The Class Assassins – Equalize X Distort The Studio 3 Sessions

The Class Assassins – Equalize X Distort

In November, 2011, punk rockers The Class Assassins recorded an eight song set live in studio at CIUT FM in Toronto. Now the tracks are available as Equalize X Distort, The Studio 3 Sessions.

The album contains six renditions of Class Assassins tracks from previous albums, and two great covers; Breaking the Law by Judas Priest and Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Included amongst the original Class Assassins tracks is the exceptionally catchy Treason, from the recently released The Treason 45 EP.

The great thing about this album is that the tracks are presented in their raw form without any fancy studio wizardry. This accomplishes two things. First, the album feels real and gritty, and preserves the classic Class Assassins sound. Second, it shows just how talented this band really is since it sounds pretty clear from the first track that all these guys need to kick ass is their instruments, and a spot to play them in.

If you are already a fan of The Class Assassins this is a must hear, but if you don’t know them yet this wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Apparently only 100 copies are being released on CD, but the album is also available as a digital download on the bands Bandcamp page.

movie review- Capitalism: A Love Story

It came in a white cardboard courier envelope.

It was addressed to the YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE. I was curious as to who would have sent it. Alliance films, Toronto, the return address stated.

I understood the moment I opened the package and several tickets fell out. They were tickets to an advanced screening of the latest Micheal Moore movie.

With a title of Capitalism: A Love Story, having a communist see the movie is a sure bet that they will like the movie and give positive reviews. Darn tooting. I liked the movie. And so sure enough here is that positive review.

You know what the movie is about by the title. Micheal Moore has his sites set on the economic crisis and the system that created it.

The movie starts with clips from many old corporate films. You hear the audio track from a school film that narrates reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. While you hear the track you see images of examples from modern day America. It really does hit home that the Capitalist system is screwed up and ready for downfall itself. It's one of the best scenes in the movie.

Micheal Moore talks about growing up in Flint Michigan in a middle class family, living the American Dream in the Industrial Mid-West during a post-war economic boom. He asks after this scene about the current crisis, what the hell happened?

Later scenes will invoke various emotions: disbelief, heartfelt empathy, rage, and as you leave the theatre, hope.

Some topics covered are:

• a bank internal memo that declared the U.S. a plutonomy/plutocracy.
• an example of "dead peasant insurance"
• Airline pilots that are in fact in poverty because of the low wages they receive.
• mortgage foreclosures, evictions, and bottom feeder buyers.
  

It's not all bad news however:

• the premiere of a long lost film showing FDR outlining a second bill of rights-including the right to health care, a job, an education, etc. It shows what could have been. How close it can be. And still able to fight for.
  
• interviews of priests who say capitalism is evil.
• a sheriff who declares a moratorium on enforcing home evictions.
• a congresswoman, while speaking in the house of representatives, calls for people to revolt against foreclosures by squatting in their own homes.
  
• American examples of worker co-operatives.
• the sit down strike at Republic Windows.
  

It's like a movie adaptation of a chapter out of Marx's Capital. Or Lenin's Imperialism for that matter. As the end credits role you hear a jazzed up rendition of the Internationale. It's pretty obvious people power and socialism are implied.

You may know the movie's subject, but to see these scenes still leaves you reeling at the times we are now living.

Notice I did not say this is a documentary. Not in the objective sense anyway. Objectivity is pointless if one is to make a point of view known in dialogue or a debate. This is not the "objective" six o'clock news. But then again neither is Fox. It is a Micheal Moore film. And it argues a point. Effectively.

Moore says the Emperor has no clothes. Because the CEOs stole them.

watch the preview for yourself.

Video review: Gilbreth time motion, social condition series 3

Taylorism and Scientific Management.

In this film, Gilbreth shows how more productivity can be made by doing as few motions as possible. Gilbreth (actually both of them as they were married) were early pioneers of time motion studies. The book and movies Cheaper by the Dozen were based on the family of the Gilbreths.

What was at first an idea of simply finding the easiest and best way to do a work process, became a hated and feared management style in the wrong hands of greedy capitalists along with other ideas like Fordism and assembly line speed-ups. It became not an easy way to do things, but a way to de-humanize and control workers to produce so fast that they could barely stop to scratch or rub one's eyes for fear of falling behind.

This film was made in the era of scientific management, and the drive for efficiency.

Taylor's methods were mentioned by Lenin is his book, Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government. Later, the Five Years plans of Stalin also were influenced by faith in progress by science and technology as was common both in communist and capitalist systems.

The dystopic novel Brave New World takes these ideas to the extreme, predicting that capitalism with it's drive for efficiency would plan, control every aspect of life on the planet for the sake of the economy.

Art by the Masses, guerilla art projects

Art for the masses?
how about art BY the masses.

Never mind mass produced art by publishing houses and studios. In these projects the grassroots are encouraged to produce works for themselves.

image at left: radical graphics.org








POOR MUSIC SERIES

Ever seen those crappy mixed tapes in the bin at a Goodwill or Sally Ann shop? Sick of top 40 music? Well there could be gems in the pile if you are into listening to other peoples discussions and musical tastes from ages ago.

Some of those tapes could be planted there as fakes. Fakes? Yes, fakes. It's all part of a guerrilla art project started in San Diego by Pea Hicks. And if you are bored as Pea must have been you too can make a tape as per his instructions on this website.

A quote from the site sums up the project: "...creating his own slightly bizarre tapes, recording them onto cruddy old tapes, writing fake descriptions and dates on them, and dispersing them back into the thrift stores. Hopefully, people would be intrigued enough by what was scrawled on the tapes to buy them for a quarter and find out what was on them..."

Slightly bizzare, and Hicks gives an example of such a tape with such track titles as:

• Girl In A Picture In My Wallet That I Don’t Know Very Well
• You Suck Like An Abalone
• Killer Typewriter From The Planet Mongo
• In Shadows Lurk Dead Guys

EARLIER PROJECT

Another project that Hicks did previously is in a similar vain involving an early digital voice recorder toy.
This web page shows the results of compiling random recordings from such toys left on the shelves of the toy departments of various K-Marts and other stores. Nothing fancy here, just the recordings of a mass produced toy in a store. Just goes to show that art is everywhere and everything not just what media moguls say what is art for our consumption.

THE CHICAGO TAPES PROJECT

As the introduction goes:

"The Chicago Tapes Project is a public art/experimental sound project in which citizens exchange mix tapes, found sounds and original recordings via publicly hidden street side stations. Any and all are encouraged to participate."

This project is a similar to the Poor Man's music above, but is more liberal in that the subject matter is more open to be whatever the tape creator chooses. And instead of music bins at the local thrift shop, this project uses open spots marked by a specified stencil:







"The tapes can be planted anywhere discreet yet public - inside newspaper boxes, planters, and tree trunks, under mailboxes, park benches and stoops, between the cracks in the walls and the pavement."

Among the resources listed on the links page is Loopers-Delight, for those interested in making music for the project or just for the hell of it.

ANOTHER CHICAGO PROJECT that is listed as a related project but has vanished is "open-loop", a mapping project of all the security cameras in Chicago.

BOOKCROSSING



If you like books but hate having bookshelves or boxes full of books you've read before and needlessly collecting dust, bookcrossing is for you. Especially if the local used bookshop won't take your copy because it's too worn, or only offer 3 copper pennies for it.

Bookcrossing involves labeling a book as belonging to the project and cataloged and then given away free in a manner of leaving it in a public place. Such books often have a history to them that can be looked up online as to where they have been, similar to tracking banded waterfowl, or a 5 dollar bill.

YELLOW ARROW PROJECT



Started in New York in 2004 and wrapped up in 2008, but not before going global, the yellow arrow project is very much an auto-guided tour and scavenger hunt all rolled into one. One finds a yellow arrow and on it a code one uses to text a phone number via a cell phone. And voila! you receive a message about the place 's history or whatever the arrow placer found interesting about the place. It's somewhat of an technologically advanced form of the hobo sign much like warchalking is.

Several yellow arrow projects have been made, such as one encouraging participants to smell, hear and use other senses at marked spots of a city. A project tells where long defunct shops, clubs, meeting halls etc. have been. Another good places to skateboard and perform bike tricks. In Washington D.C. home of the D.C. hardcore music scene and the Dischord record label and it's roster of bands, a project highlights the history of punk in the area.

I imagine that along with historic information and details about a place (eg.such and such a restaurant makes a good burger or a poem related to the spot) , labour history could be put on these yellow arrows, or a red arrow project could be started.

music review: proletopia records label

note most links below are to myspace profiles, including music players.



above: “...I saw the wildly flashing red ad...”

“OUT NOW!!!” the self-promoting blurb proclaimed on a myspace post. I wish I had a better way to introduce a record label in a profile or review, but I did not come across this label by ways of a indie record shop, merch table or touring punk band. I saw the wildly flashing red ad on a computer screen hours away from any metropolitan area.

Proletopia records is the label. Hard core punk is the music. Beijing is the home base for it all.
Oddly enough the website for this label has been short lived since it is now offline.

The use of 1!..2!..3!..exclamation points following “OUT NOW” means it must be good. Or really bad and they must flog those records. Or excited that they released a copyleft record. Well that's for you to decide, but for myself I find the music good enough to download. Or if I had extra cash maybe even buy a CD. The fact that the label's releases were copy left is what got my attention. Let's face it, if the music is for us proles, we have to make it ourselves and to get other fellow worker's music, we need it cheap or better yet free.

Why the name Proletopia? The first things that crossed my mind when I read that name were, myopia and utopia. The second one is more relevant. The label's name is a contraction of the words proletariat and utopia.

The bands on the label are from all ends of the Earth: South America, Europe, North America and Asia.
Ska and Oi! Bands also make a strong showing on the label roster.

Right: The fact that the label's releases were copy left is what got my attention



Earlier this year the label released two compilation albums: Black and Red (also called in full black sunrise and red sunrise ).


There are too many bands to give space to them all but I will feature a couple now to give an idea of the label....

Gum bleed is a Chinese street punk band that reminds me of another street punk band: the Casualties. The same mammoth size mohawks and street punk music style. But clone band it's not. Surf rock band like the ventures, instruments like klezmer clarinets, and other influences seem to find their way in at times. Many tracks are largely metal influenced. Most unusual is the punked up cover of the Metis anthem, Red River Valley.

The adrenaline dumping into arteries from the high energy sound and screaming lyrics are sure to wake us up with after a tiring shift at the factory, store or call centre. With tracks titles like “don't forget the Class struggle” and People's War” Gum Bleed is very much relevant to working class punks.

Factory Minds is a ska punk band from San Jose, California that formed in February 2008. A listen to them and you know the Clash was a big influence on them.

Brigada Oi! is a Oi! band from Columbia that formed in 1999. Lyrics are in Spanish.

other bands:

Answer---catalonia
Camarada Kalashnikov---catalonia
A.S.C.O---Western Sahara
Subversivos---Brazil
Piolet Rock Proletario---Venezuela
Cervelli Stanki---Italy
Sobressal Tos---Portugal
P38punk---Italy
Post Guerra---Colombia
Breaking To Top---PRC
Mr. Irish Bastards---Germany
Death Zone---UK
Hangover Overdose---Finland
Civil Olydnad---Sweden
Unity of inferior---Russia
Lost Cherrees---UK
Represion24horas---Spain
Crise Total---Portugal



above: note the misspelling “surise” well kudos for trying. I guess that's what punk's all about.

web/book review: early communist literature

It's 1919, the First World War has just ended, millions of workers still have in their minds all the waste and death from that war. The economy is slow. But strikes are taking place everywhere. Winnipeg is having its General Strike. The Russian Revolution only happened a couple of years before.

In the United States of America, a new party formed. It was a communist party. And it published this leaflet below.




above: screen shot from the internet archive, just click on "read online" to view document.




The above leaflet doesn't seems very outdated. It discusses its split from the Socialist Party, which had become controlled by its Right wing. The leaflet attacks the tepid reformist platform of the Socialist Party.



The communists were not the only people to attack the Socialist Party:


The IWW also viewed the reformist party in a bad light. Today the equivalent of the Socialist Party of old is the New Democratic Party of today. In Manitoba the provincial NDP have become more and more right wing.

Before there was even a communist party, or the Russian revolution for that matter, was the Socialist Party. A publication discussing its newspaper the appeal to reason, is also among documents hosted on the Internet Archive website.




The Internet Archive has a huge selection of books available online, including Project Guttenburg selections.


Just type in "communist" in the search bar and a ton of communist and anti-communist documents come up, produced by hollywood, chambers of commerce, the FBI, house of un American activities, and of course communist parties themselves. Among them, a history of the Young Communist International (including early history of WFDY) and Why every worker should join the Communist Party.

Web Review: Mark Fiore's cartoons

Around for a few years now, markfiore.com is a web site that hosts flash animations that have been highly critical of the war in Iraq, war on terrorism, war on drugs, neo-liberalism, social conservatism, and George W. Bush.

Unfortunately older videos have been taken off the site but many are topical in nature and have become dated.

Here are a few examples below.




above: Newly-Frugal guy is a neo-liberal bag of money who thinks social programs should be cut to benefit the rich.



above: odd simplification of the financal crisis involving frog and rabbits feet.



above: continuation of the frog rabbit foot crisis.



above: smarty bombsalot, about Israel's bombing of Lebanon and Gaza.



above commentary of the trying times of big corporate newspapers. For instance, National Post is reducing its publication schedule.



above: Doreen the Downer about capitalism's quest for higher productivity, profits and their effects on the food industry. Capitalism is bad for a typical cow named Doreen. The video also pokes fun at outbreaks of E. coli and Maple Leaf foods' recent listeria outbreak.

Clean Coal

The United States of Incarceration

snuggly the security bear about wiretapping

cartoon: "getting nowhere by degrees" students and jobs

WEB REVIEW: STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE 1930s

The cartoon below first appeared in the World Telegram and was reprinted in The Student Outlook in December 1933.

This and more graphics are on this web site.

More examples are below.

below, red baiting against the American Student Union.

Below, student graphics against militarisation of campuses.

Below, student graphics about political and business elite's control of universities and colleges.

Video review: the plow that broke the plains, social condition series 2

This film documented the conditions in the U.S. Great Plains area. The conditions were very similar if not identical to those in the Canadian prairies, an area known as the Palliser Triangle.

It was those conditions that forged many changes in the dirty thirties.
This film criticises capitalism and its destruction of the environment. Capitalism and market driven practices drove the collapse of the environment to the point that the soil blew away and created the "dust bowl". Many people became environmental and economic refugees from this region.

Video review: capitalist rats, social condition series 1

Capitalism in a box

Maybe you had a classroom pet in your early school days. Well, for the YCL maybe these lab rats in this film should be our official classroom pets. Now, I can't vouch for the proper use of a scientific method, but still, this film is interesting in how a social situation is induced in these rats. The term "rat race" is very literal here as the worker rat runs back and forth only to find its food gobbled up by the capitalist rats who hover around the food tray the way an opportunist hockey player hovers around a goalie in his net.

What the film doesn't show is what variable conditions could make the situation more equal for the rats. What would happen if the worker rat was removed from the situation?

Video review: strikes (part 3)

Considering that as the economic recession goes on we are only at the beginning of attacks on us as workers, these two videos show examples from past history.

PROTEST BY SCHOOL TEACHERS



Original caption states,
1933/04/17"Chicago, IL: Parents and pupils join in a huge demonstration, tangling traffic for blocks as hundreds of thousands line the streets of the Loop to watch the bizarre procession staged by employees of the Board of Education, whose pay is eight months in arrears."

FARMERS AND SHOTGUNS

To learn more about the subject matter of the film read about the Farmers' Holiday Association.



Farmers have always been divided. Example are plenty: rich against poor, large against small, left against right, those in favor of genetic modification versus those against.

Farmers have traditionally helped each other out, formed co-operative stores, grain handling companies, or pooled their money towards a machine that none of them could alone afford.

But as time went on larger farms would instead of help out a neighbour for mutual benefit, force smaller neighbours out of business and take it over. This capitalist model of competition is shown battling in this film against the small farmers who try to prevent the sale of food at below production costs. The free enterprise farmer meanwhile rather selfishly take up arms to smash the union farmers.

Today we see the progression of this battle of co-operation versus competition. Large corporate farms are becoming the norm, and ownership of the means of food production is in fewer (and more monopolistic) hands. Farmers themselves are again becoming "technological sharecroppers" with genetically modified seeds, chemicals and contracts to obtain such technology that is becoming necessary to keep up in a marketplace where such crops are no longer an edge but another necessity that allows the farmer to keep his eroding livelihood.

video reviews: strikes

This is the month of May, and the 90th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. But another general strike is shown in the following films. The San Francisco general strike of 1934 was started as a strike on May 9th by longshoremen. It resulted in the unionization of all ports on the west coast.







Above we see the effects of workers' power of stopping all work. The employers and powers that be freak right out as shown on the newsreel.
The corporate media paint the strike as menacing society and innocent people. Who are these innocent people I would like to know. I believe the newsreel is referring to the well to do minority of bankers and industrialists.

The narration appeals to the law and order crowd who prefer the status quo instead of risking change. Of course in the 1930s not many people benefited from the status quo and so many more were willing to accept radical ideas and change. The devil they knew was a devil they could bear no longer.





This clip shows the police attacking the strikers and the ensuing battle.
It shows the strikers side of the story more, as the state comes in to crush the strike, much like in Winnipeg in 1919. Law and order is the pretext but the scenes show the police creating chaos. The end of the clip has the narrator stating the strike as a step backwards for reconstruction (of capitalism).





Above is a silent clip showing a march of longshoremen on strike. Note the "smash the fink halls" placard against having to be forced to belong to company unions and paying a company union hiring hall to work in a port.

The Depression of the 1930s was full of countless strikes and workers actions. The next and final set of videos show two such actions: Chicago teachers who were owed months in back wages, and striking farmers who tried to stop flow of their crops.

Music review: Asian Dub Foundation, Negativland

electronic music in working class culture

On the cultural left-wing, folk, hip hop and hardcore punk are the usual genres that convey working class sentiment about life under capitalism. Rebelling against the status quo through music usually produces powerful lyrics that can stand on their own merits as poetry.One genre that often doesn't come to mind is electronic music. Electronic music has branched into many different types itself....

PART 2 (final)

With sampling, music with the use of progressive sound bites was bound to be produced by progressive musicians. For example, excerpts of a lecture by Ambalavaner Sivanandan is used on the track Colour Line on the Community Music album put out in 2000 by Asian Dub Foundation.




I could review this album, but that would be redundant, as I agree with a review already. All I will say is ditto. What is clear is that electronica of this variety follows the rap traditions, so it has lyrics galore.


Well, after singing about it for years, The Crash did come.


NEGATIVLAND: culture jamming as music

Going further with sampling, the group Negativland is known for sound collages. They have been around since 1979. Certainly not geared towards a top 40 audience, the avant garde style reminds me of a novelty record. It gets my attention because it it so out there that it makes me think (WTF?) and laugh. And that's the point.

One album put out by them, Dispepsi is based on advertisements by Pepsi and Coca-Cola that they put into a new context with odd results. But perhaps the most interesting work the group did was to manipulate, not samples, but the entire corporate media:

“...Following the somewhat unexpected success of this album (Escape from Noise), Negativland faced the prospect of going on a money-losing tour. To prevent this, they put together a press release. It insisted that the acts of an axe murderer named David Brom had not been incited by their song Christianity Is Stupid. There had never been any claim that the song had incited the act, however. The song contained samples deriding Christianity taken from the pro-Christianity film, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The story ran on TV news shows, newspapers, and magazines, with little to no fact-checking. Soon the world was informed of the "Killer Song" that caused a kid to murder his parents with an ax.”-wikipedia.




Above: The Letter U and the Numeral 2. This song received plenty of attention when it came out. The announcer, Casy Kasem goes into a fit of expletives in an off air recording, and is used in this track. On this network program American Top 40, Kasem was replaced by Ryan Seacrest in 2004.




Above: a video clip from the 2007 DVD Our Favorire Things....Just plain weird.

music review: Boards of Canada, DJ Shadow and Beethoven?

• electronic music in working class culture
  or six degrees of separation in
  electronic music and Lenin; it's closer than you think
  
  Part 1
  
  On the cultural left-wing, folk, hip hop and hardcore punk are the usual genres that convey working class sentiment about life under capitalism. Rebelling against the status quo through music usually produces powerful lyrics that can stand on their own merits as poetry.
  
  One genre that often doesn't come to mind is electronic music.
  Electronic music has branched into many different types itself....
  
  What if music has no words? How does it relate to working class culture? It can. The story of Lenin's love for Beethoven's music is telling of its power. In Georg Lukács Lenin – Theoretician of Practice:
  
  '...Gorky recorded Lenin’s very characteristic words spoken after he listened to Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata*: “I know the Appassionata inside out and yet I am willing to listen to it every day. It is wonderful, ethereal music. On hearing it I proudly, maybe somewhat naively, think: See! people are able to produce such marvels!” He then winked, laughed and added sadly: “I’m often unable to listen to music, it gets on my nerves, I would like to stroke my fellow beings and whisper sweet nothings in their ears for being able to produce such beautiful things in spite of the abominable hell they are living in....”'
  
  Lenin was refering to his being distracted by music so much that he would rather not listen to it. Being lost in music can be a good thing too. It may help to concentrate. So called "study music" used by students is an example of using music to meditate, think or study.
  
  *(Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, opus 57)
  
  Lenin was also interested in an electronic musical instrument called a theremin, the grandfather of electronic musical instruments, invented in the former Soviet Union. Lenin even requested to have a lesson on the theremin from its inventor.
  
  So how does instrumental music fit in? With no words, music invokes images to the listener. We are often told about a composer's life and times to give context to classical pieces. To a worker in a feudal, capitalist, or socialist society, a piece of music may invoke different images but maybe a common meaning.
  
  Music can of course be used together with images. Movie scores are testament to that concept. So even a piece of music without words can be given a real deliberate leftist message when used together with a progressive film. The film “Dark Days” is an example, scored by DJ Shadow.
  
  
  
  above: the music process described
  
  
  
  music specific to the film
  
  BOARDS OF CANADA AND GOVERNMENT CUTBACKS
  
  Boards of Canada (BOC) are not from Canada but hail from Scotland. How are they related to Canada? The duo get inspiration for their music from movies from the National Film Board of Canada, in particular documentaries. I wonder at the far reaching effects of government budget cuts of the NFB to arts and culture down the road. The question arises: If the NFB was cut years ago like is has been recently, would the group Boards of Canada even exist?
  
  Speaking of the NFB, it should be noted that the Film Board's first commissioner, John Grierson was also a Scotsman and was dismissed in 1945 according to wikipedia after "allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war."
  
  links: (note this post was edited 5/25/09 to include the links below)

• official site
• wikipedia entry
• myspace profile

The three clips above have not much in terms of conveying leftist ideas, but combined with the silent movie in the post below, you can be the judge.
(if you do we suggest letting the players load up first to help with streaming problems for those with low bandwidth)

Video review: “The Prologue” from the Passaic textile strike

this is the first in a series of video reviews on films about strikes.







This film was made in 1926 and is silent. This video only shows the opening prologue. It is a melodrama explaining conditions of the workers at the struck woolen mills. The rest of the movie contains documentary footage of the picket lines, police beatings and other aspects of the labour actions. According to the IMDB website, the cast played themselves and the production crew were made up of members of the communist party. (Ironically the IMDB site had sponsored links to union busting outfits).


You will see in the title sequence “An International Worker's Aid Picture.” Affiliated to that was the Workers Film and Photo League. Two reels were thought lost to time. However, in 2006, the Communist Party USA donated a vast collection to New York University and among the collection were reels and reels of film. Two of them included the lost footage which at present is in the process of restoration.


Passaic by the way, is in New Jersey. And sadly, the strike was lost due to various problems like an attack by the at that time racist craft unionism of the AFL and red-baiting. It did have a silver lining of, breaking the company unions then in place, and forcing the hand of the AFL. These lessons were remembered in the 1930s

more on the strike: http://www.weisbord.org/Passaic.htm

http://www.weisbord.org/BulletinsTwo.htm

Two websites and a music review

MUSIC REVIEW: THE DILS





Above: Track from Album Class War, I hate the Rich.

Reading music reviews for me is always futile as words never do justice of describing how an album or song is. I am not one to write music reviews, but on a web page the ability to hear a tune or two for oneself makes me reconsider.

The Dils were a punk band in California from 1978 to 1980. In 2000, the Bacchus archives imprint of Dionysus records released an album (Class War-the title alone says it all) of a live show plus 2 studio tracks. A quote from the Bacchus website, actually old liner notes mentions:"...simply youthfully rebellious. It didn't matter if some members of the band were admitted communists, or that they were outspoken critics of the local scene..." One track, Red Rockers Rule makes it even more obvious. They are noted as opening for the Clash during that bands first North American tour.


For such a short lived band, their songs are well covered. According to a wikipedia article on the band, the song Your Not Blank was covered by the band Dillinger Four, while the song Class War was covered by the band D.O.A.


After the band ceased to exist, the members moved on from punk and politics. But the recordings in Class War are snapshots of a time when the members of the Dils were exactly what the liner notes said: "...simply youthfully rebellious." And I'll add: had the most impact.


if you want to view the track listing and hear track samples click on the link "Class War" above.




Above: a live set from 1978 (not on the Class War Album).


WEB SITES


VINYLCOMMUNICATIONS

VinylCommunications was a record label that released electronic music. The only reason I mention it is that it used the hammer and sickle in its logo.

This website is actually defunct and an archived page is shown. In fact the entire record label is defunct. I wonder what happened to the back catalogue? Why did it fold? This is a good question given the current debate on copyright and pirating music. Read more on this debate below.

YOU TOMB

How long will the You Tube links of the Dils above remain active?

You Tomb is a website that documents videos removed from You Tube due to copyright infringement.

It does not keep track of all videos, nor of removal for other reasons. The site is maintained by a student organization at MIT, called Free Culture. More about the site is on its info page. As the debate, or some may say, battle over copyright and its evil outgrowth, digital rights technology becomes more widespread, this site may well be a reference years down the road. Since the days of dubbed audio and VHS cassette tapes gave way to the audio file and movie file, lawyers at the major media corporations have been in a panic at the changing times. Some people have embraced this change and are adapting. Copyleft, Creative Commons licenses, are more common. Net labels have appeared releasing music for free, or donation. So, small labels can exist in a world of file sharing. Other revenue streams can thrive with free distribution and its result: free promotion. Bands like Radiohead have made waves by releasing entire studio albums (In Rainbows) on a donate what you can basis (which can mean: for free). Film maker Micheal Moore released an entire movie for free: Slacker Uprising.

The sharing of music through Napster, which held a massive directory list in central servers, was shutdown after a well publicized court case. However the decentralized setup of peer to peer (P2P) networks like Limewire, has filled the role that Napster once had. In response governments has made tougher copyright and anti-piracy laws to try to shore up the old order of things.

The free software movement, which fostered the Firefox web browser, Open Office word processor, and Linux operating system, is alive and well. No licenses need to be bought to run these software programs, unlike programs from corporations like Microsoft or Apple computer.

The idea of intellectual property as a commodity that can be bought, sold, or leased has been a large part of capitalism. The idea of greed or self interest to make money off one's ideas as a chief motivator in progress is old, but today, patents and copyrights often slow or stop development. Entire genres of music now depend on finding copyright clearances to produce new works. Laws have gone to the absurd extremes: colours, and even life forms can now be trademarked and patented. In Canada, the period of patent protection for new drugs was increased by years. With a longer time to hold monopolies on drugs, the cost of health care has increased and places vital drugs out of the reach of those who cannot afford them.

Website review: Modern Mechanix

The website Modern Mechanix is nothing more than a collection of posts of interesting articles and advertisments from old magazines.

Sounds boring? Maybe. But generations between the original publication dates and today, these posts are entertaining, showing all that is bad with capitalism and corporate media.

Most of the posts come from Atomic age, Cold War, Roaring Twenties, and the Dirty Thirties. Each era has is unique traits, for example the depression era has plenty of items on thrift and get rich quick ideas, this is sure to be funny to those with a critical left wing view. The author of the site sure views it that way most of the time. Being published in an imperialist country, new research in war is often featured. A look at such ideas (mirrors for example) show how much resources can be wasted compared to more direct research in everyday needs of the real world.

here are a number of highlights of the blog:

Bad advertising, who needs Ad Busters?

• scariest recruitment ad ever

• keep your job with a new arm

• dolls model new weapons

• slaves and pyramids

• smoke stacks and progress

• bubblegum grinder

• a booming resource

Articles of interest

• Early global warming article(1953)

• Safety?

• Subliminal Advertising

• workers seize a coal mine

• Man resorts to selling self as ad

• Latest in war fashions!

• Global warming (1932!)

• Warning about computers and privacy (1960s)

• Scary use of birth control-Eugenics

• War research and killer bees

• Ad research

right: toy figures make war look like child's play
in this ad for a defence contractor.

Video review-imperialism series 2-war industries

It's time again for the weekly video series of boring period films that will drill the concept of Imperialism into your heads.

Before the UE union was kicked out of the AFL-CIO during the red scare, it came out of the second world war swinging. History proves that the UE had it right. The CIO had a final attempt during operation dixie before it joined the AFL.

Here is a film it produced that explains Imperialism.

and part two click to watch:




There is some racism against Japan, due to the war. But the film shows the beginnings of the Military-Industrial complex long before Ike Eisenhower's farewell address. Those who have watched the movie "The Corporation" will see a similar tone between this film and the later documentary's "Fanta Orange, IBM, and Opel" segment.

The workings of huge banking interests like Morgan is explained. Very graphic, the $100 bills laid end to end is the best part! Today with parasitic capital so much more intense we need to see more of why capitalism is just rotten to the core. (capital that does not "work" in the sense of buying productivity but just skims off the cream while starving the economy. Witness the housing bubble in the U.S. ) Worth 30 minutes of your time. This movie predates "The Corporation" by 50 years. Of course Lenin's "Imperialism" pre-dates this film by a further 50 or so years.

Video review-imperialism series 1-cola

I didn't know that "sugar is a highly nutritious food"! This video is a good example of why corporations need to stay out of the classroom.



This is a fine example of Imperialism. Coca-Cola presents the Philippines as if it were a colonial possession and a market full of cola drinkers. The industrial processes are of interest. However that is not the main interest to this film. It is the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a Coca-Cola shareholder or board member. Packed with half truths and outright lies, this travelogue is actually funny to watch. Those workers just look so happy! Of course the anti-union death squads that are major parts of Coca-Cola's history are not mentioned.

Films such as this one were weapons used in the battle of ideas during the Cold War, promoting Capitalism, and by extension, consumerism. These days films such as this one have come to haunt those who have made them.

Boycott Coca-Cola. You can learn more at the Killer Coke website

Video review

UPDATE! Jan 2010---

A new video was posted to You Tube. Not bad but I like "The Harper Dictatorship" better.

Now that the federal budget is coming up this week when the House of Commons finally meets I'll talk about this video:

click here if it runs poorly



Now, Hitler and Harper comparisons may be a little much even for communists, but if you look further this is part of a larger phenomenon. The video explains:



I watched the movie Downfall during a matinee one weekend, and I never thought that such a dark movie could find it's way onto You Tube as a funny fad. Here is the original version of the clip. There are many of these clips, in this one below, Hitler explains capitalist greed. (wow I never thought I'd write or say those words together!)




It is interesting to note that this fad has both right and left elements. Unfortunately many clips are racist, sexist, and homophobic in various degrees. I'll admit some of these are funny but a line needs to be drawn somewhere (funny bigotry is still bigotry) and some clips overtly attack various groups while being thinly disguised as comedy. You'll see what I mean if you look further on the web.

The downfall clips are really an interesting grey area for a few reasons. They deal with a taboo subject (Hitler) and make use of comedy to get away with various messages. This can cut both ways. The Left has used it to (rightfully) show Harper's 'control freak' methods and the danger he represents for Canada. Racists on the right can use it to attack various minority groups by hiding behind one of the biggest racists of all, Adolf Hitler. I imagine that the right can use this clip in a creative way to attack left wing ideas in general.

Some clips seem to come across as guerilla advertising, saying Hitler wants this or that food, or product, throwing tantrums if he cannot get them. But the fact is anyone who has access to the technology,can make their version to upload. Whether it is funny or not or right or left is up to the whims of the person.

some highlights:
Hitler has computer problems

I shouldn't have burned all those books

Hitler's address leaked on British Nazi list

He wants fast food