I Do Not Play No Rock And Roll

I'm feeling a whole lotta disgust today. What to do with it?

Every so often I go to the local Whole Foods to buy a few items. In so far as Whole Paycheck is a money extraction operation in which clueless but affluent American "consumers" buy high-end groceries and doo-dads at inflated prices, I am always somewhat embarrassed to be there. But I'm trying to eat healthier, and there are some things (within walking distance) I can get only there.

As I was seeking out those healthy items trying not to spend too much money and dodging various hypnotized White People wandering about under the spell of the Affluence Trance, I became aware that there was Muzak playing. It was coming from somewhere near the ceiling.

And the tune that was playing was Baby, Please Don't Go, a Mississippi blues tune first recorded by Big Joe Williams in 1935. The sanitized version they were playing was suitable for White People in a trance. I think it was AC/DC. It might have been Aerosmith. Who gives a shit?

And I thought: how fucked up is this? Is there nothing that Capitalism does not co-opt? Apparently not. These mindless fools walking around consuming their brains out listening (or not listening) to this great blues song being butchered by some average white band.

Because it's a long, long way from this—

To this—

That's the great Fred McDowell and his wife Annie Mae sitting outside their Tennessee domicile.

And those two pictures tell you all you need to know about the 2012 election. Both candidates want to make sure those happy Whole Food Shoppers can remain in that Mindless Trance. Everybody else is screwed.

But there was no AC/DC at the Whole Foods for Fred, for as he will tell you in the video below—

I do not play no rock and roll.

And that's the way I like it too. Have a nice weekend.

 

Comments

[Oliver]

Thanks for the timely reminder that not everything is fake on this planet.
A pleasant healthy weekend to you too.

[JohnWDB]

Those Smith-AC/DC covers were horrid, and not remotely music. Sometimes, though, a white guy actually does a classy, respectful cover, like this Ben Sollee cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come". Sollee respectfully acknowledges the apparent absurdity of a white hipster covering a song written during the Civil Rights movement by a black guy who was shot and killed before the song's release.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsCjSFb1SAA

I don't know what Cooke would think of this cover, but it is at least good music.

[Jay]

Dave, Can't you get the healthy stuff you need over at the non-profit East-End Co-op? There you can shop with aging hippies rather than the BMW crowd and still pay nearly $3 for a small bunch of organic kale...

[Gail]

For an example of the callous disregard with which the yuppies hold towards the blue-collar workers who clean their offices and serve their restaurant meals, look no further than the controversy over whether to hold the New York Marathon.

Talk about feeling disgusted!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226735/New-York-Marathon-Congressman-lashes-officials-pushing-ahead-event.html

[rumor]

Relevant to your interests, Dave: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/11/01/pol-weston-oilsands-warnings-financial.html

Some very juicy quotes in there.