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Amidst wall-to-wall, almost 24-hour coverage of September 11, it feels odd to be asking for more comment and further discussion on what can only be called one of the most over-discussed events in history.
Entire forests have been cut down for this week’s special anniversary supplements and commemorative issues, most of which are dealing with the same facts, the same emotions and the same rally-round-the-flag sentiments.
Politicians, pundits, religious leaders and civil servants have all had their say. Conspicuously absent from this mix have been artists, in particular musicians.
Considering how much time we spend listening to music, it’s remarkable that more of those providing the soundtracks to our lives haven’t weighed in on the event beyond the now customary liner-note dedication to “the victims of 9/11.”
The obvious exception is Bruce Springsteen, whose The Rising disc has become the unofficial theme music for this week’s events. It’s a fitting choice, and, if you can get past the Clarence Clemons moments, a good listen, too.
The other comment of note is Steve Earle’s John Walker’s Blues, his bold, baiting repositioning of the American Taliban fighter as just another crazy, mixed-up kid from the sticks who fell in with the wrong people.
Drop those two and you’re left with the emotional meat grinder that is the new country industry, able to churn out sentiment at the flick of a switch. Good intentions aside, songs like Alan Jackson’s Where Were You (in which he boasts that he doesn’t know the difference between Iran and Iraq), Toby Keith’s Courtesy Of The Red, White & Blue and Neil Young’s embarrassing Let’s Roll should have been erased before they were released.
Nowhere, beyond Earle’s feeble stab to stir things up a bit, do we hear from any of music’s usual shit-disturbers. Zach De La Rocha? Nope. Billy Bragg? Silence. Dead Prez? Zeroes. Bob freaking Dylan? I don’t think so.
None of the musicians you’d usually turn to for a critical (in the truest sense of the word) look at the situation have offered a peep. Maybe it’s overwhelming respect for the dead, the fear of a backlash or the very real fact that one year is perhaps too soon for serious reflection, but in a week of noise, their silence is deafening.
