QUEENSRŸCHE & THE TRADITION OF PROTEST

Photo from Queensrÿche MySpace page

With a Side Dish of Korn, Charlie, Teddy, & Corporate Sycophantry
by Mark S. Tucker
(December 2007)

INTRO

What's happened to the idea of holding the line against evil, against the human infection so capably noted and harangued by such as folkies as Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and a proud line of others? Well, it never really transferred all that successfully over to progressive and metal musics, but that's nonetheless where its expansion occurred. In a shortlist of such acts, Queensrÿche may have been the most vociferous of them all.

KORN, TED, CHARLIE & COGNIZING ADVANTAGE

Being "in the industry," I get news releases every so often. Thus, it was not unusual to receive this on 7/30/07:

"KORN BUILD CORNFIELD IN TIMES SQUARE: MULTI-PLATINUM, GRAMMY AWARD WINNING BAND TO APPEAR AT ARMED FORCES RECRUITING STATION FOR ANNOUNCEMENT, TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2007 at 12 NOON. Korn, the multi-platinum, award-winning hard rock band, will hold a very special press conference at the Armed Forces Recruiting Station tomorrow at 12 noon. The band is expected to discuss their new untitled album, their plans for working with the USO and their upcoming plans to upgrade their environmental efforts on this summer's Family Values Tour in partnership with MusicMatters and SMART. Korn is stopping in NYC in the middle of their Family Values Tour, which opened last week to capacity crowds of up to 15,000 in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and St Louis."

I like Korn, but this was rather unexpected. Not entirely unamiable in an odd fashion though, as now at least Charlie Daniels, Ted Nugent, and other administration toadeaters will have company over in Bush/Cheney/Guckert Land, a meld one can understand conservos lusting for. Korn, solidly in center stage for years, evidently understands the new rules of the game: show fealty, present the sphincter, stand in line for goodies. Accordingly, it's doing all three simultaneously. Smart lads... I guess.

But the tradition in rock per se has most definitely not been one of laying supinely in the face of cruel conservatism but rather rebellion. Funny how enough time and mountains of money can pervert everything, even that. Some, however, never lost the mindset - Queensr˙che, for instance.

ENTER THE OTHER QUEEN

Back in '88, the group, famed for superior hard-rock and metal since its EP debut five years earlier, released Operation Mindcrime, its pinnacle statement artistically, a concept cycle revolving around the corruption of the U.S. government, its coterie of shadow cabals (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc.), and the subsequent need for anarchy. The narrative thread centered in an assassin, Nikki, recovering from a panoply of events in a hospital. He's reviewing recent back-history while bedridden. What's foreshadowed in the spoken prologue is ominous: "I just remember doing what they told me," referring to his contractors before launching into the full story, a tale of political espionage, duplicity, and murder.

The album did quite well, with at least one single ("I Don't Believe in Love," the radio beacon that caught many ears) emerging, setting the plateau at which the ensemble would aesthetically top out. But...top out? You'd think such a market waystation would lead to greater things, no? Queensrÿche was an exceptionally strong band, imaginative, never lacking for material. Yet, rather than entertain the obvious - a follow-up to Mindcrime - they released the thematically tepid Empire, touching off a long slow slide into relative moribundity. It was an excellent LP but lacked the immediately dangerous edge of Mindcrime. Ironically, Empire benefitted hugely in the aftermath of its sire, which had tipped off the consuming public more fully to the group's many virtues. Where Mindcrime had gone platinum, Empire went 3X plat, but successor LP's plummeted rapidly, as witness:

U.S. SALES:

1983: Queensrÿche: Gold
1984: The Warning: Gold
1986: Rage for Order: Gold
1988: Operation Mindcrime: Platinum
1990: Empire: 3x Platinum
1991: Operation LIVEcrime: not tallied
1994: Promised Land: Platinum
1997: Hear in the Now Frontier: 330,000
1999: Q2K: 155,000
2003: Tribe: 75,000
2006: Operation Mindcrime II: 132,000

Ouch!

Not entirely blind to things, the group, just after Empire, released a fully staged concert box of Mindcrime, dubbed Operation LIVEcrime, released only as a CD/Videocassette pair, at the time said to be the only such issuance of the event that would ever occur (later disproven). The video was literal dynamite, documentation of a presentation nearly unparalleled in rock and roll, rivaled by very few other such transcriptions. The cinematography was unadorned but beautifully accomplished and masterfully edited; one was not just watching a concert, one was listening enraptured to an engrossing story in which the narrators were at the very top of their game. As rock theater, it may be the very best such metal effort ever concocted, and its message was unambiguous: time for revolution and anarchy in the United States, if not the world.

This was well before the rise of BushCo Phase Two, but one marvels that the record company allowed the release of it even then. After all, we're talking EMI, a huge combine 100% part of The Machine. What would've been their motivation in greenlighting such a potential tinderbox? Ah... did I mention the sales? Politics is one thing, money another. After Empire though, the boys slowly headed South, increasingly unhip to what they'd had... or was that truly the case? Speculation abounds regarding whether Queensrÿche was pressured behind the scenes, warned not to indulge such anti-Establishment "foolishness" a third time. If so, this would not exactly be the first instance such shenanigans had come about in similar situations and definitely something the group would be unwise to admit to, were it so.

In 2004, while interviewing Dream Theater, who'd toured with Queensrÿche, I mentioned to Mike Portnoy that I was astonished the latter group had never kept the artistically and financially lucrative Mindcrime gig going. He grinned a little grimace and mentioned that it had taken over 15 years, but that the friendly rival combo had finally figured things out and were working on Pt. 2. This seemed to indicate that it was the group's own shortsightedness which accounted for the gap. Highly possible, highly probable, but I'm not convinced, even while admitting how boneheaded many rock and rollers can be.

Be that as it may, something goaded the ensemble to return to homebase. Whether that decision will be proven to be as abundantly profitable as earlier successes remains to be seen, though Mindcrime 2 nearly doubled in sales what Tribe had collected, though nowhere near platinum status.

GIVE US MOORE!

Because Mindcrime 1 was such a catalyst and Mindcrime 2 a continuo, it made sense that a repetition of both in the context of a united presentation was damned near a forgone conclusion. Thus, the concert tour for such an event was formulated. From that came Mindcrime Live at the Moore at the well-favored theater in Seattle, Washington.

Despite the excellences of the product in whole, the story cycle kicks off with a Hanna-Barbera/Japanimation-type cheap cartoon intro in a hospital where the protagonist is in pharmaceutical dreamland. Perhaps ironically, during that short sequence, a nurse pumps up the sleeping Nikki with some kind of drug, the needle being a heroin allusion, as will become apparent, while the rather dunderheaded cheers of the crowd can be heard to rise appreciably.

The paradox, of course, is that drugs form one of the myriad ways intel organizations, psychiatrists, school administrators, and others obtain docility and compliance, indeed re-forming the psyche of the individual when possible, the very procedure the opera's protesting vigorously while the butts in seats cheer the street interpretation. A bit grimly amusing.

Even more paradoxical is the true beginning to the narrative, when one of Nikki's eyes opens, forming the reverse of the all-seeing Illuminatical orb, as he says "I remember now," referring to negative interferences with will and memory, ending in the apocryphal "I just remember doing what they told me." But the irony fest has barely begun as on-stage marches the Seattle Seahawks Drum Line, playing various percussives. Um... the Seattle Seahawks? A football team adjunct? Aren't jocks basically 100% conservo boneheads? Yeah, they are. Weird.

Nonetheless, this is the overture, an intro traditionally devoted to overstatement and pomp, so add to that the commencement of an onslaught of war footage replete with Nazis, both Bushes, rebellion, resistance, bombs dropping, murder, and the standard palette of heinous elements tailored to achieve maximum visual penetration. A rapid-fire barrage of interleavings with the group wailing away only heightens the effect. All this was part and parcel of LIVEcrime but becomes newly augmented here. The thematic intro begins, signaling Geoff Tate's entry with that magnificent voice of his, as powerful and facile as two decades ago. The background screen immediately switches to Gulf War images and Saddam Hussein, as Tate's carrying something: a chunk of cardboard on which is inscribed "War IS Terrorism!"

Hmmmm, well it sure ain't accommodationist Charlie Daniels up there. But that's not all. A sign has two sides, does it not? On the reverse, we see "U.S. Out of Iraq!" emblazoned. Well, then, shove asskissing Ted Nugent out of the way as well; he wouldn't do well with these boys. Images are timed perfectly as the lyrics fade back to reminiscing "I used to think that only America's way was right/But now the holy dollar rules everybody's lives/Gotta make a million, doesn't matter who dies," and the audience knows its cue, jumping in with the first line of the refrain: "Revolution Calling!" the title of the song and the theme of the entire drama.

Here too, an overlay technique begins, adding to the constantly flashing barrage of images, often a propaganda gimmick in other applications. Propaganda, remember, was originally mostly a "positive" tactic until Leni Riefenstahl permanently enshrined it for reptilian conservatives everywhere - in her case, Nazis - though it can still be positively used when reinforcing resistance against decadence. That's when the third protest sign comes out- "Somebody give Bush a Blowjob so We can IMPEACH Him!!" Off-mike, Tate's exhorting the crowd and flipping the finger; the message is obvious. He angrily flings the banner aside, wailingly lamenting "I used to trust the media to tell me the truth/But now I've seen payoffs everywhere I look/Who do ya trust when everyone's a crook?!?!," then back into the refrain.

Fist in the air, singing with the passion of furious indignation, cameras swirling, and images crashing into one another, the thesis statement is set, the tone established, and the narrative ready to unfold. It's only the second song and the crowd's on its feet.

The atmosphere of doom and command native to metal commences with the following cut, the title tune, "Operation Mindcrime," bringing out Christian Sorenson (Nikki) and Pamela Moore (Sister Mary) to begin the sadomasochistic dance that comprises the whole of the commentary in each track, the corrupt and bilious Aztec two-step informing every thought and act of the political realm in America's 20th/21st century. Nikki's wasted, bedraggled, while Sister Mary, a nun of peculiar origins (but nuns are Catholic, female abettors of the pederastic Church, soooo...), who sets to shooting a little horse - and I don't mean "pulling off rounds at a show pony" - while her companion receives phoned-in instructions from his controllers. Immediately setting a contrast, Tate grabs Nikki and ridicules his conformist rebellion.

The anterior film displays the assassin in a flashback session with his demoniacal handler, a sequence many fans take as a game of Russian roulette. It isn't. Rather, it's an illustration of the mind control spelt out in the opera, with the young pawn dazedly pulling the trigger of a gun he's set to his temple, firing off a blank. Oh, the joys and, oh, the camaraderie! The Master's just having his fun at his flunky's expense, not-so-silently bragging of his power over those under his thumb.

MARX AND THE UBERCORP SWINE

As with LIVEcrime, Tate puts on a masterful display, with not a move wasted, every motion underscoring the lyrics and urgency of the music, a consummate display of the actor in the singer. The song ramps down and Nikki stalks the stage, interluding on a megaphone, yelling at the crowd "Are you just going to sit back while your country gets fucked by a bunch of corporate pigs?" skating the line between real-life incitory provocation and story-line impersonality. The onlookers don't miss the duality and respond.

Next up is the encouragement to crawl out of the governo-media shell we've been shoved into. "Speak the Word" stirs up the shit with its lesson: educate one another. Nikki remarks "I'm bent on submission, religion is to blame." The core of Queensrÿche's revolt is laid out: "Seven years of power, the corporation claw/The rich control the government, the media, the law/To make some kind of difference, then everyone must know/Eradicate the fascists, revolution will grow."

This becomes an ultimate statement in class war, the rest of the song leading us straight into the fact that it's up to the middle class to finally take its place in the sun. The name "Marx" is mentioned at no point, but it's a Marxist paean, have no doubt. Tate yells at the crowd: "You know what the hell I'm talking about," brandishing his fist once more, accompanied by the "Educate the masses!" repeat, Marx's cardinal point, and the plea to "Speak to Me!," denouemented by the reality that "The word is all of us."

The guitar duo of The Two Mikes, Wilton and Stone, churns endlessly, providing the sense of tumult and raw energy in such a clime. Sister Mary strips down to a version of Dave Sheridan's Leather Nun, looking like a nastier version of progrock's Lois Lane, joining Tate for "Spreading the Disease," a metaphorical take on what "everybody needs, but no one wants to see": sex. It's a very distant swipe at a couple of things. The first is the priggery of the moment's faux-liberal journalists (AlterNet et al) and their jihads against enlightened attitudes via cloaked "feminism" and "political correctness." The second is much deeper and arguable: the bio-engineering of AIDS as proponentized by one of the world's leading retrovirologists, Peter Duesberg, now broken by BushCo and cronies. No reference whatsoever is made directly to any of this, the band's relying on the erudition of the audience to pick it up.

It may be expecting a bit much in that, but this also brings the fight back to attendant scions of the the middle class. The cut scorns the practice of the Uppa Crust: "[m]anipulat[ing] the people for the money they pay, selling skin, selling God/The numbers look the same on their credit cards," simultaneously gilded by the fact that "while the banks get fat and the poor stay poor... the rich get rich, and the cops get paid to look the other way," tools to "the one percent [that] rules America."

Where has that been spelled out in modern rock? Very few places and nowhere as deeply as here. An eerie guitar slow-burn sets Tate up to shift earlier lyrics "Politicians say: 'Don't do drugs!'/I guess they want us all around to fight their fucking wars," now bringing up a double bird-flip. The prose makes an interesting point: is a main sell of the idiotic Drug War, besides all the other proliferant bullshit, precisely that? A matter of preserving the sheep for a more profitable death, fighting for assets to be seized by the American business class in a distant land? Hmmmm.

THE CHRISTERS, DEAD LOVE, AND THE DENOUEMENT

Another braindead Christian wells up, this time a televangelist pumping the herd for lucre, another Swaggert/Mahoney/Bakker/Falwell/Robertson/Graham monster drooling out syrupy pleas for the gelt that assuages the guilt the Bible implanted long before the age of reason was reached by any of the supplicants. It becomes increasingly evident that, throughout Mindcrime, every inch of society is just a garden of commodities for the rich and powerful. In a culture worshiping money above all else, how could it be otherwise? By the time "The Mission" arrives, it's clear the degraded condition of Nikki and Sister Mary is attributable to the fact that no accident of birth placed them among the elite and, therefore, they must fight to survive while surfeit is visited upon the children of fortune elsewhere.

Events hurtle to a climax, and "The Needle Lies" makes drug addiction the ne plus ultra paradigm for the government. The subjects are interchangeable: "Don't ever trust, don't ever trust the needle/It lies." Nikki kills a priest and is ordered to snuff Mary as well. He needn't, as she's soon telephonically commanded to blow her own brains out by programmings set deeply in her mind. "Breaking the Silence," a confession of enamorment from Nikki to Mary preludes the true heart of the entire play. "I Don't Believe in Love" represents the completely broken individual no longer able to trust anything: "I don't believe in love/I never have, I never will/I don't believe in love/It's never worth the price you pay." This is precisely the goal of the present regime: to achieve what Orwell wrote of in his dystopian classics, 1984 and Animal Farm. Director Michael Radford had already illustrated this in his second film adaptation of 1984 (the first, an almost completely unknown version, came decades earlier and starred David Niven in John Hurt's place as Winston Smith). The Ministry of Love, Orwell's savage euphemistic metaphor reflecting the realized tangible manifestation of governmental Rhetoric, is a place of putrescence manned by the ambulatory dead in a land of ceaseless depredation, backstabbing, incoherence, hidden danger, and stultifying insanity.

In contrast, love is a matter of waking up to the true nature of the world, something few wish to engage the labor of. Better to narcotize and run, hide. This is Nikki's confession. Near the end of "Suite Sister Mary," Tate, as Nikki, bewildered by the world and its stark nature, looks like Richard Burton in Faust, finally realizing the hopelessness of what he's chosen, stumbling upon the horror of understanding that even one's postures of defiance and independence can be just another game set up by The Masters.

From there, the remainder is a classical falling action back to "normalcy," the dreary soul-killing state wherein "all... dreams are crimes" and citizens can only "lie awake and sweat, afraid to fall sleep," where there are only "straight-jacket memories, sedative highs, no happy ending," and where we can only approach the mirror and "stare into the eyes of a stranger, afraid."

THE LAND OF THE... FREE???

This is the land we've come to inhabit, fellow citizens, a milieu created by a succession of creatures inhabiting the White House since George Bush II's prototype simulacrum, the idiot-savant Ronald Reagan. We've been thieved of all that was wrought for us in history, pilfered by each corporate toady since President Raygunz, including the reprehensible Bill Clinton and his treasonous GATT, NAFTA, FCC deregulation, pre-emptive wars, and God only knows what else in a never-ending the catalog. Clinton, posing as a "liberal," was exactly what was being inferred in Queensrÿche's "who can you trust when everyone's a crook" conservative Hell, lamenting the erasure of the lines that used to exist between political spheres. Corporations are dictatorships and have no use for politics, save as a price of business until such things can be expunged. There have been no real liberals since FDR, business has seen to that, and Operation Mindcrime points the listener to understand the hard cold fact. We didn't arrive we are in just a decade. The corporate future has been incubating for a long long time.

All of that is just the first discof the Moore set, re-chronicling '88's primary step. The story continues on the second, reviving 06's sequel and... I'll leave that to you to discover, perhaps come back to iterate it in a later issue of PSF, but probably not.

In sum, though, Mindcrime at the Moore revives what Queensr˙che attempted over a decade and a half earlier, a venture to pump nakedly informed rebellion back into a rock and roll environment which had grown far too comfortable with the business purgatory it once scorned and eschewn. It illustrates the endpoint of willful ignorance and foolishness, a bellwether against subtle and overt advents too creepingly miasmal in our newly fascist state, the reign of King George II, the idiot child of fortune, the drunkard, cokehead, AWOL, dipshit, dumbbell, megalomaniac, monkey-faced Christian lunatic steering a once-great country to bankruptcy, aggression, and annihilation, a Novo Rome perhaps writ larger than any other spectacular demise in history, imploding after only 200 years of existence, most of which was mere tale-dressing for an incredibly short span of unutterable corruption wherein the ultra-rich have gone collectively insane, forging an alliance putting Mussolini to shame.

If this DVD doesn't set your blood pounding, your mind racing, and your emotions boiling, then you're already dead and might as well just flit on over to the goddamned RepubloNeoCon tent today, the sooner the better, because you're certainly not needed in the fight. In fact, like Nugent, Daniels, and all the too many fascism-abettors, you can probably be counted upon to throw in with predators. Atop, within, and underneath it all, that's what Queensrÿche is saying. But, as far as the music goes, if LIVEcrime was 100%, Live at the Moore is 95% as powerful, and both are missed at your sonic and political peril.

On the other hand, maybe we should all just be good little boys and girls and drink the Kool-Aid, setting aside the hassle involved in creating the next ideological step in our evolution?

Ya think?

Hey Ted, Charlie, wait up!