trakMARX - Mindless People

Power To The Mindless People

Wake up and smell the rotting vegetables, it’s time for some fresh fruit.

Damned we were, and damned we all still are. Damned with false truths - little boy duplicates are marketed as gods. Disappointment after disappointment, there’s no shortage of bands playing the piracy game. Damned with deaf DJ’s who think that Dave Grohl is ‘the man’, and heartless hacks who help spread the gospel according to the label guy with the deepest pockets and fattest hands, but worst of all damned with a herd of sheep who can’t say no. The state of music is not something to laugh about- get down on your knees and start praying.

Blinded by red and white. Uniforms ARE cool, and so ‘cool’ everyone is. Suffocated with the same guitars that happily took our lives when it mattered. Strangled with empty words. Clichés drift by. We’ve heard it all before and we’re not so easily tricked now. The kids with tight trousers, tired eyes and tireder dicks hop to the top. It’s ok brothers and sisters, guitars are in and punk rock is pop. The NME told us so.

The suits who dictate the next short-lived trend don’t give a damn if you wanna hang onto anything. It’s all or nothing in this game. When the next following is in, and the records you carefully collected are ignored, discarded and mean nothing, when you pick up the next Rough Trade compilation which plans to enlighten the masses on the latest trend and you can’t keep up, don’t come running. They’ll pull all your beliefs from under you, take your money and then laugh. But don’t look to us for sympathy, we don’t care. We got out a long time ago. We don’t need the reassurance of Zane Lowe, to tell us our tastes are alright, because my friends, when we’ve got something real, we’ll know and we won’t let go.

People are stupid, so we’ve come to accept that the mainstream is not a place we’re going to get - and not a place we want to be. The people on the other side of the vaguer and vaguer line aren’t people we want to know. Music to them is a hobby, a job, something to talk about at parties to hide their otherwise boring and miserable lives. They’re not real people. I’m tired of being represented by some stupid ‘power’ who has fuck all in common with the people they supposedly speak for. We’re told day after day who we should listen to, and who we’ll like, yet we’re flooded with unwanted sounds. They’re not coming from the same place as us. Nowhere near. Things aren’t looking good, we’re losing control and so this isn’t the time to get slack. This is our culture and it’s quickly departing as Sarah Cox screeches her way through another show. Radio 1 have got it almost as entirely wrong as they could. With laughter levels at an all time low it’s not surprising many would rather have the new Radio 1 line up knocked out than focus on killing Iraqi’s. We’ve got our priorities all wrong.

So we’re in a pretty bad way. Wading through the shit takes a long time and it’s becoming harder - the music separation isn’t so clear. It’s hard to establish anything real in the midst of the crowd of fakes, and guess whose fault it is. Yours. Laziness is pushing us further and further from anything vaguely credible. Mindless droids willing to be pushed in any direction, led by the stench of hype. Why form your own opinion when you can buy into one, right?

Don’t come here with your hopeless excuses, we don’t want to hear them. You know who these kids are. You know them well. They’re the people you take by the hand and lead through the door. You listen to them, you watch them, you pay them and you (‘re told to) love them.

Open up your eyes, and question those you’ve believed for so long. There’s far more out there than you’ve been told. Hold on, and hope St. Nick brings you some principles for Christmas, it’s the only fucking way. We’ve got something here worth saving.

At some point along the way when he retrieved his head from his own arse, Lou Reed said that people should start dying for music, how right he was.

Nat Shooter – tMx 12 – 12/03