From BigKumquat Sent Tue, May 11th 1999, 20:08
<< those disgressions aside, what to do as far as political music goes? >> Consolidated made a distinct effort to produce intensely political groove-oriented music in the early nineties. Basically, their political slant can be described as far-left radical-vegan, anti-patriarchal and pro-feminist (if you'll permit the hyphens). My favorite Consolidated tracks use cut-and-paste sampling to make a political point by grabbing fragments of dialogue, sometimes from the enemy...using re-contextualization to make someone look foolish, which admitedly isn't totally fair, but can be great fun. Remember that wave of trax that sampled George Bush? Consolidated's "Our Leader" from the "friendly fa$cism" album is an excellent example. Clinton just doesn't get sampled as much. Does anyone know of any good Clinton-sampling trax? I saw Consolidated live at the old Limelight in NYC (version 1.0, where you could walk down the hall to the bathroom and tweaked-out raver kidz would ask if you had any angel dust). A somewhat sparse crowd (for that venue) watched curiosly as Consolidated's grooves and raps were backed by instense video footage, like during "The Sexual Politics of Meat" when they showed insanely grim animal slaughterhouse footage. Nothin' gets the house rocking like cattle dismember flicks! (please use sarcasm detector to scan the previous remark) They also had this idea where they would pass the mic around to the crowd, and let people make political statements. At the show I saw, folks couldn't come up with anything much more articulate than "Brooklyn in da house!" So, it can be difficult to pull off politically-themed music in a live setting...at many party nights, I think the crowd wants to rock out more than be preached to. But I support the occasional attempt, particularly sample-driven fun. - Fred Church xxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx