…Against the Machine
I ask myself a number of things daily. Questions that relate to life, love and general situations. The most recent one being about the Christmas number one.
In case you’ve been on another planet here’s the deal. According to world view anyway.
Everyone is sick of the typical number ones at Christmas that we are told to buy. Buy the latest Xfactor single, buy some crazy Christmas song, blah, blah, blah.
You get the picture.
So instead people have decided to ‘Rage Against’ this by buying RATM’s ‘Killing in the Name’ on single. This is to get it to number one and therefore fight the mainstream music industry and force a blow against the X factor.
OK sounds like a good idea if you think about it, they are have radios play it everywhere, you can buy the singles at Tescos even. This mass ‘Anti- Mainstream Movement’ seems to be working.
People are going nuts.
But Wait!
Am I the only one seeing the true picture here?
How are we beating the mainstream music industry?
The closing and controversial line of Killing in the name?
‘Fuck You, I won’t do what you tell me!’
Uh…. but wait we are, someone said buy this single and yet we are. We are feeding the machine again, we are still doing the same thing as buying the new X-factor single, FEEDING THE MACHINE!
Come on, really? You are still doing what you are told, you’re raging against nothing, you are not winning this fight, in fact you are feeding the machine itself.
If you want to try something to really kill the machine. Buy No music AT ALL! Starve it out.
Congratulations world. You’ve been sucked in again.
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Song actually owns both songs, too. So either way, they make money. Buy the Muppets’ Bohemian Rhapsody instead – much better.
The point of the Rage Against the Machine for Christmas campaign is that people are sick of the manufactured bubblegum pop crap that is spewed out every christmas.
The x-factor winners have the songs written for them by overpaid songwriters, they sing the lyrics but half the time they have no meaning to them. There is no emotion. It is hollow.
RATM wrote and performed their own music because they wanted to make a statement, they had an opinion and they wanted to make it heard. I think they are a perfect choice for the anti-x-factor campaign.
I for one am sick of ‘x-pops-got talent on ice in the jungle’ manufactured reality tv, and if this campaign can get these shows off the air and some true creativity and talent back on tv and the radio then I’m definitely in.
I understand that, but in doing that we are still feeding the giant of a machine. Someone says buy our single and we buy because it stands against another single. We are still buying. If I were to come out and say buy my single its against the X Factor, I would be laughing or my record company would be.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dave Luke, Dave Luke. Dave Luke said: New blog post! RATM – http://j.mp/noonewins #fb [...]
It’s an interesting way to look at things, but the bigger picture is that the money raised from ‘Feeding the Machine’ actually has a charitable appeal as so far nearly £50,000 pounds of donations have been raised for charity that will go towards helping the homeless this Christams (http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas) and the Guitarist from RATM – Tom Morello has pledged money to UK charities supporting youth music in the UK which can only be a good thing getting kids of their asses and playing real instruments instead of guitar hero.
By buying the song you are maintaining REAL music by REAL artists and musicians who have fought the hard fight to get where they are and not just another manufactured karaoke popstar.
Perhaps I am being naive but I for one would be stoked if RATM get to No. 1 and we may not change the world but at least the people have tried to take the power back rather than stay tight lipped and accept the garbage that we now as class popular music monopolised by Simon Cowell.
Congratulations world, you grew a set of balls!
See Tim, I never knew that existed… And maybe it should be made more public… It makes me wonder tho, how much are the FatCats getting in comparison. That site pledges money from people who have already bought the single and wish to donate more money…
So some people are doing a slightly better thing. Now in a perfect world, if a certain percentage of the cost of the record sales or most of it (realising that the cost of printing and distribution is something not of profit) went to charity, that would make sense.
I would like to make it clear that I love RATM, one of my favourite bands out there, but I can only see consumerism.
Anti-consumerism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff. If you speak out against the fat cats in the music industry you must be prepared to speak out against corporations in general, from the Apple Mac you use to write your blog, to your favourite brand of coffee to the shops you visited and the presents you bought for Christmas, it’s all relevant.
but there is a difference between essential and materialistic.
I can stand out against consumerism in general, I am doing what I can to help who I can, I have not bought material presents this year.
I do what I can not to feed the machine.
It’s hard to break from this slavery we have gotten ourselves into, but slowly I am getting there.
To truly write something insightful about consumerism, you must do far more research about the corporations involved. In your defensive mind Dave you subconsciously think, “Well, they’re doing a very small thing with the charity, they could be doing so much more in comparison to what they’re GETTING out of it…” etc…Here’s something to consider: As Christians you and I can probably both agree that we believe that we should neglect the practice of consumerism in order to benefit those far “less fortunate” than us with our money. We only see them as less fortunate by both of our rich countries’ standards of what a person should be able to own, or here in the U.S. by how much credit they’ll give you to buy useless goods…Sorry tangent… But really Dave, think of what the world would be without the people who aren’t of the Christian faith giving to the world. Sadly I have heard of many more unbelievers versus believers that give more to society than they take…Even more sad, corporations as a whole probably give more money to charity than the Christian population on the planet. So maybe, if we must buy, and for some reason we must, we should at least promote goods that aren’t ONLY benefiting ourselves but those charities that some corporations tie themselves to? Don’t be naive, you’ve cut yourself off from consumerism as far as is comfortable… You still drive the car they made, use the oil they’ve drilled, you still buy your clothing versus making it yourself. You still probably have more food in the pantry than your family needs for the day. The goods you do buy probably don’t support your local economy, they probably keep people in developing countries working at lower wages because those corporations have a demand to meet. Start a project: find out where everything you own comes from. And then start finding out where everything you buy comes from…
I totally agree with Tim on this, you say that we shouldn’t be buying the RATM single because it is still ‘feeding the machine’. Everything that you purchase feeds the machine.
You mention essential and materialistic, if you were just buying things because they were essential would you drive a car(don’t know if you do), public transport is available. Would you drink coffee, water is essential, not coffee. How about lightbulbs?
The whole point of life is the little things that give simple pleasures. Seeing RATM as Chrismas No1 would give me great pleasure for the tiny price of 29p from Amazon. Less than a lightbulb and far less than the daily coffee.
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