Woody Allen once said that the human species divides principally into the horrible and the miserable.
I know she had dementia, and I have some idea of how awful that is, but still. . . it's almost impossible for me to imagine Margaret Thatcher actually being miserable.
When Christopher Hitchens called Ronald Reagan a lizard, he din't mean to denote Louis C.K.'s "flesh eating space lizards who eat the poor." I think he meant to gesture at a kind of gratuitous awfulness that seems to go far beyond the normal depravity that John Calvin thinks to be everyone's inheritance. I mean, it's not bad enough that your policies gouge the poor to create an uberwealthy class of financiers. You have to support third world dictators too? Etc. Etc. Etc. It just gets to be barely conceivable.
U2 frontman Bono agreed (and if you can see past Bono's Jim Morrison schtick, this is pretty cool):
And the racist narrator from Pink Floyd's swan song (really the first Roger Waters solo album) agreed:
This song would be great, but it's almost hobbled by the way bombast comes in circa 2:08. One expects to see a bouncing ball over the lyrics that follow.
I kind of hate to say this, because she did just pass away. But I think by far the best explicitly anti-Thatcher song is Morrissey's "Maggie on the Guillotine," from his first solo album.
There's not a note out of place; the tensions between the music and lyrical content are perfect, and his singing over the Bm7 chord gives me goosebumps. The greatest tension is in the lyrics itself, with the narrator bemoaning unkind people while wishing someone's death. And this is mirrored in the melodic tension, going back and forth from minor to major. Every aspect of the song reflects on the way the lyrics instance the very human condition they are bemoaning.
The greatest anti-Thatcher song of all doesn't explicitly mention her though. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the Newtown Neurotics:
Note that "evil will triumph if good men do nothing" says nothing about what will happen if the good do something (cf. Socrates on the unexamined life). This bums me out.
And I think in some way that punk rock lives in precisely this space. In announcing the death of rock we make better rock than people who can actually play their instruments.
I wish politics were analogous to music, that one could do the same conjuring act. I wish I didn't find Zizek's meditations on Thatcher to be empirically plausible (though no less morally abhorrent for all that). I mean, what Zizek ends up encouraging is what always seems to happen in history. The rich loot their own country to the point where a strongman with support of the looted arises. Does this kind of thing ever turn out well? I guess Caesar's nephew Augusts did lay in place an administrative structure that continued on for over a millennium. And the Empire was a better deal for almost everyone (especially once the colonies were taken away from senatorial control) than the late Republic had been. But I think the norm is probably much worse, so I don't understand why Zizek is applauding the master here.
- [Punkrockmonday #1] The White Stripes - Jack the Ripper (orig. Screaming Lord Sutch), Black Math, and the Big Three Killed My Baby]
- [Punkrockmonday #2] Roy Cook - Saint Paul Cathedral, Minneapolis Capitol Building, Aayla Secura Mosaic, and Firefly Class Spaceship
- [Punkrockmonday #3] El Général- Rais Le Bled (President, Your Country)
- [Punkrockmonday #4] Charlie Patton -High Water Everywhere, Part 2
- [Punkrockmonday #5] Henry Rollins- What Am I Doing Here; Willie Nelson- Me and Paul; Rainbow Connection (orig. Kermit the Frog)
- [Punkrockmonday #6] Philip Larkin - Church Going
- [Punkrockmonday #7] David Bowie - Time
- [Punkrockmonday #8] P.J. Harvey - When Under Ether; White Chalk; Broken Harp
- [Punkrockmonday #9] Allison Kraus and Robert Plant - When the Levee Breaks (orig. Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie)
- [Punkrockmonday #10] Doog - Famous Blue Raincoat (orig. Leonard Cohen); sElf - Back in Black (orig. AC/DC); Johnny Cash- Down There By the Train (orig. Tom Waits)
- [Punkrockmonday #11] John Lee Hooker - Hobo Blues; Weird Al Yankovic - My Sharona; Edgar Cruz - Bohemian Rhapsody
- [punkrockmonday #12] Pixar Studios - Cars 2; The Bang Bang - Sitting in a Car; Angry Samoans - Hot Cars; Black Flag - Drinking and Driving; Gary Numan - Cars; Queen - Bicycle Race
- [punkrockmonday #13] Betty Bowers - Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage to Everyone Else
- [punkrockmonday #14] Sesame Street - Sure Shot (orig. Beastie Boys)
- [punkrockmonday #15] Neil Degrasse Tyson - Stupid Design
- [punkrockmonday # 16] C.M. Punk - run up to Money in the Bank victory
- [punkrockmonday #17] Dead Kennedys - Riot
- [punkrockmonday # 18] Cookie Monster - God's Away on Business (orig. Tom Waits)
- [punkrockmonday # 19] The Legendary K.O.- George Bush Don’t Like Black People
- [punkrockmonday #20] Mance Lipscomb- Ella Speed
- [punkrockmonday #21] Iggy Pop - Lust for Life; Iggy Pop - The Passenger; Iggy Pop - I'm Bored; Iggy Pop (orig. The Stooges)- I Wanna Be Your Dog; Iggy and the Stooges - Search and Destroy
- [punkrockmonday #22] Iris Dement - Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day
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