| The KLF – Last Train to Trancentral Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Try the White Room album for a version with lyrics. As per KLF songs the lyrics mean very little and aren't actually that important (see their book, The Manual) However, a couple of things...Trancentral was Cauty's squat in London, if I was being cynical of Anarchism the pretty standard criticism being it's a petty bourgeois ideology which doesn't actually change social relations i.e that it's for workers management etc I would point to the line "The liberation loophole" which consciously or not suggests this. Adding that "liberate and free the psyche" is the usual dose of mysticism inherent in most of their tunes. I am however a fan of their music, some great groove to be had in amongst it all. Whether they were situationist or not is another matter...they probably were not. Stewart Home has some good criticism of Anarchism and what is and isn't situationist. All aboard, all aboard, a-woah-ho... | |
| The Clash – The Magnificent Seven Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Reform and Counterreform in the Bureaucratic Bloc ...If ever an event had cast its shadow ahead of itself long before it happened, it was, for those who know how to read modern history, the Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia. It was long contemplated and, despite all its international repercussions, virtually inevitable. By bringing into question the omnipotence of bureaucratic power, Dubcek’s adventurous – though necessary – effort began to imperil this same power wherever it was to be found, and thus became intolerable. Six hundred thousand soldiers (almost as many as the Americans in Vietnam) were sent to put a brutal stop to it. Thus when the “antisocialist” and “counterrevolutionary” forces, continually conjured up and exorcised by all the bureaucrats, finally appeared, they appeared not under the portrait of Benes(4) or armed by “revanchist Germans,” but in the uniform of the “Red” Army. A remarkable popular resistance was carried on for seven days – “the magnificent seven” – mobilizing virtually the entire population against the invaders. Paradoxically, distinctly revolutionary methods of struggle were taken up for the defense of a reformist bureaucracy. But what was not carried out in the course of the movement could certainly not he carried out under the occupation: the Russian troops, having enabled the Dubcekists to brake the revolutionary process as much as possible while they were at the borders, also enabled them to control the whole resistance movement after August 21. They played exactly the same role the American troops do in North Vietnam: the role of ensuring the masses’ unanimous support for the bureaucracy that exploits them... SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL September 1969 http://bopsecrets.org/ |
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| Gang of Four – Capital (It Fails Us Now) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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The first lyric is: This is the story of my struggle. I'm not sure whether it's coincidence, sarcasm or what but My Struggle is Mein Kampf, the title of Adolf Hitler's autobiography. I think it's a fantastic song and it's probably just a coincidence. The song seems to be about Marx's theory of alienation with a sarky Debordist twist. |
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