Couple things:

Anyone in LA got any information about great hardcore bands doing a DIY sorta thing or just great and local? Myspace, facebook, any sorta profile is welcome. Also if you're in one of those bands, let me know. I'd be glad to promote your music here and even attend a show.

This also goes for indie bands. Hardcore and indie, probably 2 genres that will be my favorite for a while.

Also, if anyone has any Fieldtree work aside from their self titled Ep, PLEASE send it to me. PLEASE. Seriously. PLEASE.

Ken mode get 'rights' of their music back

Exclusive: KEN Mode Get the Rights Back to Their Songs on MySpace, Call for Change in Website’s Dispute System Following Copyright Battle
11/25/2009 By Jason Schreurs

Just days after we reported that Winnipeg, MB noise rockers KEN Mode were denied the right to upload their songs by MySpace, who cited ownership rights by Warner Music Group, the songs on the band's MySpace page have been reinstated.

In an interview with KEN Mode singer/guitarist Jesse Matthewson, he said he received the good news from MySpace on Sunday (November 20), two days after Exclaim! first contacted the social-networking site with a press query about the situation.

The message to Matthewson said the previously blocked songs were "currently active on your profile and your privileges are currently active." The message gave no explanation as to why the band were initially denied access to their songs, for which they hold exclusive copyright, nor did it offer any kind of apology. "If you have further issues regarding blocked media, please let us know," concluded the message.

While Matthewson is relieved to have control over his band's songs again, he is still fuming at MySpace for taking down the songs in the first place and the website's frustrating dispute forms, which he tried to fill out no less than 25 times over the course of a few days. He finally was able to contact MySpace, but believes their swift action was due to the negative press the website drew from the situation.

"I'm glad that MySpace fixed the problem as quickly as they did, but I question what would have happened had Exclaim! not gotten involved," says Matthewson. "The fact that MySpace has a dispute form that doesn't work — and I've read accounts of other bands going through the same thing and just gave up because of it — is very frustrating. I'm not sure whether that was a MySpace Canada issue or what... but to have the dispute form indefinitely offline? Weak."

When Exclaim! contacted MySpace about KEN Mode's situation on Friday (November 18), we received only an email from an unnamed "MySpace Copyright Agent," saying that the band should contact them directly and provide their MySpace info, something Matthewson had already repeatedly done.

"Unfortunately we cannot offer assistance to any third parties on behalf of a MySpace member. Please have the band you're referring to contact us directly for any assistance they might need with their profile," the copyright agent emailed to Exclaim!

Matthewson speculates that the copyright issue may have something to do with the band's former label, Escape Artist Records. In fact, that label's MySpace, as well as those of Escape Artist bands such as Collapsar, In Pieces, Blunderbuss and Theory of Ruin, has recently had songs removed from its MySpace profile. Matthewson spoke to Escape Artist co-owner Gordon Conrad, also a publicist at Relapse Records, about the possibility of the link to bankruptcy proceedings of the label's former distributor, Lumberjack Mordam Music Group, which Warner seems to have had some sort of stake in, perhaps in a creditor situation. However, the direct link to Warner is still unknown.

"Neither KEN Mode, nor Escape Artist Records, gave away any rights to WMG in any way, so we don't understand why this would be happening," says Matthewson.

Steve Waxman, director of publicity at Warner Music Canada is not familiar with KEN Mode, nor Escape Artist Records and its other bands, but he did say that the problem seemed to be from the MySpace ends of things and he doesn't believe Warner needs to take any action at this point.

"It could be a glitch in MySpace with regards to how they have publishing set up. And you don't know and I don't know, and none of us know, if this is the Warner record company that MySpace is talking about [when they send out the copyright notices], or if this is the publishing arm that they are talking about," says Waxman. "I don't think anyone here [at Warner] would be inclined to contact MySpace, just because it's not an issue for a company, and that company in this case is Warner; if it's not an issue for them, they're not going to get in touch with MySpace to find out what is going on."

But the Warner Music Group copyright notice is not an isolated incident. Besides the many independent labels and bands previously associated with Lumberjack Mordam that are experiencing trouble, some unrelated artists are also being affected by the same copyright errors. Last month, we told you about how British singer Edwyn Collins was battling with MySpace and Warner over user rights for his hit song “A Girl Like You.” And the now-defunct '90s alt-rock band Pure, based in Vancouver, also recently had their songs blocked by a Warner copyright issue and posted about it on their MySpace page.

In a blog post, Pure's former keyboard player, Mark Henning, wrote: "Starting last year, I noticed certain songs were no longer streamable on the MySpace player. Pretty much all the music that was recorded while we were signed to Warner Bros has been removed. Then, earlier this year, I attempted to post a song from the Extra Purestrial EP, which was later amalgamated by Mammoth Records as part of the USA release of Generation Six Pack. I figured it shouldn't be a problem as it wasn't part of the Warner Music period, yet it triggered some copyright software which blocked us from uploading any more songs to this page."

As far as offsetting any bad PR is concerned, Waxman believes it's not Warner who should be doing damage control. "I think it's a PR issue for MySpace, frankly," he says. "Until you just told me we were getting bad PR, we didn't know about it."

Matthewson does agree that MySpace needs to step it up in the customer service department and monitor their form emails and copyright notices so smaller artists like KEN Mode don't get criminalized for merely trying to upload their songs.

"If they're going to allow majors to do massive sweeps like the one they apparently did with their copyright filters, they need to be able to handle the myriad disputes that will occur, not just lead them to a page that crashes," says Matthewson. "They could also spare everyone the accusatory language when things are so automated. It's pretty awesome being treated like a criminal when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. This might sound like I'm whining, but the language they used only made me furious; and then to have them remove a blog I did about the situation unfolding... I was ready for war."

Matthewson also has some strong advice for any other bands that run into the same kind of troubles while trying to upload their songs to MySpace.

"I encourage any other bands or labels that have their copyrights being claimed to draw attention to it with as many people as possible. Get in touch with MySpace immediately via e-mail/fax/phone, and get in touch with any media links you have. Let people know you're pissed off. I think that's the quickest way to resolve these ridiculous occurrences."

TO ANY BLOGGERS WITH MUSIC BLOGS, PLEASE POST THIS TO HELP SPREAD WORD SO THAT OTHER BANDS MAY BE ABLE TO RESOLVE A SIMILAR SITUATION IF THEY SHOULD BE PLACED IN ONE

NO, no I don't wanna buy you a diamond ring.

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Prayer - William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.


Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

Really don't understand the hate for the second and third Matrix movies

They're pure genius. The writing especially. I dont care much for action, though I know it takes many a meticulous hours and time being spent so that those fighting scenes can look so god-awesome, but fuck, the writing was great. I'm watching a recorded Matrix Reloaded and I'm hearing the same revelation I had a few months ago, that there is no purpose to life, only an act warranted and justified by a result. There is no congruity unless a sequence of actions are planned to attain a sequence of results. Check out this dialogue to see exactly what I mean:



Merovingian: Hmph... I am a trafficker of information, I know everything I can. The question is, do you know why you are here?

Morpheus: We are looking for the Keymaker.

Merovingian: Oh yes, it is true. The Keymaker, of course. But this is not a reason, this is not a `why.' The Keymaker himself, his very nature, is means, it is not an end, and so, to look for him is to be looking for a means to do... what?

Neo: You know the answer to that question.

Merovingian: But do you? You think you do but you do not. You are here because you were sent here, you were told to come here and you obeyed. [Laughs] It is, of course, the way of all things. You see, there is only one constant, one universal, it is the only real truth: causality. Action. Reaction. Cause and effect.

Morpheus: Everything begins with choice.

Merovingian: No. Wrong. Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without. Look there, at that woman. My God, just look at her. Affecting everyone around her, so obvious, so bourgeois, so boring. But wait... Watch - you see, I have sent her dessert, a very special dessert. I wrote it myself. It starts so simply, each line of the program creating a new effect, just like poetry. First, a rush... heat... her heart flutters. You can see it, Neo, yes? She does not understand why - is it the wine? No. What is it then, what is the reason? And soon it does not matter, soon the why and the reason are gone, and all that matters is the feeling itself. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it, but it is of course pretense, it is a lie. Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is we are completely out of control. Causality. There is no escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the "why". "Why" is what separates us from them, you from me. `Why' is the only real social power, without it you are powerless. And this is how you come to me, without `why,' without power. Another link in the chain. But fear not, since I have seen how good you are at following orders, I will tell you what to do next. Run back, and give the fortune teller this message: Her time is almost up. Now I have some real business to do, I will say adieu and goodbye.
Neo: This isn't over.

Merovingian: Oh yes, it is. The Keymaker is mine and I see no reason why I should give him up. No reason at all.

Persephone: Where are you going?

Merovingian: Please, ma chérie, I've told you, we are all victims of causality. I drink too much wine, I must take a piss. Cause and effect. Au revoir.

Great fucking blog: Lyrics Will Not Reach The Audience

So much music here, its insane. A lot of punk, but also some metal, and some of the subgenres punk spawned. YOu want some emo, go here. You want some fucking hardcore, go here. You want some music thats real and doesn't feel orchestrated like virtually all music now does, go here.

http://lyricswillnotreachtheaudience.blogspot.com/

Deep Puddle Dynamics

Not a whole lot that needs to be said about his album either. Its truly a landmark in my progression as a fan of music. I got it after I got Why?'s Alopecia, which was also my first anticon record. Prior to that, I wasn't even listening to rap much. I had gotten my firstAtmosphere album which was When Life Gives YOu Lemons. I actually found Why? on myspace's home page, being promoted for the release of Alopecia.

After being blown the fuck away by the honesty of Yoni of Why? I searched last.fm for a similar artist to Why? and ended up hearing Sole's first single "Bottle of Humans". After being once more blown the fuck away, I researched Tim Holland himself on wikipedia and found out he was in a group with Slug. So some time passed, and I was skeptical to get The Taste of Rain, but once I did, I couldn't stop being impressed, not even if I wanted to find their lyrics and concepts dull. One song that stood out most to me first was THe Scarecrow Speaks. I'm not one for encouraging and inspiring songs, but every verse in this song made me begin to question my inactivity at times.

Sole saying "Be what ya speak, never speak on what ya be." and "It ain't that hard but stand if ya ready to be a man" really impressed itself upon my lethargy and insecurity.

Doseone saying "I come to you with one heart, broken in two, gnashed hands, and many flaws, A MAN" and "Make you yours" and "I implore you....just think" still gives me chills to this day because so many rappers aren't willing to say they're a man, even with a flawed demeanor and being. Also "simplistically, topsoil is no sea shell full of bitter ocean body, but it can be," encapsulates the sheer ambiguity of life itself in a mere sentence.

Alias saying "I consider myself blessed when I think" really personifies the maturity of his style and the truth he effortlessly encompasses in his raps.

Slug saying "God got drunk, drove heaven into a tree, now there's no reason left for you to breathe." makes me laugh even now. Him ending his verse with "trying to speak to the class and justify the act of pointing my finger at your head and asking you what the fuck is that?" also reiterated the importance of consideration and conscious thought for me.

This all got the ball rolling for who I am now and feel I'm still growing as. This album also has its fair share of more traditional, braggadocios raps and even some well placed humor. Check this shit out.



I've also thrown in some freestyles I've gotten this past year. Two are about 5 minutes and one is.....wait for it.....30 fucking minutes. I highly suggest signing up for Sole's forum HERE for more potential exclusives like this.

Deep Puddle Dynamics - The Taste of Rain ... Why Kneel?
+ Freestyles
Mediafire

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway

What the fuck is there to say about this album? My lack of words to express the feelings I experience while listening to this and the love I have for this band BECAUSE they made this album. Its just great.

Here's an excerpt from their wikipedia article to explain a little more about it:

Cult of Luna albums tend to focus on a theme; guitarist Erik Olofsson states in an interview that this release focuses on "Male loneliness – I was very inspired by a book by J.M. Coetzee [Life & Times of Michael K] about a man in South Africa with a hare lip. [The character] escapes from everything and lives off the earth eating only pumpkins. Johannes [Persson] had similar ideas for the lyrics about loneliness, it all has a kind of countryside vibe to it."

ANd the thing about eveything else besides the lyics is that this album stands out in a genre where you can pretty much get away with tremelo picks, predictable crescendos, and screaming vocals. These guys do a lot more than that by truly making songs that feel like they are their own, not some structure their art is adhering to.

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway
Mediafire

Portraits of Past

Both in effort to bring more activity to this blog and help give more people great music, I'm gonna start uploading some shit. If any artists or person associated with any of the bands or musicians I post the music of, I pray you'd voice your opinion and I'll remove the music immediately.

These are the only two Portraits of Past pieces that I have, Cypress Dust Witch, their newest EP, and their self titled effort. They've had a number of older eps that came out a while ago as well as a cd with everything they released called Discography, but I don't have those. feel free to post a link if you have any.

Great screamo band though. Real music by those who feel what they're screaming and 'whining' about, as all artists should.

*********So I got an email about this shit, and because of that I am taking down the link, but the mediafire link still works, you should be able to find it by searching for 'Portraits of Past screamo mediafire'. Mediafire did take down the Cypress Dust Witch EP though, but thats like 4 songs and defnitely worth a purchase anyway, just as great as their album.

Kurt Ballou of Converge is a winner

Excerpts taken from this interview with Punknews.org



Ballou: I never had guitar lessons. Nate never did either. Maybe he had one or two as a kid, but I never had any really. My dad played a little bit of guitar, he never really taught me anything, but he did give me a chord book. I had played saxophone and piano prior to it, so I sort of transferred my musical knowledge over to guitar. I think Ben was auditioning for music schools, but he never went. We’re all just students of the artists we like who we spent listening to while we were younger and attempting to mimic what we heard on these records. When you do that you develop your ear a lot more than when you take lessons. Lessons seem to focus more on the dexterity of playing, whereas people who are self-taught have to use their ears more to decipher what they’re hearing. I think you become a more observant player that way and you also start to learn how an ensemble interacts with each other. That being said, it also forces us to reinvent the wheel a lot. There’s a lot of things we could’ve learned that would have accelerated our musical growth. I don’t think we did a truly good record till Jane Doe, which was in 2001 and we’ve been around since 1991 so in my opinion that is ten years of sucking. In the end I think it was a blessing though because we were so stubborn, idealistic or lazy, the fact that we learned to play on our own so slowly it caused us all to develop our own style.



Converge is challenging to listen to if you’re not familiar with the certain genre, but what I’ve learned to do over time is to take those inaccessible harsh sounds and put them into a more accessible song format. Not because we’re trying to be a pop band or anything. Like to me a song used to be like ten, fifteen or twenty riffs per song, but now there’s only three or four that are assembled more in a verse chorus, bridge chorus kind of way. Even though they’re weird riffs, they have a more memorable format.


Ballou: Well we usually take a few years from record to record, because especially as we’ve gotten older as people… when you’re 17 or 18 or whatever, you’re changing really fast. Over a course of 6 months you might become a different person. When you’re in your 30s like we are now, it takes a lot longer to evolve as a person and music is really a reflection of your own humanity. If you’re trying to put out a record every year in your 30s you as a person aren’t really changing that much from year to year. So it’s not likely you’d have a lot new to offer musically if you put out records that frequently. We want to wait a few years between records and make sure every song on the record is the best song we could have written at a time and giving our listeners the most premium material we can offer.

Ballou: I think we definitely walk a lot of fences as people and as musicians in terms of our own personal interests in music. We’re certainly appreciative of a lot of different kinds of sounds. I also think that genre names are things for marketing people and journalists and not something a band should concern itself with. It’s your job to report on music and you need a language that can convey in words what something sounds like, but a musician is not constrained by those words. A musician can make something sound like what it is. We don’t feel the need to confine ourselves to a particular genre; we confine ourselves to stay within our own abilities, the large umbrella that is the Converge sound. We’re not going to push it so far that we’re not going to be able to do strongly. The ethos that drives the band and the scene we all grew up in is definitely the hardcore scene. We identify ourselves as more of a hardcore band than anything else because that’s the community where we come from and we cut our teeth and a lot of early show going experiences are from there. I feel like as people we can relate to hardcore kids a lot better than most other people. Even though we may be into metal or country or indie or whatever, I think because we were born out of the hardcore scene our first love is hardcore. There’s a certain way hardcore kids get each other and relate to each other that maybe lacking in other forms of music. We just feel more comfortable in those kinds of environments. There’s an ethos to hardcore I think we still embody in a lot of ways that’s not understand outside of hardcore. Our approach is definitely hardcore, despite the fact that we’re not constantly involved in playing with hardcore bands.

Ballou: I think it’s better now than it was in the 90s. I think in the 90s that’s when hardcore went suburban and the metal influence came in a lot. Obviously there was a metallic influence in the late 80s with Cro-Mags, and Slapshot and Judge and Leeway and all these crossover bands such as Suicidal Tendencies. I think the suburban kids such as ourselves, we had that kind of hardcore influence from going to shows, but we were also the first generation that had MTV and Headbangers Ball. So we’d go to see Slapshot on the weekend or Bad Brains or whoever and come home and watch Headbangers Ball and see Slayer and Metallica. I think the 90s there was a lot of early attempts at fusing those things and a lot of it was really cheesy. A lot of that moshcore stuff that came out of the 90s was really bad. There’s always going to be bad music, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music now, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music from the 80s, but I think with time a lot of the bad stuff gets forgotten about and the good stuff gets remembered so I think certain time periods get revered more than others.

Then in the 90s you also had these hardcore kids from suburbia…. like in the Black Flag era there were a lot kids who had no other choice but to be hardcore kids. They’re urban kids, they’re runaways, they’re from broken homes, they’re people that are suffering and desperately needed an outlet. It had nothing to do with fashion or anything like that. There’s definitely some posturing going on, but it wasn’t a fashionable thing, it was dangerous and it’s just what these people were coming to do. That’s not to say affluence precludes any kind of suffering, but it’s a different kind of suffering that happens among suburban and upper middle class kids which is where hardcore starts to move in the 90s. So you have this new thing that starts to happen in the 90s called emocore, which is driven by people that don’t have such a dangerous life. It’s the classic suburban depression, kids who otherwise would have been into The Smiths or The Cure or even The Red House Painters and then started to form this more tempered music. When that term was coined, they were referring more to the D.C. scene, which is more like the intellectual side. There are a lot of politics in D.C. so you have a lot of politicians, lobbyists and other businesses in the area so you have a lot of intelligent people in the area who are having intelligent kids. So these kids are thinking more outwardly and more politically. So you have the Revolution Summer and the birth of Rites of Spring and later Fugazi and Moss Icon and these other kind of bands. All that stuff gets filtered of this kid who knows about hardcore and the metal they’re playing on MTV and the result is the 90s screamo, sweater vest, horn rimmed glasses sort of scene and so little of that stuff was any good. And between that stuff sucking really bad and that early metallic stuff sucking really bad I think it took a really long time to flush itself out and become it’s own thing than being a poorly played derivation of a lot of other things. Now that I think that evolution has happened it’s refined and it’s a higher caliber than it was in the 90s.

Another big difference in how the music has changed since when we started is the business. There’s this constant access to music that we didn’t have back then. It’s not really better or worse, it’s just different. We used to buy 7 inches and we used to take it and send it to your friend or your pen pal and you’d have to recycle your postage because there’s no email yet or downloading so local scenes would develop a lot stronger. Bands from Boston tended to sound like each other because bands wouldn’t go on tour very frequently so you’d end up playing with the same bands a lot and influencing each other more than bands across the country. So there’s this Boston sound, this L.A. sound, this New York sound. But then downloading and MySpace starts coming up and it dilutes the local scene identity and it makes music a lot more competitive in all genres of music. There’s so much out there and there’s so much access to it so only the music that requires the shortest attention span that people will pay attention to. So if something doesn’t have a great recording or a hook right away it’s really easy to dismiss it and move on to something else. It used to be like I would go to the record store and buy a few CDs or records or tapes and even if I don’t like it that much, I don’t have that much music in my collection so I spend a lot of time with each record and getting to know it and it might rub off on me and I get to understand it. That kind of thing doesn’t really happen anymore so it’s a really different environment. Touring has become the same way as the scene has grown and people are able to make money touring. Everything has become a lot more lowest common denominator with regards to the tours that you do and the music that you write because people are thinking about their careers more than about expressing themselves. The fans support that mentality through their buying practices.

Music is dead

Jeremy Freer of Fieldtree and Freer drops some serious knowledge here.

SH: Your debut album, Secret Chorus, is an incredibly eclectic set, and it’s pretty obvious that you’re drawing from a broad range of influences to create a marriage of a lot of different musical styles. Has there ever been a time where you’ve been working on something and said to yourselves, “Nah, this just isn’t a ‘Freer’ song” ?

Jeremy: No. If we play it, it’s a FREER song.

SH: Unlike a lot of bands, you guys actually seem to put a lot of thought and meaning into your lyrics. What kind of themes attract you as a writer, Jeremy?

JF: I’m glad you asked that. I don’t have a favorite theme. I don’t think or write in those terms. I just attempt to express whatever it is I need to express so I don’t lose my fucking mind. And I love good lyrics in all shapes and sizes. When the lyric and the music sound like they were meant to be it makes me tingle all over.

SH: Something that crops up again and again on Secret Chorus is the juxtaposition of natural and artificial (particularly urban) imagery. I’m thinking of lines like “In forest and in alleyway,” “In streetlight and starlight,” or the buildup to the climax in the title track where you sing “Right now we’re sick, we need the perfect melody/ You can’t find it on the radio or T.V./ It’s in a secret chorus God gave to the birds.” Sometimes these images appear diametrically opposed, and other times like they completely belong together. How do you see the relationship between man and nature, and is that an important component in Freer’s musical philosophy?

JF: There are many religions that deal with this issue. In the story of Adam and Eve they are naked in a perfect paradise, and when things go wrong the first sign of it is that they become ashamed of their nakedness and make themselves clothes. Then they get kicked out of Paradise. Mans relationship with nature is a mirror to something deeper.

SH: On your Myspace, you guys have declared an open “War on Musical Terror.” What constitutes musical terror? Are we in a worse place than we’ve ever been as far mediocre rock radio goes, or has the jukebox always been anemic?

JF: Elvis being called the “King” of Rock N’ Roll is musical terror. Pat Boone making more money off Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” than Little Richard is musical Terror. Johnny Cash getting kicked off of Columbia Records is musical Terror. When the Grammys paired Smokey Robinson (a genius) with Lionel Richie and some young asshole who, from what I could see was more of a circus performer than an R&B singer, is musical terror. Female pop stars who get naked every chance they get and send a message out to young girls that it doesn’t matter if you can sing or have soul and talent, the most important thing is to exploit your sexuality every chance you get is musical terror. Male pop stars who promote violence, extreme materialism and the total objectification of women is musical terror. Designer Emo bands who fake emotion and exploit pain for fame and money is musical terror. And yes, I believe we are in a worse place now than we’ve ever been before.

What the mind of a man,

enveloped in poverty and forced to make some kind of money through illegal acts thinks:

"I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm petrified by the idea of growing up."

Sole - My President

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.

This year was a bad year,
I knew it would be that,
they gave us some nice speeches,
but I cant eat that.
We voted for change,
but homie I don't see that.
Has a momententum at the start
Didn't know how to seize that.

Mr post racial - don't you understand?
There ain't no middle ground when you dealin' with the clan
we got drones up in Pakistan,
forget that - Afghanistan.
Just be a grown man, quit playing up in the sand.

We got some real problems,
they fuckin' with Glenn Beck.
What up wit da Amy Goodman
And some Juan Gonzales

An to my name I got three hundred dollas',
and to my credit I got ten or so albums
My Corolla's bullet grey,
and my wife owns that.
The car is in her name,
but the bank owns the debt

We just moved to Colorado, ain't no jobs here but dumb shit.
this ain't a recession; its a readjustment.
the late great USA owners of the world days are gone.
better learn to grow some food on your own.
Only thing about me that's rich
is the spices I use, the beats that I rock, the path that I chose.

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.


We talking Hoover verse Roosevelt,
Fox news verse Rosa Parks,
Osama verse Fifty Cent.
a Phoenix can't swim with sharks.

So wake up them blue dogs,
kick dirt on them' red states.
And give us a single payer, fuck all the red tape.
And fuck having empire
we outta aspire; to more than pursuit of cash
relentlessly chasin' power

In high school they taught Latin
shoulda' taught Mandarin,
shoulda' taught Marxism,
shoulda' taught Blacksmithin'.

My money isn't green cause I'm livin' on credit,
only time i see green is when they say "cash back or debit."

I ain't mad at wall street, cause we all wanna ball
the planet's overpopulated and cant feed em' all
problem is a missile costs a couple of mils'
wanna' swim up in the beach but i'm swimming in bills
an there ain't no reprieve till Obama grow a spine
Its the death of a nation and don't need no common ground

CHORUS:
X2
My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.

"It was November 08,
my home state was Blue, no New England was Red
so I threw my weight up in, a swing state instead
8 years of this damn war, couldn't face it to lose
so i drove to New Hampshire, walked'em straight to the booth
trooped the whole district holdin' signs and workin' phones
6am Election Day until the polls closed
then got back on the damn line, callin' Alaska
up to Wascilla, still gunnin' for Sarah
I ain't no Democrat, but this was fate by the throat
I believed in your promise, now where did it go?
Guantanamo's still open, Single Payer got dropped
this Bail Out was murder, tent cities popped up in the park!
Rendition's still on the table with no investigation
of war crimes or blatant Israeli invasion
man, what's the matter with you? Audacity's Hope
but you ain't done what you said or what we sent you to do...

BRIDGE:
X2
My president is black,
we still cant relax.
The war will stop itself
single payer ain't passed.
My money's on the movement
we're not gonna stop.
Gotta keep on working,
black president or not.

(yea, ask not what your president can do fr you
but what you can do to keep your presiient honest.
And i'm saying right now, get outta wall street homie.
Run the country, It ain't too late.)

http://www.soleone.org/media/mypresident.mp3

Hip hop will never be the same

Fuck, this is great.



Makes me wanna love Jesus again.

"Struggle is just a part of my day
Many obstachave been placed in my way
I know the only reason that I make it through
Is because I never stop believing in you
Some people wonder why we're here in the 1st place
They can't believe because they ain't never seen your face
But even when you pray, the next day you gotta try
Can it wait 4 nobody 2 come down out the sky
You've got to realize that the world's a test
You can only do your best and let him do the rest
You've got your life, you've got your health
So quit procrastinating and push it yourself
You've got to realize that the world's a test
You can only do your best and let him do the rest
You've got your life, you've got your health
So quit procrastinating"


"Who said good folks is not supposed to die
The same * that said * is not supposed to cry
United States giving out milk and cheese to pacify
I'm sure they got a cure 4 A.I.D.S., but yet it's classified
You wonder why I spit the truth and not 2 make no dough
To make a differencefo' this * up and blow
In piece, I could thinkof many reasons
Only when * is going bad you want to holla Jesus
I pledge allegiance, they got my knuckles bleeding
From crawling , got these * thinkin they ballin'
When they isn't, don't take my word,
there's * off in prison
That will tell yo, that's locked up 4 a long time and won't sell you
No flex, so congregation will turn you text,
To the book of OutKast, chapter 2, verse 1
The 1st 1, that make me jump up and make a joyful noise
You'se OutKasted, meaning you now have a choice like that"

Music genres and their assimilation

"For me, like, punk music or whatever is always about, you know, undercutting people's expectations and throwing, like, a spin in the works or whatever, and for me--I mean, I want this band to be--I mean, if this is unsettling people, I'm ready to really unsettle people, because I'm ready to, you know, I want the sound to always be moving and to be like... I--anything starts getting set, I start getting uncomfortable, because I feel like what happened with hardcore or whatever was that things get so ritualized they became--they're no longer powerful, they lose their power, they're not dangerous anymore, they don't excite people, they don't move people anymore. They just become some kind of a traditional thing which people can just, you know, slip on the clothes and slip on an attitude. But for me it's, like, it has to always constantly be moving forward and, like, have some kind of a time thing/dimension to it."

--Guy Picciotto


Exactly what happens with every fucking genre. Motherfuckers hop along, think its cool to make this sound, reproduce the sound sans the emotional drive, and fuck it up for the genuine fans of music who just want something to listen to.

And people who are weaker than you and I,

They take what they need, and just leave.





"God make up your mind, do you wanna play fair? Or should I just take whats mine...like everyone else."

Sole on supporting indie artists

on behalf of soleone.org & fakefour inc, and musicians everywhere
in the spirit of thomas jefferson and james madison
the forefathers of this here semi great nation
we have launched a forward offense against the pirates
those who roam the oceans of the internet
squandering our labor, stealing food from our children(and dogs) mouths
sucking the very wind from the mountain air

through sheer conceit, arrogance, & butchery
they have plundered for too long

the first shot fired acrossed the bow was a megaupload zip
the second was to a far off land called sendspace
soon, isohunt, piratebay, will be overloaded with zip files
containing:
old albums, country music, animals being massacred
all in the name of sole & the skyrider band “plastique”

for those who think stealing isn’t stealing
tell that to my bank account
and the indigenous people of north america & australia
the IRS, Goldman Sachs, & AIG

we, are aware that the ground beneath our feet is shifting
that someday the world won’t need:

record stores
record labels
publicity companies
working artists
magazines
newspapers
video stores
locally produced goods, labor, & ideas

but i remember old voyages
while working at mcdonald’s
saving pennies
buying a turntable
driving 6 hours to fat beats with the pedestrian
roaming the cold polluted streets of new york
simply to buy records at fat beats, vinyl kings, and anything we could find
before mail order, itunes, & the internet
coming home with a swollen backpack
sore from the subway
and playing the music for my friends

i realize, that this is a losing war
the barbarians, as they say are at the gates
and we can’t hold them off forever
but we will die trying

for more information visit
http://www.soleone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=15082

or, if you wish, upload a fake torrent called “plastique”
megaupload a copy of “gone with the wind” sound track
call it “plastique”
recite the NAFTA, CAFTA, & bill of rights on MP3
call it “plastique”

or not, its not your problem.
its up to the artists to work this out.

but when all thats left is major label artists
and the only place to buy records is at walmart
don’t say we didn’t warn you

just cuz we live in the society of the spectacle
doesn’t mean we have to submit to it.

Bemoaning our hypocrisy

I don't know how many times I've been told or simply heard someone say that life is just hard and we have to suck it up and accept it as that and keep moving. Yet people still refuse to acknowledge our helplessness in the overall system of things. Whatever I do on my job may help me in the long run, but it won't keep the sun from giving me cancer or stop some lethargic driver from rear ending me. I don't know how we let ourselves get away with believing that bullshit.


And another example is theist who praise a god who has a will that allows bullshit to happen to good people, yet they then claim its apart of his will. Well if the bad things are apart of his will just as much as the good things, and you can't predict the bad things or the good, you can only say he's ALWAYS in control, then it seems to me that God's will is essentiall chaos. Why should I pray to chaos? My prayer won't cause anything different to happen. Goddamn. Fuck all this stupid shit.