A Chicken Is Not Pillage

Ignorance and Prejudice and Fear Walk Hand In Hand

Not that it much matters at this point, but my personal webspace turned 9 years old last month.

As I spent time this afternoon attempting to put together a new Halloween playlist, I kept gravitating towards one particular song.  It's dark, and angry and I love it for its honesty.  Way on back in the early 1980s, Rush recorded the album Moving Pictures.  I've purchased it on vinyl, which I still have, and purchased it on CD.   Terrific as it is for it's better known songs, it is my favorite for the song Witch Hunt.

 

 

This year, more than 28 some years ago, the message of that song rings true. 

The righteous rise, with burning eyes of hatred and ill will.

I have been lead to believe that many of the intelligentsia don't like the band Rush all that much.   Too bad.  This song is terrific Halloween music, and it makes a point that should sink home to any who will blindly excuse the religiously gullible.  Evil doesn't control us, manipulate us or create us.  It comes from us, is suckled and is fostered by us.  Often it is supported by those who willfully ignore one thing in favor of others. 

On this Columbus day, there are many who would hold that one man was a genocidal maniac when actually all he did was change the make up of how humans would create their future.  It shouldn't really be celebrated but doesn't need to be denigrated either.  I know many folk who believe in Pagan magic, but seem oblivious to the idea that if their idea of magic worked, hundreds of millions of Christians would already have brought the rapture.   Well over a billion Muslims would have seen infidels destroyed.  At least dozens hope that what they hold as a Kumbaya will defeat candidate X, Y or Z.  OR ... it could simply be that we are humans who overlay what has been with what we would want, a very thin veneer of righteousness, and gosh aren't we individually cool?

Rush will likely be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame this year.  Yes, I am one of the assholes who's lobbied for this honor, because they truly deserve it.

Relevant To My Interests In Jethro Tull

It seems there is another Jethro Tull album to be had.  (That link is to a Metafilter post.  If you're not a member, you should be.)   The post reads a little like very good marketing, but the comments show that I'm not alone in saying that this is relevant to my interests.  There are many more links there at Mefi then I could provide here.

I loved Thick as  Brick.  It was everything my younger me needed; well, that and most other recording efforts of Ian Anderson.   It was angry, full of images, it relied heavily on pace, with discordant rhythm, and most of all, it was just.  It's what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it.  I've gotten a whole lot older, and so has the album.  But the memory remains.

I still have the vinyl, with 16 page newspaper, a far cry from mint condition.  I likely wouldn't sell it, even if I cared to.  I also know full well that the new album will not be what that one was. Ian Anderson has come 30 years in resolving his daddy issues.  We all have.  Still, I'm looking forward to the music.  If Ian Anderson can still feel the need to create, then I guess I'm not that old after all.