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Another form of
human communication behind a non-threatening distance is music. Depending on the genre the themes can trend
pro-Meme or anti-Meme. Understanding the
Meme’s role in music can help illustrate why certain music tends to be popular
with certain groups of people.
Pop music is the
definition of pro-Meme. Top-forty songs
slathered in bubble-gum lyrics and dopamine releasing melodies and measures,
which do not have to make logical sense, but typically toy with the
sexual-meme, but do not dive into the internal or social issues are the
pro-Meme’s music staple. Adult
easy-listening also does this. Examples
of pro-Meme artists include: Elvis, Madonna, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, George
Straight, Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney (almost all modern pop-country), Mike
Love, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Electronic Dance Music, Jimmy Buffet, the Bee
Gees (disco), Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra (big band music), Justin Timberlake,
Gene Autry, Poison (glam-rock), Eminem, Kayne West, The Rolling Stones, Maroon
Five, Kirk Franklin (gospel), New Kids on the Block (boy bands: Nsync, One
Direction), and Brittany Spears (pop-princess: Miley Cyrus, Tiffany, Rihanna
etc.).
Clear-Channel
corporate playlists on auto repeat on generic radio correlate with the
Meme. Listeners are dulled into
passively absorbing the same sounds over and over without asserting anything
beyond the smallest volition to click the radio on. Commercials airing are digested with the same
level of rejection.
Humans who avoid
the radio and utilize an iPod to prepare specific playlists or compact discs to
assert volition over artistic and auditory options are anti-Meme. This at times can be the same exact song, but
consumed through varied paradigms. Certain
bubble-gum music and draconian synthesized beat patterns are correlated with
opiate releases in humans that are common tools of the Meme to spread and retain
itself and sell products.
Dance music like
Spears, Beyoncé, and Madonna dangle the Lolita-nymph meme, which would appear
to be anti-Meme, but it is done so without substance to retort the empowerment
of an internal volition. Dance club
music teaches repetitive action and phrases to assert what is allowed and
acceptable. Line dancing is a particular
vile form of the Meme. Rihanna and Katy
Perry are fuck-me STD-training kits.
Dance music lyrics
are generally lacking to maintain volition behind the veiled prostitution of
selling sex in melodies and beats. Elvis
sold sex with a gospel foundation to veil the theft of African American music
and to show adherence to the Meme. Madonna’s crucifixes and Spears’ school
uniform did the same. Beyoncé’s Girls, is a farcical empowerment.
Disney, a champion
of the pro-Meme, bought Justin Timberlake, Spears, and Cyrus to turn cute into
fuck-bait on a song hook for profit. Boy
bands are a reverse Lolita-fantasy that uses a congregation of males to diffuse
overt female lust. Female individuals like
Madonna can be lusted at more overtly under the Meme. Brothers can masturbate looking up at the
posters of Brittany in their sister’s room and the sisters can name their
vibrators Justin. No matter the Meme,
their sperm-supplies are not finite.
The modern-country
iteration is fueled by religion and patriotism.
Drinking and having it First-World-hard, soldiers and war are common
themes to Tobey-Keith kick-ass. A salt of
the Earth, family-first comfort akin to Jesus’ the last-shall-be-first message
is a comfortable frame to ensnare the Poor.
Jimmy Buffet is
non-threating grab a drink, be happy, and
don’t think too much music. Disco
was the same. The Rolling Stones may
appear to be anti-Meme, but for the most part the Stones are a party-band. Like other party-bands like Kiss they are a
louder version of disco with musicianship serving a similar purpose for the
Meme.
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Some
powerful artists twist both sides of the pro and anti-Meme. These artists understood or understand that a
fun pro-Meme type song can allow musicians dexterity to spread anti-Meme songs
to the public. The Rolling Stones did
this, especially with their Blues influences, but the Beatles were the masters.
Paul
McCartney and John Lennon’s partnership can be seen as the ultimate musical
combination of the pro and anti-Meme on a global stage. McCartney could fuel “And I saw her standing
there” and “Birthday.” John Lennon could
fuel, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “A Day in the Life.” Almost all Beatles songs were written in
collaboration between the two. Despite
who may have sung the lyrics on the track, the message of the Meme is clearly
subdivided and evidenced by the inevitable breakup of the band and the comments
and lives of each. In some ways the
question of “Who is your favorite Beatle?” can explain one’s Meme allegiance
(John and George on the introverted anti-Meme and Paul and Ringo on the
extroverted pro-Meme.)
John Lennon’s influence on the
planet is unparalleled in his overt atheism while exiting the Beatles. The Meme may even have led to his
murder. His song, “God” may be the
greatest full frontal assault on the Meme in the history of music given who
Lennon was. If “God” had been done with
the full complement of his Beatle band mates the ramifications would have
dwarfed any previous umbrage over comparisons of the Beatles and Jesus. Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Working Class Hero”
are more palatable iterations of the anti-Meme.
There is a reason Sgt. Peppers is
considered by many as the greatest album of all time and Bob Dylan’s “Like a
Rolling Stone” may be the greatest American song. Dylan presents a human like a vagabond animal
out on the street being dared to peer inward.
The Beatles explore disconnecting from society, cultural norms and
asking the inside to come outside. Each
is a full assault on the Meme. Sgt.
Peppers peaks with the line, “He blew his mind out in a car. He didn't notice that the lights had changed.
A crowd of people stood and stared. They'd seen his face before. Nobody was
really sure if he was from the house of lords.” in “A Day in the Life.” Dylan’s belts, “How does it feel to be on
your own?”
Anti-Meme musical artists
include: Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Nirvana,
Michael Jackson, Nine Inch Nails, KRS-One, Green Day, Wilco, Sam Cooke, R.E.M.,
John Prine, Public Enemy, Fugazi, Rancid, Miles Davis, Metallica, The Clash,
Pink Floyd, Muddy Waters, Fela Kuti, Brian Wilson, Etta James, Lead Belly, Billy
Bragg, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, U2, The Avett Brothers, Adele, Sage
Francis, Indigo Girls, Ray Charles, and John Lennon.
Mike Love served as McCartney to
Brian Wilson’s Lennon in the Beach Boys.
See the playful “Surfin’ USA” to the inch-away depressive suicidal awe
of “Hang on to your Ego” and the genus that is the anti-Meme album “Pet Sounds”. Michael Jackson although the ultimate pop
star, reclaimed his childhood and anti-Meme through songs like, “Man in the
Mirror”, “Heal the World”, “Will You Be There”, “Black or White”, and “Beat
It”. Sam Cooke was founded on gospel
like Elvis, but found the anti-Meme through confronting racism and systematic
injustice in songs like “Chain Gang” and “A Change is Gonna Come”.
Black music tends to be more
anti-Meme for this reason. The blues
founded by artists like Robert Johnson and Lead Belly, rock n’roll founded by Chuck Berry, hip hop
with artists like Run DMC, and reggae founded by artists like Bob Marley all
possess a sense of rebellion, smile for fear of crying, and introspection to
sense an internal pain from the Meme which the Meme seeks to suppress.
Hip hop is broad. Pro-Meme artists like Jay-Z can dominate in
the billions spouting the use of women as sex objects and the glory of wealth
and gangster status. Anti-Meme artists
like Mos Def, Public Enemy, and Sage Francis exist in hip hop making less
money, but far more poignant commentary for humanity. Albums like Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black
Planet”, Francis’ “Life”, and Mos Def’s “The Ecstatic” are Meme effrontery.
The blues echo slavery and the
hurt of poverty. Lead Belly, Etta James,
and Ray Charles can voice human loneliness from the grips of both love and injustice. Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, “Get up,
Stand up”, “Exodus”, “Buffalo Solider”, “War”, and “Coming in from the Cold”
etc. do the same.
The folk genre was founded by
Woody Guthrie with songs like, “Tom Joad”, “Pretty Boy Floyd”, “I ain’t got no
home in this World Anymore”, “Jolly Banker”, “Do-Re-Mi”, and the eponymous
“This Land is Your Land” as a retort to “God Bless America.” The chain from Guthrie goes to Bob Dylan with
entire albums showing Dylan’s battle with the Meme as he goes from anti-Meme
folk and blues to pro-Meme Christian and country. Dylan’s “The Times They are a Changin’” is
the strongest anti-Meme assault folk album ever.
Bruce Springsteen bears Guthrie’s
torch most adeptly in hiding the anti-Meme in plain sight behind a typically
pro-Meme topic of patriotism in his “Born in the U.S.A.” album. One of the most glaring examples of the Meme
is a pro-Meme listener chanting the refrain without listening to the other
lyrics of the title track. Springsteen’s
“Thunder Road” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” albums break at the
loneliness of the soul and begs for human connection to shine through the dark
reality of the American dream.
Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” is homage to Guthrie along with
his “Nebraska” to echo the dustbowl desperation of the Poor.
Springsteen wrote a modern update
to Guthrie’s consciousness after 9/11/01 with “The Rising” and after the 2008
economic collapse with “Wrecking Ball”. Bruce
Springsteen covers up his assault on the Meme with fun rock n’ roll songs, but
the anti-Meme is the substance.
Springsteen and Dylan understand that if one does not combine the candy
of the pro-Meme the anti-Meme music will not penetrate the population.
Johnny Cash was like Elvis and
Sam Cooke with a gospel foundation. Cash
was more like Cooke than Presley as music made to his death struggled with his
concept of god ultimately covering Trent Reznor’s “Hurt”. Reznor is the lead singer of Nine Inch
Nails. His album “The Downward Spiral”
is a modern industrial anti-Meme update to Dylan’s “The Times They are a
Changin’.” It rampages through herd
behavior of conformity in humans, animalistic sex, atheism, suicide, and human loneliness.
The
punk genre was sprouted through the anti-Meme of The Clash with the political
flare of rebellion in the albums “London Calling” and “Sandinista”. The Ramones’ disaffected formula claimed the
outsider role. Modern punks in Operation
Ivy’s “Energy” led into Rancid with albums like “Life Won’t Wait”,
“Indestructible”, and “Let the Dominoes Fall.” Green Day transcended from sophomoric pop-punk
to a full anti-Meme war with the global impacting “American Idiot”, followed by
“21st Century Breakdown.”
Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia” is the update to Lennon’s “God”. Green Day has recorded covers of Lennon’s
“Working Class Hero”, Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, and the Clash’s “I Fought
the Law”.
If
one can imagine a Mount-Rushmore of the pro and anti-Meme for English-language musicians,
the pro-Meme would have Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, Jay-Z, and Madonna. The anti-Meme would have John Lennon, Bob
Marley, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie.
Many
musical artists are actually introverts as for a non-shy introvert performing
in public may actually be less daunting than an extrovert concerned with the
audience’s judgment. When we can syphon
music based on the Meme in such ways we see which musicians are likely to bring
substance over gloss and which are likely to find radio play or not,
particularly in a modern area of large corporations like Clear Channel
controlling playlists with advertisers taking priority.
Music
has the ability for the public to acknowledge what humanity dislikes about the
Meme. Humans will sing refrains in
concert against the Meme chastising the authoritarian establishments of
government, war, commercialism, religion, fundamentalism, racism, and violence,
but then go right back to living the Meme.
Other songs will document the inevitability of discord and the
inescapable minefields of poverty correlated with violence in communities. One can see this Meme-differential in the
cost of a Fugazi show as less than a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt and why
Tom Morello now has a divergent solo-career.
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Writing,
television, film and cult celebrities present similar paradigms. Rather than exacerbate a similar pro and
anti-Meme disparity we will simply list a few of the limitless candidates as
example. The Pro Meme includes: any
Pope, Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Henry Kissinger, Rick Warren, Ayatollah Khomeini,
George Bush, Joseph Stalin, Bill Clinton, JFK, Joseph Goebbels, Barak Obama,
Osama Bin Laden, Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Harvey, Larry the Cable Guy, Ward
Cleaver, Archie Bunker, Penny from the Big Bang Theory, Homer Simpson, Monty
Burns, Fonzie, Rush Limbaugh, and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
The
anti-Meme includes: Albert Einstein, Christopher Hitchens, Jonas Salk, Noam
Chomsky, Charles Bukowski, Salmon Rushdie, Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi, Harvey
Milk, MLK, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, George Carlin,
Richard Pryor, Bill Maher, Bill Cosby, Larry David, Sheldon Cooper from the Big
Bang Theory, Lisa Simpson, Monty Python, Louie C.K., Joe Rogan, and South Park.
The
back and forth internal conflict with craving the Meme’s comfort in the
bastions of hope, faith, religion, solidarity, and community, while raging
against its false promises and inhibiting constructs is common. Many times artists and listeners do not
connect the two extremes as part of the same whole. This is in part why and how humans hunger to
have a source to blame and will accept any solution. Even if the solution is not empirically
proven or likely to be a productive avenue for reprieve it has done the
internal contemplative work for us and is therefore preferable for the Meme.
We will vote for a token
candidate with name recognition for his or her ability to be elected, not the
ideas proffered. This truncates our
responsibility for taking action, as our passive vote reflects our resistance
to contemplate and attempt to live without the Meme. We will engage in endless rabble debate over
the rhetoric surrounding a topic to facilitate a theater of make-believe that
we are doing something about a “problem” without actually doing. Given the timely and detailed analysis the
Meme discourages we might see that either side of the debate is a feckless
appearance of action unlikely to change the root cause, but likely to win
public favor in the arenas the Meme is most concerned: popularity, symbolic
gestures, and sound bites. These political
candies are less likely to be criticized because each was not linked to logical
recourse at the impetus.
All of these are iterations of
thought through speech or song which represent the crime of thinking
anti-Meme. The introverted practice of
burrowing into the hierarchy of thoughts that hold our global society from
chaos and secure profits for some and desperation for others is inseparable
from the ninth commandment. The Meme
wants to avoid this conversation entirely.
Humans need to accept all the
facets that make us human, our choices, especially the dark ones like
suicide. Otherwise when we search for
motives, it is not to pilfer benefit to the deceased or victim of a crime, but
to shield ourselves from the idea that we could be in the deceased’s
stead. We could be the cremated dust or
glob dissolving in a casket. We could be
the one shot in the face on a sidewalk over the idea that we have a wallet with
currency in our cache or once sang of atheism.
We are left with the notion that
we can be condemned simply for a thought-crime.
Psychoanalysis or introspection becomes dangerous. If commandment nine makes our desires into
evidential matter for sin, then the contents of our minds become the property
of god and thus the Meme. We create
false assurances that others will be subjected to similar examination when they
repudiate thought-culpability through their volition.
The anti-Meme wishes to reclaim
jurisdiction over our thoughts. We can
want freely. It is our actions which
will determine our morality. These
actions are independent of judgment and are good or bad based on consequence,
not intent. A man meaning well in war is
still a murderer. There is wrong in the
act. This means an act can be both good
and bad. We must accept this dichotomy
and expunge the absolutism of godly
pardon as if we ever possessed such authority.
Any possession is a fleeting
parcel in the mirage of time. We hide
from these long-Decembers coming due. We
fail to appreciate the other three seasons as if the fourth will never come
around. We conjure mythical eternities
to partake a never ending spring time, a recycling veil of childhood as if the
waters of the womb could wash us in regenerative fluid in commensurate measure
with our faith. These are the pleasure
islands of the Meme leaving one with elongating nostrils and hopes that one is
not a real boy.
We create heaven to absolve
ourselves from seeing the duality of our actions and thus ourselves. We are animals. We kill to continue to survive. The suffering of others so often produces a
measure of our benefit. This is never
truer than in the disparity between the Third and First Worlds.
The Meme makes it more
comfortable to avoid consideration of the energy passing through our internal
thoughts to manifest this reality of our complex interconnected human
super-organism. One is pushed down for
the other’s head to rise above the limited surface. Once we peer inward and accept what we are
and why we do what we do, then we can accept the task of our continued
evolution.
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