street sweeper social club

this is clap for the killers, a track from street sweeper social club, which features tom morello and boots riley. it is unfortunate there is nothing to look at above but i wanted you to be able to hear the song so...

i can't help but contrast this record with any of the audioslave records. where audioslave songs had power chords and an arena rock sound, sssc has tom morello's signature innovative guitar so reminiscent of rage against the machine. as much as i like chris cornell, everything he has done since soundgarden has sounded contrived and as if he has been trying to find a certain formula or voice of his own sans his former bandmates.

i bought one of the audioslave records, (as well as cornell's first solo record,) and i enjoyed some of the songs on it. still, for both morello and cornell audioslave was rather pedestrian.

boots riley, (formerly of the coup,) is gifted as rappers go. he has a style that is distinctly his own and he has the ability to make rhyming seem somehow fresh in an age when rappers have blended together and become largely irrelevant.

street sweeper social club further combines the political roots and ethos of both morello and riley with an accessibility heretofore unseen. here in los angeles, sssc can be played on kroq, power 106, kiis fm, 100.3 the sound, klos, kcrw, pacifica and perhaps star or any of several other softer stations on the dial. this gives the idea of their music being the bombs and machine guns of a new revolution all the more authenticity. the mass appeal sssc is capable of could contribute to the further edification of the youth of today.

things are changing and there are many forces at work in the world contributing to this end. consider street sweeper social club yet another one of those forces.

armenian remembrance day

armenian remembrance day is dedicated to remembering the victims of the 20th century's first genocide. the campaign of mass murder was committed by the ottoman empire against the armenian people from 1915 to 1918 and longer.

15 years ago i was the editor-in-chief of a small college magazine called logos and i wrote a story about the armenian genocide. i had an armenian friend whose family had escaped the genocide to lebanon, eventually coming to america shortly after her birth in the 1970s. when my friend told me of these horrific events, it was the first i had heard of the armenian genocide.

it was a wake up call in many ways. i suppose i was late blooming, growing up and awaking to many truths in 1994, which had been formerly hidden to me.

for my article i approached this genocide as a fact-finding mission. i interviewed several armenian-americans including: larry zarian, (former mayor of glendale, california, a city with the 2nd largest concentration of armenian people in the world,) and dr. avedis k. sanjian, ucla professor of near eastern studies, who sadly died within a year of of my interview at the age of 74.

the people i interviewed for that story were remarkably generous. one person, a music teacher at usc, played the armenian oud for me, (a small guitar,) and treated me to the works of the great armenian poets as well as some of the foods of the culture.

another person i interviewed, a survivor of this holocaust who was then in her 90s, hayastan terzian, of pasadena, invited me into her home and told me chilling stories of seeing bodies on the banks of a river which seemed to be covered in a sort of grease and which smelled so distinctly horrible she said she could never forget that odor and in fact, any faint resemblance to that odor conjured memories of death and terror for her.

i did try to get the opposing view of the events by contacting the turkish consulate in los angeles. within two days i received three books, essentially propaganda downplaying the idea of any preconceived or planned genocide on the part of the ottoman empire. i was also contacted by a man named david erbas-white, who had married a turkish woman and become something of a spokesman for turkey on the subject of this genocide the turks continue to deny to this day.

the primary argument the turks, (and erbas-white,) presented was to suggest that one of the young turk leaders of the day, a pasha named talaat, had somehow been misquoted. he is reported to have said he had a solution to the armenian question, after which he sent boxcars filled with armenians into the desert to die, and invited the invading russians to kill the armenians who he used as a buffer between the russian and ottoman troops. could talaat pasha have been misquoted or misunderstood? perhaps but it always seemed like revisionist history to me.

the story i wrote was not well written. i did good research but i was a novice to say the least and my aim was to write something like what i might have seen in time magazine. i wanted it to be an authoritative expose on events 75-80 years bygone. instead the piece was meandering and my position was unclear. still, school is about learning and for a student writer to be able to choose such an expansive topic and to be able to get interviews with notable subjects and to have the freedom to explore and to collate and to write as i would, was of my greatest learning experiences ever.

recently this topic of the armenian genocide, specifically the united states' acknowledgement of these events as genocide, has received congressional consideration. in october of '07 the bill was essentially killed at the last minute as pressure from turkey was stepped up through the implication that turkey's cooperation with our military efforts in iraq could be jeopardized. a century after the fact, the descendants of the young turks who ruled the ottoman empire fiercely oppose being characterized as the descendants of the perpetrators of the murder of up to 1.5 million armenians.

by contrast, armenians and armenian-americans seem to covet the world's acknowledgement of their plight. serj tankian of the rock band 'system of a down,' has been one of the most vocal proponents of u.s. recognition of this genocide. (www.axisofjustice.com, an activist website founded by tankian and tom morello has also supported the cause of u.s. recognition.)

i remember hayastan terzian wiping tears from her eyes that were not there. she felt those tears and she reached up to blot them but at 95-years-old, it was as if her body could not cry anymore. i remember sitting in the office of a 40-year-old real estate agent who shared stories of how the subject of the genocide would come up at home when he was a kid and the entire house would go quiet, after which arguments would ensue over the most trivial matters then later he would hear his parents crying together in their bedroom over recollections of their lost parents and relatives. his tears made up for hayastan, (which happens to mean "armenia," in the armenian language,) terzian's lost tears as they rolled down his face and knocked his spectacles right off it.

at a famous cathedral in yerevan today armenians remember. here in southern california at a monument in a park in montebello, armenians remember. the armenians have a saying which is, "wherever two armenians or more gather, there is armenia." a saying like this makes perfect sense coming from a people who have survived a diaspora, a people who were swallowed whole by the soviet union, a people who lived isolated as the only christians in a muslim part of the world, not to mention the enclaves of armenians who lived in iran, iraq, lebanon, russia, france, canada or the united states.

i will never forget these things, these people, this story, but i seem to remember them all more clearly every year on april 24th; armenian remembrance day.

the nightwatchman

tom morello, as the nightwatchman, thumped and rocked the el rey theatre last night like a dogged revolutionary on a quest to bang, beat, funk and groove a spirit of activism deep into the hearts and minds of all who listened. by all accounts it was a welcome assault.

this was not an ordinary rock and roll concert. from the large, black, red and green american flag behind the stage to the iconic image of che guevara draped over an amplifier, this was not going to be about good time songs and sex in the back seat of a chevy. morello, who was backed by a couple of other guitarists and a drummer who he called the freedom fighter orchestra, opened with one man revolution, the title track from his first nightwatchman record and musical proof of his commitment to all things struggle.

on the streets of havana
i got hugged and kissed
at the playboy mansion
i wasn't on the list
on the streets of cape town
shit's ready to blow
i don't know how to get there
but i'm ready to go
'cause i'm a one man
i'm a one man
i'm a one man revolution

that song particularly connects morello with his fans/kindred spirits later when he sings, "if you've come this far mister, maybe we're one in the same."

then again, to say tom morello sings is not quite right. the songs on both of his nightwatchman records are folk songs, perhaps fit moreso for a union rally than a night at the el rey. the songs typically include a call to action and represent populist values of the proletariat. he growls more than sings and at times is reminiscent of leonard cohen, (whose penchant for biblical imagery in his songs he also shares.)

morello's guitars had revolutionary messages scrawled on them: "arm the homeless," and, "whatever it takes." (it may not get more revolutionary than "arm the homeless.") morello also conveyed overt messages such as when he and his band played ac/dc's dirty deeds, (done dirt cheap,) only with altered lyrics about the bush administration. he also mentioned barack obama saying obama not only seemed to steal his bio, (both are half african-american with fathers of kenyan origin and both attended harvard,) but he has graced the cover of rolling stone more times. morello went on to warn the audience not to be so enamored with our new president as to not become individually and responsibly involved. he reminded everyone that an elected official never made the difference in bringing about the major changes the people have yearned for, rather, he expounded, real change has always been the result of grass roots movements.

serj tankian, of system of a down and a partner of morello's in axis of justice, joined the nightwatchman on stage for one song, contrasting morello's gravelly baritone with his own sweet tenor. boots riley, of the coup, also joined the band for a song, which was as reminiscent of morello's former band rage against the machine, as the evening got, (including morello's acoustic version of guerilla radio.)

near the end of the evening the nightwatchman played woody guthrie's this land is your land, mentioned paul robeson who sang it as a means of agitation, and invited the crowd to sing along as if in unison of marxist, socialist spirit. that old folk diddy may never have rocked so hard and as disparate as the crowd was, 20-somethings next to 40-somethings, black, white, and brown, all side by side singing and fist-pumping along, there was a sense of brotherhood and joie de vivre amongst strangers.

from boots riley as the opening act singing about five million ways to kill a ceo and telling of the five things he was put on earth to do, (laugh, love, fuck, drink liquor and speed the revolution,) to tom morello's mother introducing him to open the show, the nightwatchman show was unconventional and offered more than just live rock and roll. it offered practical camaraderie and plenty of hope for a time when people are informed and engaged in the processes that dictate the policies that affect their lives.