Video Friday is Hastily Assembled

It’s been a big week, and it’s definitely time for an extra-big, soothing cup of that tea I’ve been drinking lately.

The Right Brothers – ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ ‘It’s The End of the World as We Know It’ ‘Bush Was Right,’ (5:09)

We haven’t heard much from these guys lately, for some reason or another. Oh wait:

‘What About the Issues.’ Finally. A response to all that hate mail. Not available on any other album. Free for a limited time only! Preview.

Hee. It’s a classic Keane-eyed wingnut plaint for civility, like they always do when they’ve screamed Yee-haa! and shot at you until the ammo ran out, and now at long last you’re about to clock them in the nuts. Like, Peace, dude — can’t we talk this over rationally? The cartoonist Vaughn Bodé had the perfect sound effect for someone getting clocked in the nuts. “Hey, Right Brothers.” “What?” [Goomph!]

Is it even possible to have a Myspace page and have only three friends? Anyway, when TRB were first running around stealing other people’s ideas (‘TRB’ is properly the appellation of the Tom Robinson Band, known for the song ‘Glad to be Gay’ among others, while the fade of Cheap Trick’s At-Budokan version of ‘Surrender’ makes a brief, kidnapped appearance at the end of ‘Bush Was Right’), they nabbed a guitar trick involving octave-doubling a note and sliding it up and down the neck that ultimately comes from Rikk Agnew, former guitarist of the Adolescents and Christian Death. Time was, there were only a few other people who did that — early-adopter thieves — and I’ll list the ones from the East Coast that I’m aware of: myself and Doug ‘Sluggo’ Vitzthum, then of Pleased Youth. I daresay it’s a nice, fluid-sounding and butt-simple way to add counterpoint, even sometimes when these yunk-heads do it.

Crucifix – ‘How When Where,’ Target Video footage recorded 1983 (1:43)

One of the original hardcore bands that make newer punk sound flimsy, fronted by a guy named Sothira, who (it was said) came to San Francisco as a Cambodian refugee. Sothira had a major timing problem, though. When you can’t count to eight on the beat, you definitely ought to be practicing at home with a metronome.

Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos – ‘Aurora y Pekin’ (8:55)

Ribot is one of those rare guitarists who can play ordinary, simple phrases rivetingly.

(P’raps more later under the jump…)

 

Comments: 10

 
 
 

From the Right Brothers site:

“Liberal Bon Fire Kit – Save $53!
Heat things up with your liberal friends and burn The Right Brothers music. Great fun and therapeutic release for frustrated liberals. Free signed 8X10 photo included to get the fire started right..or left. Get’em while their hot, baby!”

Ride that Dixie Chick wagon.

 
 

Is the contract to do the Right Brothers’ Configuration Management for Lyrical Validity a T&M deal? I tell you, a man could get very rich indeed keeping those tendentious assertions up to date.

I can see an enormously complex relational database, updated twice daily, in which such highly debatable assertions as “freedom in Afghanistan” and “Al Qaeda is finding now America won’t turn and run” are checked against the day’s headlines and “adjusted.”

Imagine the versioning system:

03.31.06 Bush Was Right 3.0.12.145.86
04.01.06 Bush Was Right 3.0.12.145.87
04.02.06 Bush Was Right 3.0.12.145.88 …

 
 

wow, those guys SUCK. I mean if you are going to rip off a famous song for your pro-bush propaganda tune, why choose a lame, cheesy, dated late-80s pop song?

I guess if you are just going to pack it to the brim with tired wingnut cliches, you might as well be as transparently derivative as possible, but Gawd. They make BLT sound like the second coming of Miles Davis with that dreck.

I noticed one of the tags was ‘mush.’ That is perfect. Just exactly perfect.

 
 

Thanks, Gavin, for putting the Ribot after the wankers. It was a great antidote.

 
 

where are my headphones? I’ll have to wait til tomorrow.

*sigh*

 
 

I didn’t notice you gunning down Green Day’s American Idiot with the same panache, even though it was a poor man’s toy-politicized rendition of the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket.”

You just made the Right Brothers’ point for them. God forbid you talk about the issues.

 
 

We won!

…um, the sandbox. Now someone is supposed to say, “I two the sandbox,” and we’ll be like, “Uh, we three the sandbox.” And I’m not going to tell you how it all turns out in the end, except somebody…

 
 

For what it’s worth, that Crucifix song was actually “Prejudice”, not “How When Where”.

Sothira and Jimmy from Crucifix now have a band called Proudflesh. Sothira’s timing has definitely improved two decades on. Of course, few of us could sing as fast as Crucifix played anyway.

 
 

It’s a classic Keane-eyed wingnut plaint for civility, like they always do when they’ve screamed Yee-haa! and shot at you until the ammo ran out, and now at long last you’re about to clock them in the nuts.

Yeah, it’s like ’04 all over again! Wingnuts never learn, huh?

 
 

> “You just made the Right Brothers’ point for them.”

That’s pretty much universally acknowledged as the “I know you are but what am I?” of the internet.

Seriously. You can use it anywhere, and it serves no purpose other than to shut someone up. “By refuting my ill-conceived argument, you just made my point for me! Who’s the smart guy now? Ha ha ha!!!1!”

 
 

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