Music: March 2005 Archives

This is sad news.

Australian music is in shock today at news of the death of Paul Hester at the age of just 46.

The musician was found dead in a Melbourne park on Saturday night and websites are talking of suicide.

As a drummer, first for Split Enz and then Crowded House, Hester was counted among the greats of Australian popular music.

...makes Andrew Lloyd Webber look very, very sad. Sorry, Evita is no Sunday in the Park With George. We won't even get into Starlight Express!

Anyway, there's a great interview and profile of him here, with some of his songs too. 

(Er, does anyone else out there like musicals, or is it just me?) 

The Beastie Boys did "In a World Gone Mad." Green Day did "American Idiot." Even Eminem did "Mosh." But those were all quite straightforward little numbers.

I mean, I've been listening to the Fiery Furnaces for a few weeks now, and I never noticed until I read the lyrics just now that "We Got Back the Plague" was about the Bush administration.

That easy-going man of blood
Mucking out in the McLennan county mud
If you're hoping he won't well of course then he must
Driving his truck through the McLennan county dust

I read in my book on Sunday afternoon
So it's easy to think the end's coming soon
But though sometimes the signs from heaven are vague
Early November we got back the plague

While beautiful Laura's sweeping the porch
He's teleconferencing up his operation torch
And I don't care if he bombs Babylon to hell
Except for he's building Babylon here as well

Waking up in Cedar Rapids asking for allies
Praising his leeches and looking for likewise
Down in St. Charles local talent he hawks
Smirking and sowing the winds as he talks

In Northern Virginia on their excursions
L.U.V. in with all their diversions
Horns for hounds and spurs for horses
Release the committed 72-hour task forces

Bentonville and Dallas with gasoline douse
Then back to Crawford going over to the firehouse
Behind the curtains not turning much of a trick
Sicking ourselves to make ourselves sick

That easy-going man of blood
Mucking out in the McLennan county mud
If you're hoping he won't well of course then he must
Digging us down under the McLennan county dust

Really, it's the first surrealist protest song of the Bush era. 

Rachid Taha is an Algerian rock musician living in Paris. I'm only just now starting to get acquainted with his work (including one really excellent song: "Kelma") but I noticed this interview with him in the New York Times.

...It's a song that puts Mr. Taha in mind of those archetypal combatants, Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush.

"The irony is, they're so similar - they're twin brothers," he says. "They're both wealthy religious fundamentalists from oil-producing desert states. It's like watching an argument between two Bedouins. The only difference between them is one drives an S.U.V., the other rides a dromedary."

 I don't know if he was the first one to come up with it, but, damn. I like it (and how many other people would use the word "dromedary" in a sentence these days?)