Please Let Me Forget Darryl Worley

Talentless hillbilly Darryl Worley, whose song Have You Forgotten holds No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, says his songs are "based on experience". Further examination of the lyrics to this philistine paen to mindless redneck patriotism makes one wonder what kind of experience he is basing it upon, his Creationism classes or the hours spent watching Sesame Street for the Simple Minded while cleaning his rifle:

"They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it every day
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
After 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right"

Who is guy, John Wayne with a remote? Yeah, let's look for a fight. Let's drink some goddamn Budweiser and run down some A-rabs with our pick up trucks or shoot down some third world dictators with our squirrel huntin' rifles because goddamn it, we're mad and we're stupid! You go girl.

If you'd like a good barometer of cultural America's opinion about the war, take a look at the Billboard chart. In addition to Worley's chef-d'oeuvre, No. 1 on the Hot 100 is rapper 50 cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin" while Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" is the Hot 100's top debut. All seem to reflect the wide parameter of intellectual gifts America's top pop singers possess.

On the other end of the spectrum, in a concert in Colorado last night, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder caused quite a rucous with an anti-Bush rant punctuated by Vedder coming out wearing a Bush mask, which he then put on a microphone stand like a severed head, jabbed the mask with the mike stand and threw it on the floor, stamping on it. I wonder what that song is called, Mime The Death of Bush? I never knew Eddie was a performance artist.

Thanks to One Good Move for noting the band Little Big Men who have a song out called "Mr Bush, You Are Not The President Of This World". The entire Centre for Political Song is full of resources for anti-war songs and compilations.

Punk band Anti-Flag teamed up with Germany's Donots for a protest song against state terror.

Statik Music has a good hip hop song called "War".

Znet also has a site of selected anti-war songs.

Meanwhile, the BBC has effectively banned MC Life of Luton based hip hop act Phi-Life Cypher's track entitled Bush and Blair from his forthcoming album Everyday Life - "This world it ain't fair, Bush 'n' Blair, they don't care, hope you'll all be aware" --

Sound familiar? Clear Channel, the media conglomerate that owns some 1,200 radio stations, issued what a spokesman has called a "recommendation" not to play such songs as "Shot Down in Flames" by AC/DC and "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by the Gap Band.

Sounds eerily similar to the list of songs provided by Fucked Company which were deemed by Clear Channel Communications to be of "questionable content" after September 11th.

And up in Canada, Toronto newspapers reported that CHUM-AM oldies station a major station there had pulled anti-war songs off the playlist. The station blamed the gaffe on a miscommunication.

The list of banned songs included Edwin Starr's "War (What Is it Good For?)" and John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance."