You've Got To Get Mad

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's no one anywhere that seems to know what to do with us."



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The first time I heard this monologue was as the lead in to a track by Evol Intent. It's very stirring. In fact the monologue, to me, was so much more intense and meaningful than the token gesturing of the lyrics that followed I wished that, instead of lyrics, they simply allowed more of the monologue to play. The music track is below, synced (not by me) to the visuals. You might have to click through and view it directly on the youtube website if it doesn't play here.



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Sometimes seeing and hearing things like these and knowing what my own vision is for music and film, I long for a chance to go back in time and make myself put down the calculators and math books and just do the things that came naturally. I wish I could manipulate music and art well enough to create animated films or produce albums or write music. I'm sure I will at some point, but a head start would have been nice.

At any rate, hearing the monologue was so stirring in part because I feel like I am definitely in agreement. I don't think the people being gutted and ground up and swallowed and shat out into darkness in this country need to write to congress or go to sit ins or vote for people that will represent them for five minutes before succumbing (of no fault of their own) to the massive under currents of commercial/industrial pocket padding politics. If people being shafted by the education system would simply express their disappointment, their anger, at being farmed, and express it with a sustained voice and intensity there would be a positive response. Same for people getting shafted in the work place or anywhere else.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but so many things really need so much more than a drop of oil. The problem is that people are so content to get their drop of oil, their quick pay off, and then they forget that their problem hasn't been solved. Their problem hasn't even begun to be addressed, but staying angry takes so much effort and why stay angry when you can take your hand job to the bank and buy yourself a big tv and fall asleep again until your conditions become unbearable or swallows another member of your family or short changes you once more.

You've got to get mad, and you've got to be willing and committed enough to stay mad, and that's why I love that song, but I love the monologue even more.

///Amon Tobin - "Verbal (Topo Gigio Remix)" The original song, featuring MC Decimal was good, but this version takes that song and makes it an anytime anywhere "listen to it twice in a row 'cause once is never enough" kind of song. The way the bass comes up and swings and swims around your ears you almost feel like you're lying in a river as wide as lake Ontario heading for a waterfall that crashes against rocks so loudly you can't hear it.