I am irritated, therefore I blog.
You probably recall, or have heard, "Beds Are Burning," the whomping thwomping 1987 number from the whomping thwomping politically-engaged Australian band, Midnight Oil.
To refresh your recollection, we'll go to the tape:
Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning
I call that a more than serviceable tune. And it comes with a clearly articulated political agenda: the Oils leave no doubt that they are in favor of wholesale restitution of ancestral lands to the indigenous peoples of Australia. This is a song you can bob your head to whatever your views concerning restitutionary land rights. It has a beat, it has a cause, you can dance to it: what more can you want?
The late 1980's had their drawbacks, but a political tune was a political tune in those days, a thing that made particularized demands and had no interest in just wallowing about moanin' about the injustice of it all.
Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.
On the weekend, it came to my attention that this brawling, bawling Oils tune has been remade by an all-star crew of contemporary musical lights in the name of Fighting Climate Change and, particularly, in the cause of Demanding Action at the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference. The new version of the song is circulating for free download at most of the established music sites. Here is the official video:
I hesitated a bit before embedding the awful, self-important thing because it is, regardless of anyone's views on anthropocentric climate change, Deeply Awful and Self-Important. Anything that begins, as this does, with Kofi Annan intoning "tick tick tick" in the most portentous fashion is doomed from the outset, and the ensuing arrangement and rewritten lyrics are so totally deracinated and spineless that it is hard to stay awake through it all, let alone become Fired Up and Ready to Go in support of its chosen Cause.
And qu'est-ce que c'est, cette Cause? Hard to say, let alone qu'est-ce que c'est.
The whole thing is the product of an organization calling itself Time for Climate Justice, but you can search from one end of that site to the other without being able to figure out who or what is sponsoring this project. More damningly, you can search from one end to the other of that site without finding a single concrete statement of . . . what exactly you should be calling upon the delegates to the Copenhagen conference to -- dare we say it? -- do to move toward a solution to the ostensible problem at hand.
Oh, if you roam around the site you can buy stuff if that's your inclination: ticking ticking dog tags for instance. "They are all individually numbered," we are assured, "although we can’t tell you to whom all the highly prized [sic] first 1,000 went to." (I am inclined to believe that excessive and unnecessary prepositions cause more global warming than they eliminate, given that we breathe carbon dioxide into the world with each spoken syllable -- but I could be wrong.) Kofi Annan, they'll tell you, is Number One, though the other 999 remain secure in their anonymity. (Et tu, Bishop Tutu?)
Dog tags not your style? Perhaps you would prefer the inevitable Armstrongesque wristband. Those, too, are on offer.
Where go the proceeds from all these tchotchkes? Alternative fuel bunnies, perhaps? You'll never know, nor can I find anything to suggest that even one carbon dioxide molecule will ever be beaten into submission and sequestered where it can do us no further harm as a result of this organization's efforts. I am not reassured, for instance, by Mr. Annan's call, early on in the video, for a "robust post-climate agreement." If we ever become truly "post-climate" on this planet, we will by definition be worrying about these issues from the afterlife, or not at all.
In short, it seems that a Perfectly Good Political Pop Song has here been slaughtered in vain, accomplishing nothing beyond ithe care and feeding of the self-image of its celebrity killers.
Fight the Power. Don't Believe the Hype. Close Cover Before Striking. Rotate Your Tires. Amen.
~~~
Dear Mr. Wallace,
The whole thing is the product of an organization calling itself Time for Climate Justice, but you can search from one end of that site to the other without being able to figure out who or what is sponsoring this project. More damningly, you can search from one end to the other of that site without finding a single concrete statement of . . . what exactly you should be calling upon the delegates to the Copenhagen conference to -- dare we say it? -- do to move toward a solution to the ostensible problem at hand.
This says it all! Thanks for the smart read. May i please add you to my blogroll? :)
Posted by: Nash | October 21, 2009 at 08:16 AM