Shove It: The Dwarf's "Middle Finger Mixtape"
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.
Oscar Wilde
Fear not, reader, the title does not refer to you. Well, not all of you. The title of this article refers to the following list of songs, songs I feel best reiterate the sentiment. A kind of aural middle finger. So, here, is The Dwarf’s "Middle Finger Mix Tape", if you will. Songs that simply say "fuck you" to whoever: teachers, parents, police, God, in no particular order.
1. "Sorry"- Butterfingers. An ode to love if there ever was one. And by love, I mean, the ‘hit-and-run’ kind that many of us enjoy ever-so. Although right now the Puritans and prudes are furrowing their brows and curling their lips with disapproval, casual sex is probably the number one pastime of this day and age. I mean, it's relatively cheap, fun and improves your skin. Eddie Jacobson of Butterfingers makes no excuses for bluntness (misconceived as malice to those he scorned) and says what you all want to say to that annoying one- nighter that keeps calling: "Sorry, just trying to be honest with you, you call me motherfucker 'till I get the picture".
2. "Hush"- Tool. Considering how many artists must want to say this, I suppose Maynard James Keenan is one of the few audacious enough to do so. A chant- like barrage is hurled at those constantly and very indiscreetly censoring art today. True, we can get away with saying and doing so much more than our 1850's counterparts, but I'd like to think much has changed since then. Keenan cries, "I can't say what I want to, even if I'm not serious, I can't say what I want to, even if I'm just kidding" and you can almost picture him being the kind of ruffian they'd lock up in the 1800s for slander and public indecency. A Marquis De Sade type of character. There needs to be more bands with this mentality, who won't censor and chop-and-change themselves, and their work, for the sake of the almighty dollar. And when you think about it, Tool are making loads of that! So you may as well tell people to "Fuck yourself, Kill yourself, You piece of shit, Why don't you just go kill yourself?...Just kidding"
3. "Prisoner of Society"- The Living End. The Living End were the golden boys of Australian rock music back when Esky magazine was still in circulation. Remember that? Setting my own personal bitterness at the 'End's transformation from rough punks to suited up flower boys aside, this track, nay, anthem has kicked in the balls everyone who has heard it. From the kids who worship The Clash and want AN-AR-CHY, to the parents of the kids who worship The Clash and want AN-AR-CHY. It's a fairly adolescent sentiment ("we don't need no one to tell us what to do, yes, were our own and there's nothing you can, well, we don't need no one like YOU, to tell us WHAT TO DO!") one that develops less and less realism the closer you move towards your townhouse in the 'burbs and 9 to 5 desk job, but at 16 it fills you with so much damn hope and anger and confidence and spirit you can't help but turn a table over or set something on fire. The good old days.
4. "I Fought the Law"- Various Artists (Personal Dwarf Favourites: Bobby Fuller Four and The Clash). Having been covered by more people than Paris Hilton (Zing! she shoots, she scores!), this song may seem unfitting. "Lisa, you silly goat, isn't the chorus of that song "I fought the law, and the law won?” How is this rebellious or uplifting in the least? Tell me now lest you receive a glove slap!” Obviously, rebellion and anarchy don't always go right side up. Sometimes they, well, die in the arse. But just the notion that there are individuals in the midst willing to try, and be remembered for trying, is reason enough to be inspired. There are so many cheesy catchphrases for trying after failure; I just think this one does the trick with a little more chutzpah. Interesting side note: while most people know the original, and most popular version of this song, how many of you have heard the Dead Kennedys’ cover in which the chorus is changed to "I fought the law and I won"?. Think about it.
5. "Another Brick in the Wall"- Pink Floyd. You all know this one. If you haven't heard Roger Waters robotically telling you that "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control", then you pretty well haven't lived. This track is a classic uprising anthem, the kind that leads to the dominant authority being quashed very theatrically and the imprisoned souls beginning their lives anew, their minds having been freed. This is, to me, the matured "Prisoner of Society" (put it this way, if POS was Diet Coke ...Brick would be Chivas Reagal ). If you have no idea what I'm saying, you're probably one of the few people that don't own "The Wall", so I'm gonna quit this segment until you go buy it. Go.
6. "The Unknown Soldier"- The Doors. Having lived their lives in the thick of war and dissidence, The Doors were one of the many bands that spoke out. Not in the gawd-awful pretentious Bono way, but slightly more subtly told their fans what horrors and tricks their government (among others) were playing on them. They didn't have stickers, they didn't have plastic wristbands with easy-to-spell catchphrases on them, and they certainly didn't have multi-billion dollar concerts where the rich and luxurious waggled their fingers at the middle class and told them not to be rich and luxurious. Look, Bono and Co, cats are pampered and comfortable compared to the starving black kids you tout about, so I don't know how your going to justify your cupboard filled to the brim with expensive sunglasses and those hideously ostentatious leather jackets. But I digress. Here, The Doors make a (somewhat formidable for the time) comment on war, and the anonymity that ensues of men willing to die for their country.
7. "Fairytale of New York"- The Pogues. I know it's almost par for the course for most people under 30 to at least dread, if not detest, Christmas. Well, here's the perfect Christmas Carol for you! An ode to that twinkly, sprinkly time of year that anyone with enough money to make people like them, loves. Sick of giving presents to people you hardly know and/or don't give a rat's about? Well, The Pogues have set you up with a hearty dose of Anti-Xmas cheer to keep you scowling ‘till New Years. A taste of their festive rhyme: "You're a bum, You're a punk, You’re an old slut on junk, Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed. You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot, Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last". Boy, Santa, do the Pogues have your number.
8. "Caught in the Act"- Redgum. Redgum are probably the most ocker Aussie band you will find. Thus, their songs and attitudes encompass a die-hard Aussie spirit. One of those being that Australians don't take kindly to shit-eating, brown-nosing, white-wine-and-salad, uninformed-opinion-touting douche bags who worship Steve Price, and anyone else who denounces fun on talkback radio and the like. This track is basically a how-to guide to figuratively fuck the corporations who make everyday pleasures so difficult, the kind of Big Businesses that tax our dreams (Poetic, or what?). They sing "Don't be naive, you're stealing from thieves" while detailing a plan to, among other things, screw the credit card companies and travel around our awesome country at ANZ's detriment, and every Shazz and Bazz in the room yells fuck yeah and feels like setting down the TV Guide and Carlton Draught and tackling the world.
9. "You Oughta Know"- Alanis Morissette. I'm not bias, but I'm pretty sure when Alanis released "Jagged Little Pill" in 1995, she made lesbians out of many mid-90s women. They laid on their bed in their ripped jeans, fingerless gloves and short-jackets with shoulder pads like bricks. They'd recall their worst heartbreak when Tommy Dean left them for Sally Jane at the homecoming dance, while belting out "Well, I'm heeeeeeeeere to remind youuuu, of the mess you left when you went away, it’s not faiiiiir to deny me of the cross I bear since you went away, you, you, you oughta knooooooow!” They'd attest that all men were the same, and they'd undoubtedly spend the money they would have spent on a new dress for the prom on books by Germaine Greer and some Indigo Girls records. That's just how powerful this song is. Alanis could go from fine to ferocious; from tender-hearted to tyrannical in less than time it'd take for you read the linear notes. For those that felt that anger, and could identify with the pain beneath it, YOK shoots you right in the gut, and it feels so damn good.
10. "Make Yourself"- Incubus. "If you let them fuck you, there will be no foreplay. Rest assured, they'll screw you complete 'till your ass is blue and grey". Incubus are responsible for not only one of my favourite ever set of lyrics in a song, but a commanding tirade of authoritarian control. The song gives me, personally, the image of a production line, stacked high with malleable mannequins ready to be fitted with "personality" and "features". Like Furbies. I'm sure Incubus have nothing against Furbies, I mean, I do, those annoying little shits....my point being, it's not hard for weaker members of the hive to collapse into the ebb-and-flow of obedience. We like to think we have almost complete control of our minds, but so much is dictated by others and outside forces, we don't even realize. That's the point I feel Incubus are poking at here; to make yourself, and not let others create you in a likeness they see fit. Or maybe they mean to sculpt a statue of yourself in your next pottery class, I don't know, I mean, Brandon Boyd was on enough drugs to stunt a bull only 2 years before. Your call, audience.
11. "Hooker With A Penis"- Tool. Yes, Tool again, what can I say, these crazy cats speak to me. Here, Tool address the notion of the hypocrisy in this day and age, how a person standing in The Latest Everythingcan call you a tired scenester, or when your mum informs you of the evils of alcohol abuse and how you will get raped if you get drunk in public tonight, right after her third or fourth or eighth glass of wine. It’s that ungodly notion of the pretentious and desperate to appear “in the know”, all those people who use sentences like “I knew this band before they were famous…” and “I stopped liking them after they went commercial”. We've all met people like this. Sanctimonious and ignorant, they think they are above and beyond the dregs of “consumerist society”, and with a sneer they look down on you and your Chucks and your Volcom hoodie. They say this, though, while scuffing their new Vans for a well-worn look and chatting tirelessly on MySpace and uploading NME’s Next Big Thing onto their iPod. This song addresses capitalism in its richest, gooiest form; "All you know about me is what I've sold you, dumbfuck, I sold out long before you ever even heard my name". Purists believe all a band must do to "sell out" is to become popular...if you ever get this tired tirade, ask them: If they didn't "sell out", as you so derisively put it, how would you have ever even heard of them?. Tool are one of the few bands making music for the sheer effect they know they have on their true fans. For the fight, hopefully for the win, but the fight nonetheless. . Sure, the money’s probably good, but one can easily sniff out an artistic imposter from a mile away. When I hear this song, I think of the many, many stupid people out there, and I get a nice ego stroke knowing I'm not one. The Skyhooks said 'Ego is not a dirty word', and I love the Skyhooks.
