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I keep telling people it’s time for change, that we can’t keep standing still on a backward escalator like this. Records keep the hope and magic of a revolution alive. Seeing the (International) Noise Conspiracy has renewed a lot of my hope, so has the new iDLEWiLD album (great ain’t it?) but I just think there’s too much chaos to make things happen or rather, too few people who believe anything can truly change, for the better.
I started this site, and have done many small things since, to try and make some kind of amends, but so what, I had nothing better to do and it’s hardly killing me. But why? I know, right now, somewhere not too far from any of us, kids are watching tv, others are doing homework (of little to no relevance to them ever again), some sit homeless on park benches escaping their dysfunctional, clueless families. Many are right now out of their mind in a slow-decay on class-a drugs. Thousands are sliding blades across their skin to let blood bubble out. And very few really care or know why, not saying I have all the answers or solutions, but here goes…
We’re a generation living for the weekend, quick fixes, meaningless hype, terror news and little else. Right from day 1, we’re filled with short-term goals, cultural-trappings, little-to-no job security, huge debts if we bother to carry on rotting in the education/religious/class system, and the threat of anyone we fall in lust with having any number of diseases. But it’s ok, we have big brother, we have pop idol, we have stadium rock about wrist slitting, “bitch” slapping and erm, what else is there? Nah mate, we don’t need nuffink else, we got our freedom if we got a bit of cash to crash and burn. Popping pills like 14-year-old school-sluts’ virginities in clubs cus the music’s so fucken awful. Well, not all music, of course, but you get the picture, for most people this is it.
And there’s another problem. Well over half of what is beautiful from “creative genius’s” right now in books, music, movies and anything else, is mostly really dark, twisted, painful surreal escapes from normality or a valiant attempt to change things but the messages are all distorted, totally out of focus by metaphor or by using words that very few people understand. For instance, take Rage Against the Machine, hearts totally pumping in the right place, yet I stood near some idiot in a Ben Sherman at Reading a few years back shouting “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” That’s the kinda irony Alanis couldn’t get across in her W.Bush bumpkin tones. Who the hell let that idiot be the most powerful man in the world anyway? Oh yes, freedom and democracy which is also known as the power of the media, bribery, corruption and a ill-informed mass playing part of the system!
I sound like such a jaded fuck! I’m sorry and I’m sorry that I have to apologise. This is the first step of the problem. People are worried about being different – this was a barrier bust down in ’77 but very little of the depth actually seeped through. Then there’s a lot of the stuff I said above, blended with some kind of belief in innateness, y'know that we’re not cut from the cloth and that not everyone can do everything. RUBBISH! Didn't we get over this when realised women can, like, do the same stuff as men and that yellow people can play football too?
R.E.S.P.E.C.T what does that mean to you? Well, if you hate yourself, hate the world and give up at the first sign of things getting hard, then you either have little to no self-respect (probably due to your parents never being taught how to raise you and giving you junk, instead of the attention that builds social skills and them things called values) or somehow, sinpite of all the above things, no drive. I can understand why they make people feel this way, it's seems so easy not to care but surely, you want out of this?
So what now then smarty pants? I can hear it in the back of your heads. I don’t have all the answers and if did I’d not be banging on. What we all need is to support one another, stop all this bickering amongst ourselves for a start – sounds so hippy and all communal like. Reading heavy books, manifesto’s and that is all well and good, but those who have done so already they need to share the information (to speed things up!) about what’s wrong. Most people don’t even know what’s wrong. I mean things like the crap that goes into our target market bodies which is actually killing us or editing our DNA for d-generations to come. The point of the media is to share information but of course all media has it’s own motives, just like this here ranticle and me, as editor of DiS I have mine as vaguely set-up herein.
Most of all, we NEED inspiring! Music, just like books and movies, are a great distraction, to help us leave this world in a much less harmful way than drugs (hence the music is a drug theme on DiS you may or may not have noticed!). And also, lyrics, they’re an instant way to say something but then again, don’t actions speak louder than words?
Start a band. Help someone out. Put on a gig. Write about bands. Write uplifting prose. Don't let them grind you down. Open your mind. Quit moaning and do something. Regret might get you oneday. Believe this. It starts here!
