Buying in the name of.

[fearmeforiampink]

As a reaction to the X factor and all that, there's now a campaign to get Rage Against the Machine's "Killing In The Name Of" to be the Christmas number 1, rather than the latest X factor spam.

This amuses me. Enough to buy at least one copy, anyway. For anyone interested...

Here's some news about it. For reference, some/all of the profits from the sales will be going to charity.

For anyone interested in joining in, here's the links to do so on:
Amazon
Play.com
iTunes

I rather like the idea of it all, plus RATM are a good enough band for me to be willing to help them in their resurgence.

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I would be much happier if the choice of songs to googlebomb wasn't easy-listening crap from a mass-produced alterna-pop cookie cutter manufactured-socially-acceptable-outrage boyband.

(Go ahead, ask me what I REALLY think of Rage Against The Machine)

[fearmeforiampink]

Fair enough. I like their stuff, and consider getting the X factor off, and the annoyance of the poppy celebrities worth it. I can see where you're coming from, though I think part of the issue would be getting an even less well known band sufficiently bought.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's not a matter of well-known or not. I just don't like *them*.

[fearmeforiampink]

Oh definitely. But what I mean is that in practical terms, for the 'stealing number one' thing, you want some level of recognition of the band.

[megapope.livejournal.com]

They're not easy listening, I'm prepared to hear how they're manufactured though, so please go on, and they're very obviously not a boyband.

So unless you can convince me on point 2, I kinda think you're saying this just to show how 'hardcore' you are.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They're boring, selling fake outrage to mallpunks whose mothers buy the CDs at Wal-Mart for them. They have the artistic integrity of Avril Lavigne and Christina Aguilera.

Does that sum up my opinion any more clearly?

[fearmeforiampink]

It's clearer, but does suggest you were just spurging insults in your initial comment, given you haven't addressed the point he made.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Which, my assertion that they're a mass-marketed product taking on a carefully crafted pose intended to appeal to (and thus get money from) teenagers who aren't smart enough to notice the massive disconnect between their rhetoric and their actions?

(And OF COURSE they're a fucking boy-band. They've adopted a carefully crafted persona intended to make dumb people wish they were JUST LIKE the band. With the concomitant implication that they can take the first step along the road by giving money to the band's record company. There are two kinds of boy-bands: The ones you're supposed to want to be, and the ones you're supposed to want to sleep with. Both ways, it's fake, and it's pretty much the defining characteristic of pop music.)

If you want a band that take their politics seriously, look at U2. If you want a band that takes RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE'S politics seriously, go look up Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Notice what they do that Rage didn't? Oh, that's right, they practiced what they preached, they didn't just sell the preaching.

To call RatM "sellouts" implies that there was anything there *except* a carefully crafted product to be sold, which there wasn't, so I don't like the word sellout. I prefer "televangelist" - they're a band who people pay lots of money to hear "do as I say, not as I do" from.

Also, their music sucks. But that's a more subjective thing.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I mean, fuck, at least Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson *admit* that their personas are a joke and invite you in on it.

[fearmeforiampink]

Yeah, that assertion.

Which I still don't think you've particularly addressed. Boy band, you have, sellout, you have, politics, you have. You keep on mentioning manufactured/suchlike in passing, without actually supporting it, like you have for your other comments.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I thought it was clear: they crafted their hypocritical messages and fake personas, for the purpose of selling them.

And then Sony paid them millions of dollars over the decades to sell their fakeness, because that particular kind of fake was worth quite a lot of money to Sony.

[fearmeforiampink]

Ahhhhhhh, I see.

Your use of 'mass produced', 'cookie cutter' and 'boy band' all led to me taking 'manufactured' as 'externally manufactured' – that they had been created, put together and their full image devised by an external agency like a typical boy band, and indeed, liked the guy they're going up against.

[hawklord2112.livejournal.com]

have done my part already ^^