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Sheavy View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 31 2013 at 13:32
^ Those guys aren't right wing in the USA. They would be considered left wing.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 01 2013 at 02:42
I dunno, covert or open Fascist sympathies are generally seen as right-wing despite the self-identification of Fascism as the "third position" between market economy and socialism. For the record I consider the left/right/moderate spectrum to be of limited utility, and prefer when people specify actual ideologies.

Back on topic: Correct me if I'm mistaken, but Frank Zappa certainly seems to have popped up in this thread more often than any other person... which I guess does not surprise anyone? And I think he's by far the most deserving candidate as far as classic avant/prog/psych goes, the debate on how to categorize his political views being yet another argument in favour of so.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 01 2013 at 02:56
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0w

^ My favorite FZ moment.

I agree with him on this, and bet most people here do as well.

Edited by Sheavy - November 01 2013 at 02:57
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 02 2013 at 11:31
Originally posted by Sheavy Sheavy wrote:

...
There was plenty of very left leaning Prog bands. RPI band Area are notorious for their Communist ideas. Lokomotive Kreuzberg are another good example, and both these bands operated during the 'heyday' of Prog rock.
 
The early days, before the WALL came down in Berlin, was that Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, were absolutely massive in blasting Beatles and Rolling Stones, Elvis and many other bands, not quite progressive necessarily,  as a way to make sure they knew how screwed up their government was by preventing that music from showing up!
 
There was just as much right going to the left, as there was left going to the right.
 
We just don't know, or hear about it, because the media on this side only does this side and say that our God is right and theirs isn't! They do the same thing to us!
 
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2013 at 08:49
Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

This reminds me that Drudkh happen to be on PA: Their frontman Roman Saenko's previous band Hate Forest was very openly Fascist to the point of dedicating one album to a Waffen-SS division, so Drudkh's often national-romantic lyrics cause a lot of raised eyebrows they otherwise wouldn't. Saenko's supposedly mellowed out later on, but it's hard to tell for sure since he doesn't give interviews.
Yeah, a lot of NSBM guys - particularly those who find that their earlier, more overtly Nazi work is becoming an obstacle when doing business - do like to declare their projects to be "apolitical" and act all silent about their views in order to try and silence the issue, even when the projects in question clearly deal with blatantly political themes. (What could be more political than nationalism, for crying out loud?)

Re: Janus - holy crap, is that a honking great Celtic Cross on their album cover? (For those that don't know, the cross-in-circle symbol is very widely used by neo-Nazi groups as a sort of surrogate swastika.) Yikes, they certainly weren't subtle about their position were they?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2013 at 15:31
Originally posted by Sheavy Sheavy wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0w

^ My favorite FZ moment.

I agree with him on this, and bet most people here do as well.

I love his testimony...he totally blindsided the congressmen who expected him to be some kind of brainless idiot...think again Wink
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 14 2013 at 03:36
Originally posted by Warthur Warthur wrote:

Yeah, a lot of NSBM guys - particularly those who find that their earlier, more overtly Nazi work is becoming an obstacle when doing business - do like to declare their projects to be "apolitical" and act all silent about their views in order to try and silence the issue, even when the projects in question clearly deal with blatantly political themes. (What could be more political than nationalism, for crying out loud?)


Or maybe they're just not as extreme nationalists as they used to be. Most people who start out very opinionated do get more (relatively) moderate in their political views in older age after all...

To bring things back on topic: How finger-licking surreal is it that Motörhead, the band most responsible for popularizing Fascist symbolism in heavy metal, happens to be a Hawkwind spinoff? (and the first band do to it, Blue Öyster Cult, consists mostly of ethnic Jews)

Quote Re: Janus - holy crap, is that a honking great Celtic Cross on their album cover? (For those that don't know, the cross-in-circle symbol is very widely used by neo-Nazi groups as a sort of surrogate swastika.) Yikes, they certainly weren't subtle about their position were they?


You'd think an Italian band with such loyalties would use Greco-Roman rather than Celtic and Viking imagery...


Edited by Toaster Mantis - November 14 2013 at 03:59
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 14 2013 at 12:25
Originally posted by Sheavy Sheavy wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0w

^ My favorite FZ moment.

I agree with him on this, and bet most people here do as well.


Holy crap, thanks for this! Thoroughly enjoyed the watch.

God I love Frank Zappa, probably even more than I love his music.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 14 2013 at 14:51
In more from the "bands I'm surprised to find on ProgArchives" drawer, has anyone had a hard time getting into Woven Hand just because of their Christian-fundamentalist lyrics as I have? I'm not religious at all, and coming from one of the most secular and progressive countries in the world it's a total mind-bender hearing that kind of scary fire-and-brimstone spirituality expressed so eloquently in a contemporary music project that's also instrumentally amazing.

(same thing that motivates me towards the more adept crypto-fascist industrial/noise and heavy metal artists, actually, though those guys are usually more subtle about their particular brand of extremism)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 15 2013 at 06:06
Originally posted by questionsneverknown questionsneverknown wrote:

Another way to approach the problem with Neil Peart's lyrics is to think about one of the basic "rules" that pop up in creative writing classes: show don't tell (or, as Henry James put it, "Dramatize! Dramatize!").  I don't think the issue is with the content of the lyrics, but with how he expresses the ideas.  Rather than create a dramatic situation in which ideas are brought to life, in the clunkiest moments the lines are presented all too literally, reading like cod philosophy notes.  ("Free Will" is the ultimate example of this; I have a friend who is a professor of philosophy who just cringes and cringes at the thought of those lyrics.)  But he has been far less guilty of this kind of thing on the two most recent albums.

At the end of the day, I know though that hearing Neil's words the first time when I was in high school was revelatory.  If most of what you had heard before were the words found in radio ballads or AC/DC, then these lyrics were really something special.  Still, it is still pretty hard to forgive "Trees" (even if I do still sing along).    


Hmm, while one may or may not like The Trees it is presented as an allegory. It is a 'show don't tell' (also a Rush song) and as dramatic and pictorial as these lyrics are they do fit this 'show don't tell' criteria.  Of course this still does not mean one would like it.

I alwasy took from Neil's lyrics the recognition of the individual as distinct from imposed social conformity; a statement of one's own identity. Not necessarily a right wing versus left wing but a determination against the oppression of government (and now those who control it). Which is not the electorate (you or me). Maybe he could focus on that rather than this watchmaker thing which I cannot fathom at all...

Oh if you want a good show don't tell number how about Witch hunt. Now there's parallels...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 15 2013 at 14:56
Originally posted by uduwudu uduwudu wrote:

I alwasy took from Neil's lyrics the recognition of the individual as distinct from imposed social conformity; a statement of one's own identity. Not necessarily a right wing versus left wing but a determination against the oppression of government (and now those who control it). Which is not the electorate (you or me).


Yes.  Neil Peart's lyrics cannot easily be placed on a "left-vs.-right" axis except perhaps in the "radical centre" if there is such a thing - they are simply strongly individualist and opposed to any kind of conformism, whether from the "left" or from the "right".

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 16 2013 at 04:51
He'd more or less belong the same place on the spectrum as Frank Zappa, then.
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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