Socialist Rock

Musicians (and most in in arts for that matter) tend to be liberal when it comes to public policy issues. Members of the rock bands Pearl Jam and REM both have promoted the likes of hard line leftist Noam Chomsky who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Pearl Jam got themselves a 75 waitt "pirate" radio station which transmits at their concert stops featuring not only their songs, but marxist propaganda from the mouth of Chomsky himself. R.E.M. took their love for Chomsky one step forward by inviting the MIT professor to speak at their concerts. Pearl Jam promotes many other far left causes on their website while R.E.M.'s Peter Buck paid a visit with Fidel Castro and his country that he rules with a iron fist called Cuba. R.E.M also supports the release of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal.

While many of their songs are tongue and cheek and encryptic their are other groups that are more blut about their socialist convictions.

One of those blut groups was "Rage Against the Machine." RATM was one of the first groups to combine hard rock with rap and Hip-Hop.

Lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha had a hard childhood. He was an outcast from his own people (he is of Chicano decent) and being surounded by white kids with lots of money. Rocha himself was not economically deprived but did quite fit in with these "rich kids." In high school he became involved in California's underground punk rock scene and played with a band called Hardstance. He would form and lead the group "Inside Out" which gained a loyal following in Huntington Beach and Irvine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_de_la_Rocha

Rocha would soon achive greater fame when he started to embrace early 1990's hip hop music and acts like KRS-One, Public Enemy, and Run DMC. While freestyling at a hip-hop club he met Tom Morello and Brad Wilk. Morello and Wilk would eventually become the gutarist and drummer of RATM along with bassist Tim Commerford who had befriended Rocha prior to meeting Morello and Wilk.

Rage released a cassette tape of ten songs and soon would sign with Sony Music. With a major label backing them, Rocha and company would be able to take their far left political belifes to a greater audience. Some thought that the group was not being honest about their convictions; but Morello points out;

A lot of labels contacted us, and lots of them just didn't seem to understand what we wanted to do. They kept talking about the message of the music as a gimmick. They were interested in us just because there was a buzz... They saw us as the latest local rock band to be hyped. But Epic agreed to everything we asked--and they've followed through... we never saw a conflict as long as we maintained creative control. When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine

The song "Bulls on Parade" is an anti-Milltary song (Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal), while Vietnow is an attack on the talk radio format just because the "progressives don't have a monopoly on it (Let's capture this AM mayhem Undressed, and blessed by tha Lord Tha power pendulum swings by tha umbilical cord Shock around tha clock, from noon 'til noon...I tune in wit a bullet ta shut down tha devil sound Shut down tha devil sound Tha program of Vietnow).

RATM would spead their message of socialism through their music untill 2000 when Rocha decided to leave the group. Morello, Wilk, and Commerford would continue on as Audioslave with former Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell. As Audioslave the band steers clear from the socialist ideals that they hold...at least in their music. Cornell has made it loud and clear that he does not want to write any political lyrics.

With RATM inactive another group has taken their place in using rock to promote political messages. That group is called System of a Down.

Their current radio single B.Y.O.B (Bring Your Own Bomb) that will be featured on their upcoming release "Mezmerize" is a direct attack of our millary action in the middle east, especially Iraq. In the lyrics lead vocalist Serj Tankian screams that we have living in a "fascist nation" while our milltary is having a "party" in the middle east. The band also demands the question "Why Don't Presidents fight the war, Why do they always send the poor?"

Maybe these musicans should enlist in our milltary rather than complain about our men and women in the Armed Forces? Yea I am sticking by that statement, but will the members of SOAD enlist and serve our country??? I doubt it. They are way too busy stealing the limelight from American Idol judge Paula Abdul on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/307679p-263255c.html

Most musicians (and those in arts community for that matter) don't know Jack about the founding of our country and what the framers of our country envisioned. They are likely to have avoided taking some kind of class in which they could learn how our free market system works and why we need a strong milltary to protect us from those who would distory us inside and outside our borders. I wonder what they were taught in their American History classes. Does not matter since their minds have been poisoned by the ideals of Marx and Lenin, and their carriers (Chomsky, Zinn, Castro, Ward Churchill etc etc).

Keep in mind that most if not all socialist movements were always started by people that had deep pockets of money, and grew up not being poor. Their was no worker that was the brains behind these movements. The workers were nothing but "useful idiots" these elite rich socialists used and that includes RATM and and SOAD even if they had "humble" childhoods.

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