The Bopst Show - Episode 24

by Chris Bopst

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• The Bopst Show — Episode 24

Everything that I feel about the world is based on my love of music. While other people look to religion for spiritual or moral guidance, I turn to my record collection. And it’s there that I always find the face of God.

I have no doubt that this might sound a little silly to some people. Music is merely an entertainment option to them, a means to enable a good time and nothing else. To me, that thinking belittles the redemptive power of sound. While I certainly enjoy musical a compliment in the shallow end of the pool, I seek out music the most for guidance in the deep end of life’s headier realms. And it works both ways. Sometimes AC/DC is the perfect antidote to cure existential angst; sometimes it’s Stravinsky or maybe Lee Perry. I’ve found that cranking MDC’s, “Millions of Dead Cops” cures a Sarah Palin-induced rage and that Nina Simone’s cover of the Ike & Tina Turner classic, “Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter” is the perfect theme song for John McCain. If I’m feeling down in the dumps, the soothing sounds of Perrey & Kingsley or the Beau Hunks always brings me back to the good life. Of all the creative expressions, music is the most malleable and immediate in its ability to affect either the individual or a group’s mood. It has the ability to convey true emotional impact though the arrangement of notes.

And at it’s best, music can affect social and political change.

Take Duke Ellington for example. Born in Washington, DC in 1899, the prospects of a black musician of that era playing to anyone of lighter skin pigmentation were dim. America was still segregated and divided along racial lines. Duke helped to change that. When people heard his music, the color of his skin did not matter. All that was important was his music. Ellington’s challenge to musical categories not only subverted aesthetic hierarchies, but they also challenged racial stereotypes. His innovative use of African melodic and rhythmic sensibilities in his 1920’s big bands (heard in this podcast) was revolutionary in a time when membership in the Ku Klux Klan numbered in the millions. Although it would be decades until the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Johnson, it was the music of Duke Ellington (and fellow musician Louis Armstrong) that helped plant the seeds of racial equality in America’s eardrums.

The rest of the songs on this show are much more literal in their intent. As a 42-year-old balding married man raising a daughter, everything I like musically to this day has to first pass my punk rock test. I learned in my life that you can actually trust people who can’t sing, “Wasted” by Black Flag on command, but the ability to do so does carry a significant weight when I am accessing a person’s
character. Especially when I meet someone around my age - if they don’t know anything about punk rock, I don’t think (at least initially) that person is trustworthy. Like people with tattoos or people who state a love of the Grateful Dead, I place these human beings in the idiot section of humanity until they prove otherwise. Is it right of me to judge people this way? Probably not, but it works for me.

My favorite band of that era is the Minutemen. To me, they symbolized the best in music. They were daring, unconventional, fiercely political, and most importantly, they rocked. Along with ZZ Top & The
James Gang, I consider the Minutemen to be one of the greatest American three pieces of all time (and I would argue that the Minutemen are better than those two groups). They proved to me (like the Clash) that punk rock wasn’t a hair style. It was an attitude. If you haven’t heard their 1984 SST release, “Double Nickels on the Dime”, you are missing out. I don’t care what your taste in music is, that record is as good as music gets. It is American punk rock’s finest recorded hour.

Having said that, there aren’t any Minutemen songs on this podcast. I’ve included tunes from their contemporaries the Circle Jerks and D.O.A to accentuate this week’s theme of financial ruin. Both of these bands played vital roles in building the American underground of the 1980’s that Nirvana would later ride to the top of the Billboard charts. Also from this era, I’ve included a tune from one of the most overlooked bands in the history of Virginian music, 9353. What a great band they were. As hardcore was dying in late 1983, 9353 mixed elements of New Wave (Bruce Merkle is a dead ringer for Wall of Voodoo singer Stan Ridgeway), Frank Zappa and a sense of the absurd (comparable to the late, great DC legend, Root Boy Slim), and created a genre of music that was distinctly their own. I saw them one time at DC Space, and they played nothing but pitch perfect renditions of Beach Boy classics in drag. I saw them dozens of times during their hey day and not once did I see them do a boring show. Sadly, their two seminal early releases (1983’s, “To Whom It May Consume” and 1986’s, “We Are Absolutely Sure There Is No God”) are virtually impossible to find. Between the eras of Minor Threat and Fugazi, 9353 were the most important band to come out of the nation’s capitol.

If you grew up in or around DC in the early 80’s, you heard a lot of Go-Go music. I fell in love with it thanks in part to the punk funk throw downs they used to have at the time. My favorite Go-Go band was Trouble Funk, but a close second was the godfather of the movement, Mr. Chuck Brown. His shows would go on for hours. I remember calling my mom at 3 in the morning after a Chuck Brown show and she went into hysterics thinking her 16-year old son was dead in the big bad city. She proceeded to read me the riot act after I got home. “Why are you so sweaty?” she asked as I sat there in clothes that looked like I had just came out of a pool, “Are you doing drugs or something?” I wasn’t on drugs. I was totally drained (gleefully drained that is) because I had spent the last 3 and a half hours dancing. Because of Go-Go music, this wasn’t the last time my mother would be screaming at me at some late night hour. I didn’t care though. Those shows were amazing.

From these experiences (coupled with the fact I was raised on a steady diet of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and various other 60’s and 70’s rock and rollers by my music loving father), I gravitated toward music that had a subversive bent. Artists and groups on this podcast such as Mose Allison, Johnny Cash, and Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul entered my music vocabulary not only because they were great musicians making great music, but because their music stood for something. It’s the unifying theme that runs through all the music I love most: the desire to push things forward. Though I am in no way a fan of organized religion, I am greatly moved by Jamaican music and early American gospel for this same reason. The Jamaican artists you will hear on this show (the rock steady sound of Larry Marshall and the roots reggae of Horace Andy) are fine representations of the deep seeded musical humanity that Bob Marley would come to represent to the rest of the listening world. From 1960 to 1980, that island made music that never fails to give me goose bumps. The amount of music created during those two decades is astounding. What’s even more astounding is that a good percentage of it is worthy of hearing. As great as Marley was, it should be remembered that he was but one of the many essential Jamaican musicians that played during that time, and you are doing yourself a great disservice if your reggae collection begins and ends with only the island’s most famous and beloved musical icon. Marley, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Music has shaped the way I view politics. On my old radio show and on these podcasts I’m doing here, it isn’t too hard to figure out where what my political, social, and moral viewpoints are. The Bopst Show is a liberal presentation of music. The power of the music I love compelled me to rant at length on the radio about the evils of Bush Administration, and many people would call and complain that I sounded like Rush Limbaugh or that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I should stick to playing music.

My answer is always the same. Not only am I right to bash the Bush Administration, trickle down economics and preemptive wars, but I play better tunes than Rush.

I rest my case.

The set list for this week’s show is posted on my MySpace page.
Previous show set lists are on my blog.

The Bopst Show Request Line: 804.767.2550

Until Next Time:

Stay Clean,
BOPST

Previous Episodes

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 22, 23