three reasons for being a consumer pt. 1

I have to admit, I do have some tunes I didn't pay for, but I will honestly say I do not use file sharing programs. Somebody I know personally or myself, mostly myself, have bought everything I listen to. The digital revolution will eventually change the business of music and it WILL be for the better, but for now there are some sounds from some bands I will always happily pay for, because I want them to continue making the noise to which I like to listen. So I present three reasons here for consumerism that I feel deserves support.

1 - Neil Young "Living With War"
Check it out while it's streaming on his website, then buy the album. I've already posted about this and, yes, I need to again. The best of American protest songs just got some new cohorts. Young's album is an anti-war rant that is fuzzy, funny, armed, smart and dangerous in all the right ways. A mostly, mid-tempo fuzz-fest of guitar and slogans, there are no open throttle racers, but there are some rollicking gems that invite you to sing along. And some drop into rawkus, noisy, foot-stoppers that just plead to be played with the knob twisted all the way to the right.

Young's defiantly and clearly anti-Bush, but really only anti-Bush because he is so anti-war. Young lends his voice to those that seem to continually be left behind by political parties these days: those working middle of the road blues. Collars, not bloods. People trying to get by and getting caught in the cross fire of rhetoric and killed in the streets of countries who were invaded for the oil, sold on the ideals of Bushland the Ride. Young has been trying his damnedest to be truthful for longer than I've been alive and you can feel him seething at "faulty information" being fed to us by our leaders. Watching the new "trickle down", only this time its blame and cover-up instead of money.

All this aside it is what good, rowdy rock-n-roll should. Pure, stripped down, heartfelt, fuzzy, raw, honest and trying in it's own way to truly change the world.

You gotta love a song called "Let's Impeach the President" and the person who has the cojones to write it.

soundtrack:
not Neil, actually, but my wife playing harp in the dining room