Track: 
Killing in the Name
Artist: Rage Against the Machine
Album: Rage Against the Machine (1992)
Tags: rock, alternative rock, metal, political, my gang rotw
Video: Click the pic...
YouTube, original official video, explicit
It's Christmas this week. It should be all Frosty The Snowman, Jingle Bells or how much we're dreaming of a white Christmas but no. What's the people's choice? "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." That has to be one of the funniest Christmas number ones ever. I loved this song on its release and am very pleased to see it back in the charts.
If you Google Rage Against The Machine via Google News UK tonight, you get 4,031 hits. I shall presume readers will have seen at least one of the articles that appear there. There's no reason for me to reproduce the story of joke > Facebook Group > popular > captured imagination > went global > challenged X Factor > first non-X Factor Christmas number one since 2004 > then Simon Cowell offers jobs to the originators > they turn him down.
from The Guardian: Every Christmas number one ever.
Background done, let's ruminate. What does this all mean? Does it mean anything?
When I join a few dots, I get an interesting picture. I get this people's choice Christmas number one at the end of the same year as the peoples' uprising and revolution in Iran. In Iran, it began as a grassroots movement, then they pointed at Mousavi, "You! You're our new leader. Get up there!" much to his initial surprise. A little over a year ago in the USA, a similar hunger for change and an exceptional orator changed history. All of this from the bottom up. There was no big plan. Just a bunch of people winging it, seeing how far they could take things.
And that's the thing. For as long as I can remember, it has always been: "What difference can I make on my own against the system?" Once you begin to comprehend the enormity of The System, you balk at the very idea. You could take a potshot, sure, but you wouldn't hope to make much of an impact. If you inspired others to join you, you could rest assured you still wouldn't make much of a difference even if you got noticed, and woebetide if you did.
And now we have three examples of people who did it. Not unreachable, glamourous people. Just us and people like us.
To me, this is nothing short of incredible. I never imagined in my lifetime I'd see anything like this. Maybe I'm cynical, but if I am, I learnt early. It's pretty much what we were taught in school: to learn to accept the system, to obey, to make do, find workarounds, lower one's sights, think small, to not believe we'd make any difference no matter how much we sacrificed, and that if we tried, to expect to lose. This is what the novel 1984 was all about.
It is fitting to end the first decade of the new millenium on something so positive and hopeful. The underlying message in the RATM song is man versus the machine and man refusing to co-operate.
Can we contemplate an end to The System?
I think it's lovely to even be in a position to ponder that. After observing citizen journalism during the post-election turmoil in Iran, I saw that there is a need for some aspects of The System. I saw we need professional journalists as much as we do citizen ones. We need the professionals to put their years of training to good use and make sense of events for us, put them into context, give us balanced reportage. Of course, we don't need the parasites who more or less rewrite original copy, we don't need the ones who type with their eyes shut or the spineless ones with no integrity. But there is a definite need for the good ones.
So if we apply these lessons to music, then we see we do need The System. It can't dissolve entirely. We have a citizen chart hit this week but only because of exceptional circumstances - the idea amused us and to challenge the juggernaut that is reality television and X Factor, both products of this decade. These two things galvanised and inspired us.
Hold on.
Haven't we fought ourselves? We made reality television popular. We destroyed the music industry. We killed the CD and decided to be happy with tinny mp3s, and worse, ringtones. So who are we telling to fuck off with this week's number one?
You know where this thought leads: are we replacing The System?
As scary a thought as that is, I think it unlikely. What The System provides is the opportunity not to have to think for oneself, to have all the hard work done for you so the select bits can be served up on a plate. The System survives because most people are too lazy or lack the intelligence to think for themselves. Thirdly, some people just don't want things to change and will actively resist any threat.
So to conclude, as admirable as this week's Christmas number one is, I expect order to be restored for next week and the X Factor winner to enjoy his moment at the start of the new year with whatever his dull offering is. I expect that to continue into the next decade - maybe not the X Factor per se but certainly more disposable pop and rock. We can expect more of the usual foul language in the ever-predictable bid to 'shock' the fuddy duddies (who only exist in pop videos and the pages of The Daily Mail), and more pretend chart battles to make news headlines and keep burgeoning profiles up. If this is depressing, remember: this really is the people's choice. That's who this "expletive-driven tirade" is really aimed at. So it's not so much rage against the machine as much as rage against each other. We seem to have been in a rage about something or other throughout this decade.
As for the internet and downloading, we're not far from the £1 per album and permission to download for free for personal use only, thereby avoiding ugly, expensive lawsuits that go nowhere.
The System remains.
Happy Christmas!
Babs My Gang
Disclaimer: all my own work. Made it up as I went along.
Admin: Stats as of this week
Last.fm listeners of this track - 538,617
No. of plays scrobbled in Last.fm - 3,088,586
Position in Last 7 Days: 1 / 28,646
Position in Last 6 Months: 1 / 101,228
Video
Date Added: August 04, 2006
Views: 11,773,188, Ratings: 39.322, Comments: 48,665, Favourited: n/a times, Honours: 7
Stats after 7 days: :
Unique Visitors
Page Views
.
Killing in the NameArtist: Rage Against the Machine
Album: Rage Against the Machine (1992)
Tags: rock, alternative rock, metal, political, my gang rotw
Video: Click the pic...
YouTube, original official video, explicitIt's Christmas this week. It should be all Frosty The Snowman, Jingle Bells or how much we're dreaming of a white Christmas but no. What's the people's choice? "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." That has to be one of the funniest Christmas number ones ever. I loved this song on its release and am very pleased to see it back in the charts.
If you Google Rage Against The Machine via Google News UK tonight, you get 4,031 hits. I shall presume readers will have seen at least one of the articles that appear there. There's no reason for me to reproduce the story of joke > Facebook Group > popular > captured imagination > went global > challenged X Factor > first non-X Factor Christmas number one since 2004 > then Simon Cowell offers jobs to the originators > they turn him down.
from The Guardian: Every Christmas number one ever.
Background done, let's ruminate. What does this all mean? Does it mean anything?
When I join a few dots, I get an interesting picture. I get this people's choice Christmas number one at the end of the same year as the peoples' uprising and revolution in Iran. In Iran, it began as a grassroots movement, then they pointed at Mousavi, "You! You're our new leader. Get up there!" much to his initial surprise. A little over a year ago in the USA, a similar hunger for change and an exceptional orator changed history. All of this from the bottom up. There was no big plan. Just a bunch of people winging it, seeing how far they could take things.
And that's the thing. For as long as I can remember, it has always been: "What difference can I make on my own against the system?" Once you begin to comprehend the enormity of The System, you balk at the very idea. You could take a potshot, sure, but you wouldn't hope to make much of an impact. If you inspired others to join you, you could rest assured you still wouldn't make much of a difference even if you got noticed, and woebetide if you did.
And now we have three examples of people who did it. Not unreachable, glamourous people. Just us and people like us.
To me, this is nothing short of incredible. I never imagined in my lifetime I'd see anything like this. Maybe I'm cynical, but if I am, I learnt early. It's pretty much what we were taught in school: to learn to accept the system, to obey, to make do, find workarounds, lower one's sights, think small, to not believe we'd make any difference no matter how much we sacrificed, and that if we tried, to expect to lose. This is what the novel 1984 was all about.
It is fitting to end the first decade of the new millenium on something so positive and hopeful. The underlying message in the RATM song is man versus the machine and man refusing to co-operate.
Can we contemplate an end to The System?
I think it's lovely to even be in a position to ponder that. After observing citizen journalism during the post-election turmoil in Iran, I saw that there is a need for some aspects of The System. I saw we need professional journalists as much as we do citizen ones. We need the professionals to put their years of training to good use and make sense of events for us, put them into context, give us balanced reportage. Of course, we don't need the parasites who more or less rewrite original copy, we don't need the ones who type with their eyes shut or the spineless ones with no integrity. But there is a definite need for the good ones.
So if we apply these lessons to music, then we see we do need The System. It can't dissolve entirely. We have a citizen chart hit this week but only because of exceptional circumstances - the idea amused us and to challenge the juggernaut that is reality television and X Factor, both products of this decade. These two things galvanised and inspired us.
Hold on.
Haven't we fought ourselves? We made reality television popular. We destroyed the music industry. We killed the CD and decided to be happy with tinny mp3s, and worse, ringtones. So who are we telling to fuck off with this week's number one?
You know where this thought leads: are we replacing The System?
As scary a thought as that is, I think it unlikely. What The System provides is the opportunity not to have to think for oneself, to have all the hard work done for you so the select bits can be served up on a plate. The System survives because most people are too lazy or lack the intelligence to think for themselves. Thirdly, some people just don't want things to change and will actively resist any threat.
So to conclude, as admirable as this week's Christmas number one is, I expect order to be restored for next week and the X Factor winner to enjoy his moment at the start of the new year with whatever his dull offering is. I expect that to continue into the next decade - maybe not the X Factor per se but certainly more disposable pop and rock. We can expect more of the usual foul language in the ever-predictable bid to 'shock' the fuddy duddies (who only exist in pop videos and the pages of The Daily Mail), and more pretend chart battles to make news headlines and keep burgeoning profiles up. If this is depressing, remember: this really is the people's choice. That's who this "expletive-driven tirade" is really aimed at. So it's not so much rage against the machine as much as rage against each other. We seem to have been in a rage about something or other throughout this decade.
As for the internet and downloading, we're not far from the £1 per album and permission to download for free for personal use only, thereby avoiding ugly, expensive lawsuits that go nowhere.
The System remains.
Happy Christmas!
Babs My Gang
Disclaimer: all my own work. Made it up as I went along.
Admin: Stats as of this week
Last.fm listeners of this track - 538,617
No. of plays scrobbled in Last.fm - 3,088,586
Position in Last 7 Days: 1 / 28,646
Position in Last 6 Months: 1 / 101,228
Video
Date Added: August 04, 2006
Views: 11,773,188, Ratings: 39.322, Comments: 48,665, Favourited: n/a times, Honours: 7
Stats after 7 days: :
.
