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Here comes the answer, people! If you got the vinyl edition of Aenima, "Useful Idiot" is the last track of side A. So, when it starts, you think that the side A ended and that the song "Useful idiot" is missing. A nice and clever joke uh?
this is the only correct answer, yet everyone seems to ignore it. 'twas a joke.
Try this at home! Yes, an experiment for this song! Get out your vynil players, and put onm a 12" record (any at all). Then, get the spike-mic thingy, and put it so it scratches against the outside of a record. Then, turn on the player and turn up the volume. And there you go! A live recording of Useful Idiot, in your own home! (Turn it up to 45 speed for best results)
Yep, this is what the band did to record 'Useful Idiot'.
"Useful Idiot" is a term sometimes used by intelligence agencies (CIA, MI6) to describe a person who is being used but doesn't know it.
It is also used to describe those who blindly follow government, usually unquestioningly, and in some cases help perpetuate propaganda.
Then again it could just be a record scratching for 38 seconds...
i heard that a "Useful Idiot" was the name for the peasants in the old soviet union who would follow the government's every word and just stand in their breadlines beliving their government was doing a great job. These useful idiots were still necessary for the economy but only to that extent, like little worker bees.
Not quite. The "useful idiots" were western intellectuals who sympathized with Soviet communism.<br /> <br /> See here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Whoever the Useful Idiots were, I'm not sure how much Tool had in mind when creating this "song". It should be enough to make people happy for the idiots to be useful. Even in communism. Just a filler track. Tool is amazing though. They can do whatever they want.
I think it's interesting how in the CD booklet for Aenima, Useful Idiot's time is 6:03 and H is 0:38 or something like that, which is precisely the times for eachother's song. Perhaps, Useful Idiot is actually the title for the song we know as H, and vice-versa. It would kind of make sense, judging by the lyrical content of track 3 (i.e: morose, in a word, could be self-loathing), and the title "H" would match the ambiguity of track 4. Just a thought.
It was a printing error on the Australian and European copies of the album.
But the title for H. matches the lyrical content of H. aswell.
the intermission usefull idiot is the playing of a record which gets louder and louder and says absolutely nothing, possibly a broken record? a usefull idiot says nothing.
Maybe someone in the recording studio asked, "What's this for?", and someone else said, "Because it's useful, idiot!" That's how I like to think that it got its name.
it like gives you time to think about h before 46&2