Burnsiiiide!!!!!

It sends shivers up my spine. “Paralyzed by electricity! It was the guns of rock and roll! It was a sound that was out of control! Burnsiiiiide!!!!!”

The Rats off of their early 1980’s album In a Desperate Red. This is what I mean by a new language for politics. On the album, Burnside is preceded by a song called Working Class and followed by Come On Toody in which the band leader Fred Cole laments his wife Toody’s inability to get out of the house in a timely manner – “Come on Toody, Why’s it always take you so long?” If this is a political language it is extremely specific. It speaks to that handful of people who know about a street called Burnside and understand why it might have something to do with electricity flowing through your veins. Specificity has good and bad qualities. For those of us who are participating in the same language game as Fred Cole it makes the song take on an amazing power. For those who have never experienced Burnside it is more or less meaningless. Maybe you get what he’s saying but it’s not the same as having lived the street. So, this means of communication has limits.

A person might also question the actual message of this song, but I will assume that after all of our preceding discussion that this is no longer an issue. Burnside is no less of a call to action and values than appeals to strength and equality.

The problem is one of sacrificing the power of localism for a larger audience. Both are important and sacrificing one for the other would be a mistake. Fred and Toody Cole later formed two-thirds of Dead Moon, a band that consistently sought to use local symbols in order to create an international set of values. The title and chorus of the Dead Moon song 54/40 or Fight, refers to the slogan that was used to claim the independence of Oregon territory from the British in the 1840’s. Previously the territory was administered by both the British and Americans and 54/40 was the line of latitude that marked the northern border of Oregon territory. While the US did take control of much of Oregon territory they had to settle for the 49th parallel, which is now the northern border of Washington state. The song has little in the way of historical reference. Rather it is a song about being pushed until you can take no more. In some ways it is a song of rebellion not unlike other classics like Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It. However, both the Dead Moon lifestyle (being old, putting out your own records in mono, wearing black) gave them a credibility that kept irony at a minimal level. Despite the Oregoncentric nature of Dead Moon’s lyrics their biggest fan base was in Germany.

Dead Moon and The Rats never sold themselves as an “Oregon” band in the manner that ZZ Top catapulted themselves with the symbol of Texas. Perhaps the notion of staying true to one’s roots enabled them to expand their audience, but there was never a point when it seemed that Dead Moon was sticking close to Clackamas in order ensure their credibility and therefore sell more albums in Germany. Even with international acclaim, the localism of Dead Moon was maintained.

If there is a new language it must be one that combines specificity and mass appeal. It’s necessary to grab hold of a symbol with the power of Burnside that people all over the world can recognize. This is why peace, love, and war are so popular. This is also why peace, love, and war fail to generate any real passion in so many people – they are too abstract. This is a problem, but as 54/40 or Fight (sorry no digital copy to post) illustrates there is no inherent barrier to constructing symbols that are locally specific and appeal to people in different places. The political success of the left depends on generating such symbols that are rooted in place but are capable of transcendence as well