When you are as naive as I am there is bound to be some trouble just around the corner. And Of course there is always some really well hidden stuff. My Internet connection at home has been a bit slow lately making it hard for me to watch you tubes which is really bad. This didn't stop me from posting them, thinking they are all innocent and only music videos. But I realize that I'm a complete and utter fool. The Disturbed -Rise you tube in an earlier post was dedicated to the American soldiers and I didn't find that out until today. My sincerest apologies.I do feel sorry for them, the US army. But not in the way the video is making it look like. They are abused by their government in a totally useless war. I wont get into all the details about how wrong this all is, I will only say: US, get the fuck out of Iraq!
And yes, I have changed the you tube and will now be more careful when I post them. But if you search for "Disturbed - Rise", you will find it.
Song of the day: Kent - Lsd, någon? or just the hole album "tillbaka till samtiden".
Kent has been a permanent part of my life since I was about fourteen and of course a couple of bad records have been produced but the "new" one Kent is trying to get back to where they began but with a different sound. The lyrics are as always just absolutely pure and simple love. You can't quite understand what the band wants to say and thats the beauty of it. And sorry, they can't be translated. That was one of Kents mot embarrassing moments, please don't do it again.
4 comments:
Um, does anyone know what Kent has to say? I've never gotten into their music, despite having several friends who are.
And I STILL wonder what they were up to in the infamous concert at Stockholm Stadion in 2003 where they told their fans to dress up in white to gather "under one flag, in one colour". It was the national day and they had a giant monochrome flag on stage. I'm not very familiar with the band, but I have a hard time respecting them after reviving the aesthetics of nationalistic events with masses dressed in white at stadiums. The foremost example of that is Leni Reifenstahls film Olympia, which is a propaganda documentary about the olympics in Berlin in 1933.
I have no idea what Kent intended with this performance, but have a very hard time seeing any irony or ambitions of analysis in what they were doing. Just an ecstatic national mass meeting at the olympic stadium in Stockholm.
Uhm, I think Kents lyrics are all about finding out for your self what they mean or want to say. Or at least thats how I hope that it is. And I can always relate to the lyrics just because of that =)
Oh, yeah! I wasn't on that concert and thought it was pretty strange. By then the band was so popular I had lost interest and the records were really wired. But I don't think that they intended it to be something ill minded. So I'm staying naive and (somewhat) faithful to one of my all time favorite bands.
But yes, it very well could be one of modern histories worst brainwashing methods.
Love, isobelll
(And a huge thanks for commenting! Lots of hugs!)
Being the big fan of kent that i am i say Burn the rasist fuckers. ^^ Nah just kidding, i think there´s such a thing as reading a bit too much between the lines. Myself is just wondering why they didnt use the "swedish colors" if they wanted the audience as "one nation"...
[Before you read this and think I am utterly insane for writing such a long reply, please remember that I do this kind of thing for a living and have wasted years studying aesthetics on the university. I also think it's kinda fun to write. And I am trying to distract myself from a deadline.]
Well, I don't think they are into racism or nazism. But, into nationalism? No doubt.
I think that is problematic in itself, but from an aesthetic point of view I think it's correct to see what their work (the concept concert) communicates. And whether intentional or not, they have very specifically chosen all elements for a conceptual event.
Of course everything we see could be more or less random, making every notion of what seems to mean irrelevant. It could also be, as you seem to say, unintentional or incidental. Masses clad in white at a Olympic stadium, celebrating the nation state "under one flag, in one colour" - what are the point of these symbols and how can they be read as anything else but as other events with exactly the same elements and aesthetics (which not incidentally also are nationalist gatherings).
However, if you want to go all national, wouldn't you have the flag symbols in colour, instead of simple monochromatics? Quite the opposite - monochrome is the way to go. The reason is that fascist aesthetics is based on two notions: unity and purity. We are one (the individual is therefore not). We are the pure (the other are as a consequence unpure). Prominent display of purity and unity is present in every fascist expression. In the Kent concert, it is hard to find any element (except maybe the lyrics of the band and the pop aesthetics of the music itself), that does not do it's best to emphasize "purity" and "unity" - even the press release does. I've failed to find anything that actively contradicts these notions. It follows that the flag must be monochrome: the flag symbol conveys unity (we are swedish, we are one) while the stark contrast between bright and dark is an even stronger emphasis of purity and unity than the disparate colours of the standard flag. White, is the purest of colours and black is its opposite.
So, whatever Kent could have intended with this, I don't think the totality of elements are random or incoherent - if they were, the result would not be so aestheticly coherent: the concept actually seem to be pretty self-conscious of it's intent (eg. the press release). This coherence also makes me think that the artistically responsible knew what they were doing, but not the implications of it.
They wanted to celebrate the National Day in Sweden, and they did it real good. What they might not have seen in their naiveté, was what could be found, further down the path of Purity and Unity. Not seeing where you are going, what you are saying, does not mean that you aren't doing it. It means you are artistically, philosophically and historically naive, perhaps even incompetent.