PEACE NOT WAR (peace-not-war.org/Fusion III) Rating: NN Rating: NN
Considering the recent global demonstrations against military action in Iraq, you might think the artists and musicians of the day would also be rising up with stirring anti-war songs. If the jumble of rants cobbled together on the two-disc Peace Not War set is any indication, the protest music movement is in big trouble. It brings together new songs as well as previously released cuts by Public Enemy, Chumbawamba and Ms. Dynamite, but the only real criterion for inclusion here is a vague sense of anti-authoritarianism. In addition to painfully earnest rants like Change’s We Want A Ceasefire and Mud Family’s Peace Not War, we get a typically meandering Ani DiFranco song, a Roots Manuva track that mentions bombs and a Coldcut remix of the Cornelius tune Atomic Moog (geddit?). Billy Bragg’s The Price Of Oil is the only song that deals with the current problem intelligently, but the most striking thing is how a 20-year-old song like Midnight Oil’s U.S. Forces hits hardest.