farewells, love and respects, and spontaneously shouted "power to the people!" in unison.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a great man, a great revolutionary, and a friend. Thank you again for your outpouring of support, which we will forward to him. Together, we will continue the struggle for a fair trial for Mumia, his eventual release, and to keep fighting against injustice wherever it rears its head.
Tom Morello
03/12/01
Click here to send your own message to Mumia. We will be mailing him these comments on March 20, 2001.
03/09/2001 Tom Nominated for California Music Award!
Tom has been nominated in the Outstanding Guitarist category for this year's California Music Awards and you can vote online at www.insidebayarea.com/cama!
The California Music Awards (formerly the Bammies) now in its 24th year, will be held on Saturday, April 28, 2001. The award celebrates the outstanding music and artists of California! Nominees are selected by a panel of music industry professionals representing journalists, radio hosts, program and music directors, critics, club bookers, artist management, record company executives, producers and retail management and are intended to reflect the California groups and performers who excelled in music in 2000.
02/21/2001 Rage wins/breaks a Grammy!
Congrats to RATM for winning Best Hard Rock Performance for Guerrilla Radio (and then breaking it) at the 43rd Grammy Awards!
See the article on the GRAMMY site HERE!
02/20/2001 Battle of Mexico City DVD Is Here!
From Tom Morello
This is the full-length concert and video journal of our trip to Mexico City which was clearly one of the musical and political highlights of our career. Read more....
11/27/2000 Battle of Mexico City DVD Set for Release In January!
A DVD and VHS video entitled "The Battle of Mexico City" will be released in January. This is the full-length concert and video journal of our trip to Mexico City which was clearly one of the musical and political highlights of our career. From the police riots outside the venue, to Zack's brilliant vignettes highlighting important issues in Mexico (including the Zapatistas' struggle for land and freedom, and students' and workers' battles for justice in the cities), this was an amazing time in our lives that we were fortunate to have documented. The live performance was one of the most inspired in our history, and the Mexico City crowd was as intense as any we've played for. Bits of this concert were previously shown on MTV around the release of "The Battle of Los Angeles," but this is the full, uncensored, unedited, unapologetic version of the show and the events surrounding this crucial moment in the band's history.
11/06/2000 New Rage Single-- "Renegades of Funk" to Begin Radio Airplay November 7
"Renegades of Funk" the first single from the upcoming Rage Against the Machine album Renegades will be released to radio on Election Day, November 7th.
"Renegades of Funk", originally recorded by Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force, pays tribute to the true political renegades in the history of America: Thomas Paine, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X among others. Therefore it is only fitting that the version recorded by Rage Against the Machine be released on a day when our major party electoral choices are so limited.
Renegades, which will be released December 5th, is a collection of songs originally written and recorded by artists such as MC5, The Stooges, EPMD, Bob Dylan, Minor Threat, The Rolling Stones, Afrika Bambaataa, Devo, Volume 10, Erik B and Rakim, and Cypress Hill. In keeping with the spirit and concept of the Renegades album, a newly remixed, alternate version of Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (previously only available as a single along with Rage's 1997 home video) was also included.
10/31/2000 Epic Records Announces Plans To Release Rage Against The Machine's "Renegades" On December 5, 2000
Renegades is a collection of songs originally written and recorded by artists such as MC5, The Stooges, EPMD, Bob Dylan, Minor Threat, The Rolling Stones, Afrika Bambaataa, Devo, Volume 10, Erik B and Rakim, Cypress Hill. In keeping with the spirit and concept of the Renegades album, a newly remixed, alternate version of Bruce SpringsteenÆs ôThe Ghost of Tom Joadö (previously only available as a single along with RageÆs 1997 home video) was also included.
All songs were produced by Rick Rubin (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Founder of Def Jam) and mixed by Rich Costey (Fiona Apple, Dave Navarro, Jurassic 5). The first single and video will be "Renegades of Funk" originally written and recorded by Afrika Bambaataa.
The initial shipment of the album will contain two bonus live tracks - "Kick Out The Jams" and "How I Could Just Kill A Man." Both of these songs were recorded live at The Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. "How I Could Just Kill A Man" features guest appearances by Sen Dog and B-Real of Cypress Hill. These two tracks will be deleted from any future pressings.
A DVD/VHS of Rage's 1999 performance in Mexico will also be released on December 12. Originally aired on MTV; this home video features the entire concert, as well as some political pieces created by lead singer Zack de la Rocha.
"What began as a couple of bonus tracks has blossomed into one of the most powerful records of our career. There has never been another album like this where a band like Rage Against The Machine has recorded an entire CD of revolutionary versions of classic hip-hop and rock songs. We attack these songs with the same irreverence for convention with which they were written." - Tom Morello
Following is the track listing for Renegades:
Microphone Fiend (Eric B & Rakim)
Pistol Grip Pump (Volume 10)
Kick Out the Jams (MC 5)
Renegades of Funk (Afrika Bambaataa)
Beautiful World (Devo)
I'm Housin' (EPMD)
In My Eyes (Minor Threat)
How I Could Just Kill a Man (Cypress Hill)
The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen)
Down on the Street (The Stooges)
Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones)
Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
Attached is a track by track breakdown of Renegades, written by esteemed rock journalist Dave Marsh. These notes provide a brief history of each song and the artists who originally wrote and recorded them; as well as offer insight into what inspired Rage Against The Machine to record their own versions of these classic songs.
10/30/2000 RENEGADES - notes by respected and reknowned music writer Dave Marsh:
All these songs come from rockers and rappers who were themselves renegades. These notes are designed to let Rage fans know who created the tunes and help them seek out the music that has inspired Rage Against the Machine. If you do seek out these artists and their records, youÆre likely to find them just as inspiring as the guys in Rage do. These are anthems-reminding us why we love the music, the people who make it and the people who listen to it, is what theyÆre all about.
Microphone Fiend, Eric B and Rakim
Eric B and Rakim helped create rapÆs Golden Age in the late 1980s, and ôMicrophone Fiend,ö from their 1988 Follow the Leader album, was their anthem.. Deejay Eric B, a former radio disc jockey, wrote the song but itÆs rapper Rakim who put it across, in all its mic melting glory: The lyric says heÆs got ôa cravinÆ like a fiend for nicotineö and pledges allegiance to the whole idea of hip-hop as music that has to be done right to live up to its potential: ôYou didnÆt keep the stage warm / Step off!ö The intensity of the music makes its plain that itÆs the musicianÆs job to heat things up and keep the flame going. The best musical connection to the Rage version is the great bass line, though.
Pistol Grip Pump, Volume 10
This gangsta-ish rap from 1994Æs Hip-Hopera album actually got on the radio enough to make the pop charts, but censorship forced a title change (to just ôPumpö). Produced by the Baka Brothers, it roars like N.W.A, which is fitting because this is prime West Coast hip-hop, although the musicÆs based on a theme taken from Roger TroutmanÆs great Midwestern funk group, Zapp. This time, the anthem is devoted to solidarity and the right to self-defense.
Kick Out the Jams, MC5
The MC5 roared out of Detroit in 1969 to become the most direct precursors of todayÆs loud, hard rock and politics. Their White Panther Party proclamations, based in part on the Black Panther Party program, crossed racial barriers in similar ways. And their music with its rank of distorted guitars and hyped-up garage band rhythms lead directly to punkÆs metallic edge. ôKick Out the Jamsö sports an amazing set of lyrics, the story of a band toking up in the dressing room, preparing to assault the stage. ôKick out the jams, motherfuckers!ö was the cry that opened every MC5 show, shorthand for the bandÆs message to wimpier acid-rockers: ôKick out the jams or get off the stage.ö The rock and roll version of ôMicrophone Fiend.ö
Renegades of Funk, Afrika Bambaataa and SoulSonic Force
Afrika Bambaataa is one of the true founders of hip-hop, as leader of the early 1980s groups Jazzy5 and SoulSonic Force and of the South Bronx community action group, the Zulu Nation. The SoulSonic Force records, probably his greatest, include ôLooking for the Perfect Beat,ö ôPlanet Rock,ö and ôRenegades of Funk.ö The originals feature the highly electronic production style of producer Arthur Baker and the whiz-bang skills of rapper G.L.O.B.E., who popularized the poppinÆ later identified with New York rappers like Big Daddy Kane and Das EFX. In hip-hopÆs early days, it was frequently threatened with extinction by censors and rhythm-allergic music critics alike, but Bam and his crew knew better: ôNo matter how you try, you canÆt stop us nowàö
Beautiful World, Devo
This Akron band led by Mark Mothersbaugh specialized in misanthropic satire; their very name refers to the idea that man is in a state of ôdevolutionö back to animalism. The new wave power-pop version of ôBeautiful Worldö on their 1981 album New Traditionalists is certainly intended ironically, but the eerie beauty of the lyrics even in Mark MothersbaughÆs hyped-up reading cannot entirely be denied. Converting ôItÆs a beautiful world for you-not meö to a statement of revolutionary purpose requires real transformation.
IÆm HousinÆ, EPMD
Like Eric B and Rakim, EPMD (Eric and Parrish Making Dollars) were a key part of rapÆs New York-centered Golden Age. ôIÆm HousinÆ,ö from their first album, Strictly Business, is a deeply funky gangsta precursor, a streetwise character refusing to ôgo out like a sucker,ö determined not to be fucked with at any price. EPMDÆs energy has been described as the ôrap equivalent of a rock & roll garage band.ö
In My Eyes, Minor Threat
Ian MacKayeÆs best known as the leader of Fugazi, the most independent of indie rockers, but his first great band was Minor Threat, the definitive D.C. punk band and the group that invented the hardcore straight-edge style. With its cascading bass and guitar riffs and forcebeat drumming, ôIn My Eyesö from the 1981 EP of the same title, could be the prototype for all straightedge records, too. ItÆs a furious assault on complacency and conformity in which ôloud fast rulesö from start to finish. Minor Threat broke up in Æ83 but Fugazi continues to live out the principles snarled out in ôIn My Eyes.ö
How I Could Just Kill a Man, Cypress Hill
This LA-based rap trio dropped a bomb in 1992 with its great first album. Sen Dog, B-Real, and Mixmaster Muggs named themselves for Cypress Street in LAÆs largely Chicano Southgate district. Cypress Hill werenÆt the first Mexican-American hip-hop group but they were the first who found an audience outside their home turf. ôHow I Could Just Kill a Man,ö which actually got enough radio airplay to place on the pop charts, is a matter of fact assertion of what lives are like in the impoverished guts of the American Empire, addressed to those whoÆll never get it because theyÆre too insulated. ôHow I Could Just Kill a Man,ö making desperate people not so much sympathetic as real, is a great example of how rap and rock scare the shit out of people whoÆve been propagandized into believing that the furious poor should just shut up.
The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen
The original Tom Joad is the displaced Oklahoma farmer whoÆs the protagonist of John SteinbeckÆs 1938 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. He was incarnated by Henry Fonda in John FordÆs 1939 Oscar-winning film version. Those versions grabbed the imagination of Woody Guthrie, who was probably as close to a real-life Tom Joad as America has ever seen, and he wrote his long Dust Bowl ballad, ôTom Joadö in 1940. Almost 60 years later, Bruce Springsteen took a strong whiff of what America had become and revisited Joad, this time as a specter hovering over a land of plenty where hope had become a laughingstock. ôThe highway is alive tonight / And nobodyÆs kidding anybody about where it goesö totally bursts apart the earlier Joad, a symbol of working people fighting back against being cheated by the rich and powerful. In SpringsteenÆs version, Tom Joad is a shadow in the middle of a dark, cold night. This is the exact opposite of RageÆs version, in which Tom regains his fighting spirit, without denying any of the brutal reality Springsteen outlines.
Down on the Street, The Stooges
The Stooges classic second album, Funhouse, took what had been the worldÆs crudest band and, with the aid of producer Don Gallucci (who played piano on ôLouie Louieö) turned it into one of the most influential groups in the world. Much of that has to do with the shrieking lead vocals of frontman Iggy Pop, but a lot is also due to the wah-wah guitar extravaganza Ron Asheton makes out of the bedrock riffs in songs like this, a desperately fierce (or is that fiercely desperate) cry from the heart of the Blank Generation, years before it had an identity or a name.
Street Fighting Man, The Rolling Stones
The original ôStreet Fighting Manö was released into the teeth of the revolutionary late æ60s. Mick JaggerÆs ôwhat can a poor boy do / But sing in a rockÆnÆroll bandö was at best an ironic tip of the hat to the insurrection happening all over the world-from Paris to Mexico City to Newark to Vietnam-that fall of 1968. Whatever Jagger intended it to mean, his words resonated differently for newer generations of rock fans, who took the slightly altered Chuck Berry riffs and used them to drive home the point. Although itÆs still a good warning against taking pop stars for more than theyÆre worth, today, the poor boy rapping in a hip-hop group is very likely to be a street fighting man in more ways than one.
MaggieÆs Farm, Bob Dylan
Dylan based the words and music of this track from his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, on ôDown on PennyÆs Farm,ö a sharecropperÆs lament recorded in 1929 by the Bently Boys and later included on Harry SmithÆs Anthology of American Folk Music. Its statement of complete social defiance-ôI wake up in the morninÆ / Fold my hands and pray for rain / I got a head full of ideas that are drivinÆ me insane / ItÆs a shame the way she makes me scrub the floorö-has made it one of DylanÆs most continuously relevant and popular songs. It became especially popular among British rebel rockers when Margaret ThatcherÆs social Darwinism ruled England during the 1980s. Today, lines like ôEverybody wants you to be just like them,ö ôShe talks to all the servants about man and god and law,ö and ôThey say sing while you slave but I just get bored" testify to the way street fighting rockers and rappers have rejected the shams of globalism and free trade, attacking the World Trade Organization and other institutions wherever they meet to try to extinguish freedom.
