Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

BLEEPING IRONY
John S. Hall kicks Bush’s ...
BY MIKE MILIARD

Watching the long shadow of the United States of America creep across the globe, it’s hard not to marvel at our unparalleled might and wealth. The way we invade nations over the objections of our allies, the way we flood our cash and culture from pole to pole, the way we browbeat smaller, weaker countries into doing our bidding — it’s astonishing. We are the richest, most powerful nation in the world. We are a colossus. We are a behemoth. We rule. America kicks ass!

John S. Hall thinks so, too. "America Kicks Ass," the first single from his band King Missile III’s new album, Royal Lunch, released last week by Newburyport boutique label Important Records, is a hilarious and scarifying cri de coeur whose irony drips like oil-black blood.

Over an Armageddon-style cacophony — rumbling drums and droning cellos building into crashing, post-nuclear guitar convulsions and horror-movie-string-section crescendos — Hall yells like a crimson-faced drill sergeant or a wild-eyed street-corner kook.

America totally kicks ass!... We are motherfucking hard like a gangster with a nine by our side! Except there’s no five-oh gonna roll up and beat our ass down! We’re not criminals because there’s no international law!... We don’t have to tell the rest of the world shit! We do whatever the fuck we want! For one reason, and one reason only! Because we can! And all those other countries? They can suck our dick! They can bend over and take it up the ass! The rest of the world is America’s bitch! Half the world works for pennies a day to make us fat and rich!... We’re America! We kick ass! What are they gonna do? Arrest us? Ostracize us? Gang up on us? Let them fucking try, we are America, and we will fuck them up! If they ever fuck with us, we are gonna shake it off and use it as an excuse to fuck them up some more!

Believe it or not, there’s a radio edit of the song; the bleeps are so frequent, they sound like Morse code.

Hall — whose band, formerly called simply King Missile, are best known for early-’90s sorta-hits like "Detachable Penis" and "Jesus Was Way Cool" — says he wrote the song in the unsettling chill of fall 2002, during the steady ramp-up to war. "I just had this sense of dread," he says, "that this was going to be bad for America, to invade a country without any international support and without any real justification that anybody could find credible. I kind of assumed it was a fait accompli by that time, so I figured I would write this piece in mock celebration of our hubris."

In a world that increasingly seems to have lost its marbles, sometimes a mordant humor is an effective defense mechanism. Hall sees this sneering rebuke of our "really nasty government" as the equivalent of tightening abdominal muscles before a gut-punch. "It’s a psychological trick. You know something bad is going to happen. So you assume it’s going to happen, and just adjust to it before it happens, so when it actually happens, you’ve already absorbed some of the blow."

Interestingly, "America Kicks Ass" has found an unlikely champion. Howard Stern, the King of All Media, who’s recently done a political 180 to become one of George W. Bush’s most strident antagonists, has latched onto the song, playing it repeatedly on his show as part of his campaign to oust the president. (Even though the FCC is another of Stern’s nemeses, he had bow to its will and play the bleeped version.)

Of course, I remind Hall, not all of Stern’s audience shares his anti-Dubya world-view. Indeed, a good many listeners might not hear a speck of irony in all that thunderous fist-pumping. "Yeah, there is that concern," he says. "Bruce Springsteen had the same problem with ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ which a lot of patriots adopted without listening to the words."

Ronald Reagan, for one. So, lest it further embolden (to use a word he’s been fond of dropping lately) the current president, let’s hope this is one song that doesn’t find its way onto George W. Bush’s iPod. After all, he "doesn’t do nuance."

King Missile III’s Royal Lunch, featuring "America Kicks Ass," can be purchased for $11.99 through Important Records’ Web site, www.importantrecords.com.


Issue Date: October 1 - 7, 2004
Back to the News & Features table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group