DEATH GRIPS + 33 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

Protest pop, revolution rock, and Death Grips

By The Burg Staff on Jul. 13, 2011
By Matt Ashare

Although it can be difficult to avoid, romanticizing the past in music is a dangerous game in that, too of-ten, it leads to the problematic conclusion that things “back then” were way better than they are now. Sure, the late ’60s were qualitatively different from, say, the mid ’90s for any number of reasons that may and probably do include socio-political forces, trends in technology, and the very nature of the record business itself. But, take personal taste out of the equation, and there’s really no convincing or reliable way to de-termine objectively whether music was “better” during one era or another, only that it was “different.”
     I’ll happily concede that hindsight, coupled with a natural human tendency to remember the great art and artists of a particular period while relegating the lesser to the proverbial dustbin of history, creates an op-portunity for fruitful comparisons that can lead to useful conclusions about the past. But those tools can’t be applied to the present. And, let’s face it, most of us remain partial to the music that first moved us and gravitate toward newer artists in that same vein.
     In his new book 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, From Billie Holiday to Green Day (HarperCollins, 2011), UK critic Dorian Lynskey cherry picks 33 songs — Dylan’s “Masters of War,” R.E.M.’s “Exhuming McCarthy,” and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” to name three — that represent his idea of a proper protest song, and devotes a chapter to each. As with any list of this sort, there’s room to quibble with the selections — to my mind, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is a better U2 “protest song” than “Pride (In the Name of Love).”  But Lynskey does a fine job of getting the stories behind the songs, often from the artists themselves, and placing them in the context of what else was going on musically at the time.
     However, Lynskey doesn’t seem to have a particularly firm grasp on the peculiar dynamics — the vagaries of chance, the unpredictable interplay between artist and audience — that make for a successful protest song, or even how relative success might be measured accurately. Dylan, who would later disavow any ties to “the movement,” had written and performed “Masters of War” over a year before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution signaled the formal commitment of ground forces in Southeast Asia. It was only later that it was adopted as an anti-Vietnam war anthem. And Spike Lee’s inclusion of “Fight the Power” in the opening credits of 1989’s Do the Right Thing almost certainly added to the shocking urgency of the song.
     Lynskey doesn’t entirely ignore these factors, but at the end of the final chapter (“Green Day/‘American Idiot’/2004: The Protest Song Revival That Never Was”) and in a short epilogue (“33 1/3”) that follows, his confusion leads him straight into the nostalgic trap of concluding that, yes, things used to be way better than they are now. Even after delineating the numerous ways artists as diverse as Lil’ Wayne, Dixie Chicks, and Neil Young lent their voices to the mounting opposition to the Bush administration, he singles out John Mayer’s passively defeatist “Waiting for the World to Change” as a signal of the imminent demise of the protest song. And then, in an about face, he uses an anecdote from The Simpsons Movie and a bunch of conjecture about Facebook groups and “the release-valve nature of online protest” to blame apathy among today’s audiences for the decline of the protest song.
     Really? Wouldn’t it be just as plausible to suggest that all the anti-Bush sentiments expressed by artists leading up to the 2008 election — not to mention online networking — actually succeeded in mobilizing support, especially among young people, for the election of our first African-American president?

These days, protest songs are where you find them, if you’re willing to look. Some of the best overtly politicized music I’ve come across this year, coincidentally enough, came to me via a link from a Facebook friend. Exmilitary, the new “mixtape” album by the Sacramento-based avant-rap group Death Grips, is a free download (just Google “Death Grips Exmilitary” and it’s yours). It comes on like a more ferociously audacious and confrontational take on what N.W.A. did when they brought a little Sex Pistols punk attitude to hip-hop. Actually, American hardcore may be a better touchstone for the aggro production style applied here: MC Ride’s deep-voiced anti-cop rap “Klink” is set to a glitchy beat, random screams, and samples from the Black Flag tune “Rise Above” and there’s a snippet from DC’s supercharged Bad Brains buried in dark-hued electrosquelch of “Takyon (Death Yon).”
     Which brings to mind another form of “protest” inherent in the digital age and embedded in Exmilitary: the appropriation of samples (Charles Manson’s voice and Link Wray’s guitar are two of the more conspicuous here). Some may see that as criminal sabotage, others as the sonic equivalent of collage art. Either way, to sample in the manner of Death Grips is to create a kind of 21st-century protest song that’s outside the realm of 33 Revolutions Per Minute.
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