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By Kenney Silvers
(SugarBuzz Nowhere)

SugarBuzz Magazine

"A voice-so pure, a vision-so clear! I've gotta learn to live like you, sing like you...whoo ooh ooh ooh ooh...." (-Manic St. Preachers)

"I'm not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate-state already has."

(-John Trudell)

"I wasn't half as good, and I wasn't half as pretty as you, but I still got the feelings embedded in my soul..." (-Ian Hunter)

"No rivers runs true, it always takes a twist/Hearts can be broken, arrows gonna miss-How was I to know it's gonna come down to this? And wash us away..." (-Ian Hunter)

"We're all fat, now-on the sofas-mini morons, taking over..." (-Ian Hunter)

"We're all dead now-in our boxes-holding on to what little we've got left!" (-Ian Hunter)

"People are sad, and I know why-with no chance to live, before you die-you get pretty sick, when you have to keep it inside!" (-Iggy Pop)

DEATH OF A NATION.....DON'T TELL ME I'M FREE, WHEN I'M NOT...

Yep, this "Shrunken Heads" rekkid's a cuppla years old already, and I know it's hard for many of you to grasp- not owning your own computer, or being able to purchase new C.D.'s, but it's hard times for many of us, and it takes awhile to catch up. As Michael from Hanoi Rocks once said, "I'm so far behind, I thought I was winning..."

In the miserable Meth-lehems of the midwest, domestic violence is epidemic. People are sick, and crazy, and most of 'em don't know why-they watch Lou Dobbs, and blame Mexicans. They watch Kim Kardashian and Spencer Pratt and copy their behavior. Wal-Mart broke the backs of Mom and Pop stores, decades ago, spent millions crushing the unions, too. Monsanto and other secretive giants killed off all the family farms. If you're not interested in, "a career in criminal justice", cosmetology, carpet-laying, or, "Welcome to Wendy's. May I take your order?", you're sadly fucked. You better move, and Godspeed to you, in the metro-jungles. Most folks don't even have the money, or aspiration of making a break for the big-time, like all those forlorn characters in seventies Bruce Springsteen highway-songs. They just stay, and endure the diminishing quality of life, until they rot. The only power, or freedom that's ever really negotiable is, for white men-the permission to drive a big truck, and drunkenly vent their impotent rage on one another at the country bar, and if you don't have the big truck, you have to work as a painter's assistant, which means, making untold thousands for the big truck-haver, doing all the grunt-work, for minimum wage. The women only have the freedom to select which one of these hard-bitten cavemen she sleeps with, in exchange for his meeting all her lifestyle-demands, with his blue-collared, big-truck laboring. Almost everyone is fucked up on Oxycontin, or hard liquor, and who could blame them? Most all of 'em still believe these wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, are to spread democracy. If you bring up the Patriot-Act, they think you're challenging their manhood: "My patriotism ain't no ACT, motherfucker!" Reading is discouraged, real music is seldom heard. It's all just a slippery slope of hopeless repetition of inhumane, unhealthy, calloused cycles of exploitation, apathy, incarceration, and abuse, with no escape, besides the military "option".

The people who get stuck in Deadendsville U.S.A. get weird, man. Almost every 40-50 something, moans about how they were robbed of their childhoods. They all get shit-faced on Margaritas at the Mexican restaurant, and treat the servers horribly, exacting their Lou Dobbs Revenge on those poor immigrants who work all the worst jobs they refuse to lower their own selves to ever accepting. The military, however, will accept an illegal immigrant to fight their oil wars, no problem. The delusional, peroxide gals sleep around with youngsters they meet on Myspace, who can provide them with crack. The men are still struggling to perfect their macho Fonzarelli fantasies, at fat fifty. There are almost no twelve to fifteen dollar/an hour jobs. Big Business found new ways to cheat almost everyone out of an honest living-wage. Most everybody in small town America works at Wal-Mart, or the hospital, with their two year community-college diploma, or has to get work through temporary services. Teacher's aids, day-care providers, nursing-aids, dry-wallers, roofers, house cleaners, rent-a-cops, they all make about eight and a half, an hour. This ain't enough to pay rent, and utilities. The arrogant, and often obnoxious people, who inherited homes and businesses, all cock around like they're morally superior Rothchild/Rockefellers. The churches preach God's favor, the bountiful gospel of prosperity, of how the haves have what they have cos they're being Blessed by Baby Jesus, for all their virtue, and purity, and for voting for Sarah Palin, who's against abortion, and likes to hunt. They never, never, never seem to have even a fleeting trace of humility, or self-awareness, or consciousness that much of their success, and privilege, came from merely being born into a family who had already attained enough disposable-income, and prestige, to assure them disproportionate access to every conceivable resource. They all just tell themselves it's because they sent some money to Pat Robertson, once, and the Lord loves them more than all those filthy poor people. They're actually, openly, proudly, that tacky, and I'm not exaggerating. Someday, I'll tell ya'all the whole story. Much, much stranger than fiction-and that's just the part I know.

What's "good for business" is almost always, bad for people, and you already know that, in your heart of hearts.

Fat mustached men still manage all the retail big-boxes and food-franchises, with their state-college "business management" degrees, but they'll only hire women they can prey-on, sexually. You flip around the radio, and it's all mindless misinformation, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC's same three, over-played songs, Pink Floyd's "Money", and more fundamentalist fear-mongering. It's ugly, brutal, grim, and dire. People will stop their cars to fight you for having long hair, like it's 1950. "Queer!" There is no mentoring, no social conscience, no discussion of class politics, no advocacy for the poor. The closest thing to social awareness, besides conspicuous consumption, and keeping up with the joneses, is the hicks that think they're performing a valuable community service to their church and state, by persecuting immigrants and gay people...and the predators of the legal-system, who think they're doing young girls a favor, by using their authority to extort sex from them. It's so crass, so corrupt. Black men are still hunted and incarcerated by crooked cops, for blood-sport. Nobody cares, money and violence and misguided patriotism prevail. The common-people are programmed by the Abuse Box Bill O'Reilly and Hate Radio to have no sincere empathy, for anyone but cops, and military-families, and your always trustworthy, Grandfatherly executives.

American music no longer reflects what's goin' on. You can buy "Spin", or "Alternative Press", at Wal-Mart, if it makes you feel good to know about the young and affluent emo-kids in big cities-it just hurts my morale to think too much about trendy rich people, on the coasts, condescendingly dabbling in "exotic", roots-music, and drum-machine programs, and fashionable cultural-tourism. Commercial country makes me sick. From my perspective, it ain't the college grads with marketing degrees and brand-new Stetsons, and confederate flag belt-buckles, making a fortune, by making a mockery of hillbilly angst, with their sappy pledges of allegiance to Ford Trucks and Grand-pappy's porch-swing, that convey the true essence of rural hardships...it's the BRITS! Our brothers from across the pond-Billy Bragg, Jarvis Cocker, Manic Street Preachers, "War On Culture" by James/Jones, and especially, IAN HUNTER, all have more honest things to say about the hard truth of real America, than any of those commercial country radio-studs and their Disneyfied John Deere shotgun-propaganda.

The urban folk are all just jivin' around with disco, and Project Runway clothing experiments.

Why does it bother me? Because I NEED real rock'n'roll. How come this near-sighted old geezer bard from England can see so much clearer than any of our social-climbing, sell-out yank artistes, who'll do and say ANYTHING, for some camera-time, in a dirty hot-tub, and another round of lousy champagne? What happened to music with real heart, and a message, man? The awful truth is that most of my fellow Americans care more about the Net-Flix in their mail-box, and the still-illegal bag of pot they got stashed there, under the couch-cushion, while they huff and puff on and on, about how the politicians need to be tough on (minority) crime, parroting the bullshit they heard on talk-radio, on the way to work; than they ever will about truth, or the suffering of their fellow man. Why doesn't it bother YOU? Tell me true.

REWIND YOUR LIFE...REWIND YOUR LIFE...BABY YOU BEEN BRAINWASHED!!!

The chorus to a song I wrote five or six years ago, that you'll likely never hear, was me screamin' "We've Been Lied To Our Whole Lives!!!", after finally discovering Naomi Klein, and Howard Zinn. Having attended public schools in Ohio, I knew like, zero. Next to nothing. George Washington could not tell a lie. Honest Abe freed the slaves. Ronald Reagan told somebody to tear some wall down, somewhere. He won the Cold-War with his Star Wars Missile Defense Shield and enjoyed jelly-belleys. If you were Asian, or from a wealthier family, you were steered toward law and medicine. Pretty girls, or those who demonstrated some talent for art, were told to become nurses. Other than that, they really just emphasized sports. They weren't nurturing our intellects, or preparing us for anything. Prisoners, soldiers, and slaves aren't supposed to think---just shut-up, and dumbly obey. Of course, we rebelled against all that, but blind rebellion don't take you too far-you really need a plan, a support-network, an upright income stream, an alternative strategy, but those things are all painfully elusive, and ever harder to come by, in this reality-tv age of Every Man For Himself. "Sorry 'bout your troubles, kid. 'Care to purchase some sleek new merchandise?"

Everybody's funny...Now you funny, too! Those schools only ever groomed us to be cannon-fodder, somebody's gotta scrub the latrines, while the heiresses make their shitty rap-records and shop for Prada. Sounds fair to me. One of the last few middle-class friends I had, is this Kentucky public-radio D.J., who played Ian Hunter's last masterpiece, "Rant", on the radio so often, that it actually started flying off the shelves, at local record stores. That album was my constant companion for about three years, it was all I listened to, besides Joe Strummer. If I had my way, "Morons", and "Brainwashed" would be in constant, round-the-clock, hourly-rotation, cos Americans need the scales to fall from their eyes. Let's all talk about dead Michael Jackson some more, shall we? It's obvious we learned NOTHING from the endless Anna Nichole Smith fiasco, and her Trim-Spa sloganeering: "Be Envied". Besides the usual after-the-fact morality harangue of parasite blowhards, who always try to wring some hypocritical moral out of these tragedies, about the perils of vapid excess, and the deifying of bloated millionaires, by sensationalist, cable news vampires... Even as, they're the very same Botoxed-newsbots, who get paid so much, to revel in that very muck, having their cake, and Trim-Spas, too. Maybe it should have told us something about our focus, as a country, and what we pay attention to. It should have taught us something about big media-rule, and messaging, and whose ideas get air-play, and where we shoulda been looking, instead of through some unhappy dead lady's bedroom key-hole. I hate the corporate media--every time I foolishly allow myself to be exposed to it, I always feel violated, like I lost a pint, or three, of blood.

The King of Pop? You mean Brian Wilson? I dutifully tried listening to some old Michael Jackson, like the rest of you. "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" were okay, but the truth is, that alot of his songs weren't very good, "Bad" was really, really bad. The King of Barry Gordy Black Capitalist Crossover, maybe, but I don't particularly believe in crowning kings, at all. The Greatest Entertainer Who Ever Lived? What about Elvis? Prince is still alive, just off the top of my head. What about Little Richard, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sly Stone? Patti Smith still inspires people to read, grow, take chances, dig deeper, live out loud. I thought I'd be unaffected by his state-funeral, but it really got me down, I can't even pin-point why. Something about it was just really vulgar, and horrific. Those poor, confused children.

Me, I'm physically nauseous from the toxifying effects of caffeine, nicotine, too many bad memories, and the eyeball-straining hypno-screen addiction, that provides small relief from this looming sense of doom, despair, futility, and almost total alienation from American popular culture. I gotta take a break from all this typing, cos I just feel like shit, y'know?

"T-SHIRT WITH THE MAKER'S NAME, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WORE IT/RUNNING UP THOSE CREDIT-CARDS, YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT..... "aMiddle Of The Road, "Got Mine", liberal-apologists are still plenty optimistic and giddy about sweeping reforms coming soon, anyday now, under the Obama administration, but you need only to take a look around to discern, that it's mostly, the same old shit, rebranded. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class don't wanna talk about it!

That's why we should kinda band together on-line, and call upon our celebrity comrades in the War Against the Jive, who still have access to programming decisions in the big-media. People like Rodney on the ROQ, Little Steven, Chris Carter, all the once-cool rockstars with their own satellite radio shows, etc., and encourage them to play some more music with content relevant to today, cos this ain't the summer of love, and we already hear so, so, so much of the "Long And Winding Road", "Get Back", and "Dirty Water" on mainstream oldies stations, that we're kinda all numb to it. I'm afraid that summa youse guys are at risk of falling into the girl band geek trapdoor that sorta eventually ruined Long Gone John's once-excellent, SYMPATHY label. Full bosomed chicks in tight leather with vintage guitars on, are always sexy, that's been well established. Hollywood's busy making a big movie bio about the Runaways, right now, so perhaps, one day, they'll be allowed to join Madonna in the Rock'n'roll Hall Of Fame. The thing I get sick of, is absolutely crap girl bands getting legitimized by aging rockers, who are merely smitten with their sultry jailbait image, and who gladly overlook the fact they got nothing to say. Is it REALLY enough-just to be female? Cos I personally don't give a fook what's in Taylor Swift, or Avril Lavigne's diaries. There's more than enough valid, major, authentic talent out there, without having to lower our standards, to embrace, just any group of gals who graduate from Myspace pin-ups, to the rehearsal room. I wanna hear authentic voices. Each one of you creeper-clad old mummies know the difference between "Boom Boom Pow" and "Tutti Fruitti". You can all easily seperate art from ambition, models from musicians, bar-coded product from heart wrenching testimony-mony, so when it looks like you're happily willing to suspend your critical judgement, just to humor the young chicks you wanna swan around with, at the show-biz event, don't be suprised when folks start mentioning you in the same breath as the Real Kim Fowley. I've said it before---had the Donnas been the Donnies, none of you woulda played them, even once.

I got this former associate who runs a record store, he's a far worse music-snob than me, obsessed with esoterica, embittered, bordering on pretensious, jaded as they come. Privately, he'll go on and on about how much he despises the Strokes, the White Stripes, Bubblegum Hip-Hop, showbiz nephews, Spin Magazine, etc., but he'll never commit it to print, because he won't risk alienating Meg White's new in-law, or the youthful hotties he wants hanging 'round his store. He gets into these young chick's heads, by pretending to dig whatever they do, instead of teaching them about the good stuff, and man, is it creepy! If you're a parent, you just can't help but distance yourself from somebody like that.

Ian Hunter's got a show-biz kid of his own, but she's got it, the kinda real-deal talent, all those empowered industry-coots should be helping to promote, if they genuinely hope to shine a light on actual fully-cultivated talent, as opposed to say, the Pussycat Dolls with vintage gear, paid for by some wrinkling perf, who just bought 'em the Nuggets box, in hopes of bedding the bassist, who looks like Jenie Shrimpton, back in 1965. Boring!

THE COMPUTER'S GONE-THE TURNTABLE'S ON....

Ian Hunter has had a life-long, love affair with America. He's written probably dozens of heart-felt paeans to American music, from "Cleveland Rocks", all the way to Memphis, but I fear he's got more faith in this country than I do. Maybe he can help remind us to even bother looking for freedom, justice, or soul, in modern-day America. I just see people sell-out, everyday, for like, nothing, really. For 99 cent super-sized drive-thru fries. They don't even need to be tempted with no dirty blonde in a red corvette, they all passionately believe that having more stuff can save them. Convenience and some cheap crap, a bummer buzz, and an ego stroke, and most yanks will happily barter away any imitation they ever had of decency, if there might be a make-over, or glamor-shot, involved. What's In It For Me is the national anthem. Meanwhile, we gotta depend on James Dean Bradfield and Ian Hunter and Carbon/Silicon to give a shit.

"Big Mouth" is a lovely and honest confession for the harm we can carelessly inflict upon our loved ones with our thoughtlessly cruel tongues, by being too off-the-cuff abrasive. "Fuss About Nothin" mirrors the fast talkin' hustle of lawyerly wonks and money-weasels who swarm around you, if you're an established star. "World Was Round" reminds me of something from "Rant", one of my favorites, followed by "Brainwashed", "Shrunken Heads", and "Soul Of America"-all of them, are piercingly detailed social commentary, that clearly, understands the state I'm stuck living in...Ian Hunter still makes music that addresses actual existence, for those of us who live outside the first-class citizenship media-bubble. "How's Your House" is still haunted by the floods of New Orleans, and the rich crooks who do nothing to help anyone, except contract their C.E.O. security buddy to send in his Rambo goon squad private armies to police the poor. All these, and several more, speak to my own real condition, and I thoroughly appreciate him for that. I can't connect to ninety-six percent of what passes for rock music, nowadays. It's gotten too ice cream factory for me, it's all the same shit, with different labels. Pick a model from the catalog to be the star. Drechhhhhkkk! Every genre sounds the same.

"WE WERE WORKING CLASS KIDS, ON THE SKIDS, WITH NOTHING TO DO...."

Don't get me wrong, this was once the mythical land of Arthur Lee and Abbie Hoffman. Ronnie Spector and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The MC5 and Jim Carroll. John Trudell and Last Poets. Hunter S. Thompson and the Raspberries. Johnny Lee Hooker and David Lee Roth. Johnny Thunders and John Easdale. I just never hear much American music that rings true, anymore. It's all formulated and fully disposable. It just sounds like dead money. If you still love rock'n'roll, like I do, you owe it to yourself to obtain both "RANT" (for my money, the best, Non-Strummer record, of the past decade) and "SHRUNKEN HEADS", the current follow-up, by Ian Hunter. Almost every song, on both albums, will flood your room with poetry, truth, and soul, and remind you that music is supposed to have heart. It's supposed to be something more than another vacuous Suicide Girlfriend, with a tattoo and purple hair, who just wants her picture taken some more. Everybody likes a porn starlet in patent leather chaps, but that ain't everything, y'know? Music should convey something more than vanity, yeah? If you're satisfied with all these interchangeable neo-glam, Myspace bands, who got nothing to contribute, beyond whatever it is that Nikki Sixx already supposedly articulated more persuasively, I understand. But to me, all those Crue babies, and come-lately garage girls, are merely photo-shopped and Pro-Tooled commercials for Manic Panic, Hot Topic, and Jack Daniels, and that's cool-greasy kid stuff. I get the compulsion, I've often shared your impulse towards escapism, and chasing my long lost youth, but be aware: BABY YOU BEEN BRAINWASHED.

Ian Hunter seems a lot more engaged, alert, active, and genuinely alive, to me, than any of the twenty-nothings I see rushing to the electronics department of Target, or racing home to freshen their online profile, with a new self-portrait of themselves in their new twenty dollar Target fedora.

Rocknroll has always been my guiding light; it's a shame if everybody else just wants to watch the commercials.

I wish I could hear more Ian Hunter on the radio.

I never liked Great White.

So Ian's got the Mott reunion, these last two exceptional albums...and another mammoth two or three-disc set called "Man Overboard", rumored to be due for release any day, now, real rock'n'roll fans, and radio professionals. Ahem!

(-Kenney Silvers)

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