1. |
Erik Prince
03:54
|
|||
|
Erik Prince should have long been in The Last Jail
Rooming with the pardoned murderers of Nisour Square
Abolish every other corner of the prison system, but
We can sort the fair of Empire’s handmaids after Christ’s re-risen
Enjoy your new job at Raytheon!
We are all complicit, so let’s go, come on!
Aerial bombardment makes death’s attribution hard
So we can terrorize a lot of people
Northrop Grumman and Boeing, man
We can make Iran the new Afghanistan
Trillions of dollars pissed away to private hands
And a devastated, ailing population
Sanctions destabilize societies
They manufacture scarcity and misery
In pursuit of so-called ‘national security’
But tormenting the people is the policy
Banana workers couldn’t hear the 20s roar in Magdalena
(the banana zone in Columbia; reference to the 1928 massacre of United Fruit workers)
There’s a million Indonesians buried with the PKI
(Communist Party of Indonesia; reference to 1965-66 mass killings)
El Mozote’s ghosts are crammed into detention centers and
(reference to the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, and the network of present-day incarceration facilities for detained migrants operated along the US-Mexico border)
The jury’s out on how many in Yemen still will die
(reference to the ongoing civil war in Yemen)
So enjoy your new job at Raytheon
Lockheed Martin, Draper, and the fucking robot dog (made by Boston Dynamics)
The machinery of empire hems close to market logics
So we’ll keep marching on, kid
Yeah, we’ll keep marching on
|
||||
2. |
31
04:24
|
|||
|
Books stacked up on the desk
Like sandbags for protection
But the water's gonna find a way in...
So long staring at this window
The news is far away
I turn the radio off early lately
Power fears turned tables above everything else
So they pulverize the vulnerable to comfort themselves
The state, the cops, the occupiers, armed to the teeth
With a mandate for repression we support implicitly
But nobody needs a perfunctory "mea culpa!"
Apologies come as soon as conditions necessitate
the illusion of doing something
I've got change for you and it's a one-liner:
"Stop the Hate!" on a little painted sign
A meek cry thrown from the back of a big room while the planet dies
The politics of recognition are a dead end
Pointing at a body like:
"I think this guy needed medicine!"
Oh, tell your very observant friend I think they're on to something...
Like, where's all the Land Back when you need it?
The political means for Palestinian freedom?
The right live as a whole human being
to go where you want and to eat when you need it?
Power fears turned tables above everything else
So it lashes out in violence to comfort itself
Scary boyfriends, jailers, judges, pipeline police
And ubiquitous surveillance fills the spaces in-between
We reify data
We reify law
Efficiency, measurement, reason and all
Epistemological means of control
Teaching kids at a vulnerable age
That their emotions burden their brains
The Self, an undisciplined worker who needs
the firm hand of management to be made useful
It's hard to believe
When a whole bunch of people who stay the same say
"everything is changing"
We welcome a New Day
like Anything is happening--
(Weird!)
I don't mean to be mean
or disempower
This is just me spiraling
I'll be fine in about an hour
For now
I'm just incredulous
Raging that there's gotta be
a better way to get folks the things that they need:
Healthcare, Housing, Food, and Dignity
But what I don't know at thirty-one years old
I'm probably not gonna know
Without making the time
Prioritizing
Thinking, deciding
Building a life
And trying to be alright
Bringing the fight when conditions call for a struggle
That's when you'll know
If the strategy's right
If you brought enough muscle
Fail, rinse, repeat
And do a better job tomorrow
Power fears turned tables above everything else
So our highest aspirations atrophy under our doubts
So let's incubate the futures that we all know we need
And in the meantime struggle firmly against our class enemies
'Cause to them
Law and Order
translates to
Control
of subject populations
of whom their afraid
with the Fear and the Hate
enacted by the State
all the while making Bank
selling weapons
Hip Hooray!
Then they render the system
of social provision
so indescribably impotent
that it feels unrealistic
to make any demands of it
Who does that serve?
The same Bastards
So hell yea, I voted for Bernie Sanders!
Medicare for All my friends!
Fully fund that shit!
And if you love your
employer-provided
sky-high-deductiblized
private insurance so much
Why don't you marry it?
|
||||
3. |
||||
4. |
Burt's Bees
03:12
|
|||
|
The car is coming closer on my little screen
(I’m) looking real cool on the sidewalk in my slim-cut jeans
I’m reading the Yelp reviews for the Holocene
Because ‘consumer’ is my primary identity
I read conditions back into a moral code
Yeah, the Good like Me deserve a Real Home
And when I get real sick
I can take a whole day
Pop to the Minute Clinic for a 20-dollar co-pay
Did I work for all the things I got?
My high birth and my union job?
Benefits won through struggle I wasn’t yet present to play my little part in?
Obsessed with what people deserve
Like anything you get you must have earned
So we reject a universal guarantee of Social Goods
For everyone on Earth
Just for being human, not as payment for some work
Or based on any other bullshit valuation of our worth
(WHY??)
So now you’re like a populist, but in the sense of just for Small Businessowners
Jeffersonian yeoman using corvée labor infrastructure
Cosplaying the Working Class
Hiding my elite diploma
Bought a house with family cash
But the equity is mine to hold
While ordinary working people hustle just to scrape
A couple scraps of dignity and comfort from the plate
Expected to be frugal, to avoid emergencies
The kind from which they run the risk of losing everything
But if you come from money and you’ve never been without
You can blow a thousand dollars on a table for your house
And never face the scrutiny of wasting what you’ve got
Because Austerity is for those needy folks and not for you
Did I work for all the things I got?
Stolen land and too many cops?
Big capital’s tag team with the state?
(Coercion for private property)
Obsessed with keeping things the same
Like ‘natural law’ prevents substantial change
So we reject as utter fantasy the concept of the Social Wage
Our health and home and transportation
Our basic needs understood as high quality public goods
You shouldn’t need a credit score to live
You shouldn’t need five thousand dollars down to have a place to raise your kids
Shit gets a little hairy when the things a person needs
Are granted the same status as a mere commodity
Because the Market and the Profit Motive do a decent job
Of getting thirteen Burt’s Bees flavors
But not of compensating people for their labor
Or keeping life affordable
For people who don’t own any capital
|
||||
5. |
Futurity
02:34
|
|||
|
Futurity takes planning, of whatever kind
Maybe your horizon is lunch tomorrow
Or the end of your grandchildren’s lives
Maybe it’s flexible and wait-and-see
But (it) probably falls into one of two piles
Both shaped by ideology
Whether unconscious or crafted to match your style
Pile-1-People plan for a future
That looks like an infinite present
Maybe things change here and there
But some things are forever:
Property’s value
And their ‘bloodline’ or whatever
Pile-2-People plan for something very different
Maybe it’s climate collapse, water wars
Or the limits of infinite growth
Infinite violence
Infinite consumption
Infinite time to exploit last chances
The infinite gaps in our material standing
The infinite precarity of everyday living
The infinite wealth of our aristocrats’ kids
So anyway…
Since you asked me how I’m doing…
I’ve been trying to drag myself to the credit union
To inquire about a mortgage preapproval
But then I get to thinking ‘bout my visions for the future
Of the thirty years of steady living that I’d be assuming
Of the normatively-patterned life I tell myself I’m choosing
Of the pension that I think will be there for me to collect
Of the pleasures of retirement I’ll sample ‘til I’m dead
Of the children that we’ll maybe have, and the cool lives they’ll be living
Thanks to the universal, high-quality public goods we’ll win
Of neighborhood-based health clinics, free at the point of service
Of universal childcare, and One Big Fucking Union
But I haven’t been to the credit union yet
So I can’t even shop around to see what I could get
No, I can’t even shop around to see what I could get
No, I can’t even bring myself to make that one move yet
|
||||
6. |
||||
7. |
Metal Ring
01:09
|
|||
|
When you can’t remember how it used to be
And you stare at the photos
Eating time’s dust
Watch you forget
All those you’s they used to see
Now recreated
Every minute
Someone new who looks like me
|
||||
8. |
32
03:34
|
|||
|
Now we put away young adult things
I’m no idealist anymore
We live bound by definite constraints
That narrow the ways we can imagine wanting more
Because the structuring logics of our civilization
They warp and corrode the imagination
And when you give up alternatives
One’s life eventuates
Along a path of least resistance
Towards inheriting the futures that history created
So we bought a house
With sufficient storage
Moved to the suburbs
Took out a mortgage
Hetero-passing
And we both drive cars
We work all day
Then we hit the bar
Yeah, this is the outcome
And it isn’t even hard
Living like our parents
Like it’s who we are
Well, everybody grows up eventually—
When you develop a stake in maintenance of society
A material interest in the ways that we’re supposed to be
A deeper understanding of The Enemy
But we just wanted housing stability
Which is elusive for renters in this city
So naturally we pondered owning property
As a solution to a rootless insecurity
And my credit is good 'cause I have money
From the union contract that sets my salary
So a man I’ve never met and his financial team
Released like all of this cheddar they were authorized to lend to me
And 'cause housing exists as a commodity
Whose value is determined by the market, thus by scarcity
The cost is just enormous, but it gets worse if you keep waiting
And everybody's got to find a place to settle down eventually
But once you’ve signed the papers and you shift your class position
Once you own a little capital, two bedrooms and a kitchen
On expropriated native land converted into Property
(Those origins disavowed because it’s very, very easy)
Then all of these constitutive components of society
Transform in one fell swoop into a system that benefits me
More directly
Yeah, those very same price hikes that got you down
Are now a long-term mechanism for to build your wealth
And those property taxes that pay for our schools
Are now a personal burden on me
And while my renting friends languish under rising costs
I’ll be building equity
The state and its violence are now on my side
Busting faces to secure my private property
And when we’re at the public meeting on the housing crunch
I’ll be fighting new development and density
To keep the value of my stolen land from decreasing
Yeah, as long as I never have to leave my job
I’ll live in comfort and security
Pursing my material interests
To the detriment of all of the unlanded all around me
Makes sense if it makes cents for me
S then C
Makes sense if it makes cents for me
S then C
So here at 32 I now can tell you
And as a homeowner, I truly understand
That if we're ever going to have a just society
We've got to decommodify the land
|
||||
9. |
||||
10. |
Song for a Project
04:22
|
|||
|
We all deserve payment for the work that we do
A safe place to do it, and healthcare to boot
Food for our bellies, a home, and clean clothes
If that sounds like dreaming to you
I hope you'll get more creative real soon
If you’re an asshole, I hope your paid fairly
If you don’t like me, I hope you’re paid fairly
If you believe nonsense, I hope you’re paid fairly
Even my 'Stop The Steal,' chain-smoking neighbors
It gets hard to breathe and they drive me insane
But I won’t tell the landlord and risk their eviction
'Cause no one should live on the street
The future I want is for everybody
And if that makes you angry and you think I’m a fool
I hope you'll get more creative real soon
Borders are only for people, I’ve found
'Cause capital can circulate all around
So it's funny how some people get pissed about
Jobs getting moved overseas, what a shame
Then somehow the laborers take all the blame
And the xenophobes want fellow workers encaged
It seems pretty wild, and off the mark too
To violently keep folks from living like you
In defense of the handful whose wealth we balloon
So I hope you’ll get more creative real soon
History can be a trauma we live with
So justice for all means attending to difference
Indigenous peoples need treaty rights honored
Sovereignty isn’t a metaphor, man
It means a legitimate claim to the land
And if you think that’s fanciful, silly or impossible
Settler theft each day harm folks anew
So I hope we’ll get more creative real soon
(Yeah Land Back right now and Free Palestine too!)
Sometimes I hate people, I’m just being honest
And sometimes embracing that feels like a tonic
But mostly I know that we just need a project
To get folks the things that they need
And that’s the best outlet for our energies
And if you think that that sounds naïve or simplistic
Maybe you’re right and there’s nothing to do
But I hope we all get more creative real soon
|
||||
The Michael Character Boston, Massachusetts
It's political music, whatever. Based in Boston, MA. Absolutely willing to drive very far to play for you and five of your vaguely alternative friends in your combination kitchen/laundry room. Hit me up. I'm fully serious.
The Michael Character recommends:
The Age of Missing Information
by Thanks
Two great dudes make incredible, experimental (but accessible) piano/drums tunes that will completely blow your mind.
go to albumIf you like The Michael Character, you may also like:
supported by 6 fans who also own “Totally, Totally.”
go to album
supported by 5 fans who also own “Totally, Totally.”
go to album
How To Capture Playful
by Pink Navel & Kenny Segal
supported by 5 fans who also own “Totally, Totally.”
Pink Navel fuses great gaming references with even better wordplay, backed by glitched out and retro production made by the one and only Kenny Segal. Don't skip this one guys, this is that good shit. And before you ask, yes, they did capture playful.
go to album
A Split 7" Between Friends
by Dr Sure's Unusual Practice / Bench Press
A four-track bout between two of Australia's most formidable post-punk groups, fueled by wiry guitar riffs and vibrant, timely lyrics.
go to album
Cost of Living
by Downtown Boys
Downtown Boys' Sub Pop debut is as brash, bright, and political as the Providence punk band's ever been, showcasing their songwriting.
go to album
