Tag: Jtmp

JTMP attended the first day of #OccupyDC at Freedom Plaza on Oct 6, 2011 where several bands and musicians took to the stage and used their music to speak about the Occupy movement, Wall Street greed, and their want for the government to spend less on war and more on people; including infrastructure jobs, college loans, and other investments into our future.

We will have videos coming out of the many bands that played on stage, for now here is some banjo activist music from a troubadour we found wandering Freedom Plaza as the march to the US Chamber of Commerce was commencing. Banjer Dan Mazer:

JUNKYARD EMPIRE

One of the most politically in your face activist bands today, Junkyard Empire rocked the Empire at Freedom Plaza.

Hank Williams was on Fox and Friends and said Obama playing golf with Boehner is like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu. Watch the clip below from Media Matters.

UPDATE: ESPN dropped the Hank Williams Jr. Monday Night Football opening segment from tonight's broadcast saying in a statement, "While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize he is closely linked to our company through the opening to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result have decided to pull the open from tonight's telecast." Read more here.

Toby Keith and troops - Credit: photonichelle on Flickr

Country artist Toby Keith, who has been politically vocal in the past, mostly conservative, has taken a position when it  comes to the DADT repeal and sexual orientation as none of the government's business, and he thinks they should stop wasting time and money on the issue. In a CMT Insider interview he says, "we're going to stop somebody from getting a marriage license because they're gay? You won't stop them from living together, so what have you accomplished? ... Wasting a lot of money here and a lot of time that could be spent working on this deficit that we're under ... I never saw the reasoning behind getting in people's personal lives. ... Somebody's sexual preference is like, 'Who cares?'"

Read the CMT Insider interview here, and the full interview is on CMT.

Tom Morello, aka the Nightwatchman, has been very active and vocal in the music activist field recently, and spoke at length about music, activism and politics in a new In These Times interview. 

In These Times: How does music tackle politically charged subjects?

Tom: “There has never been a successful wide-scale social justice movement in this country without a musical soundtrack, whether it’s the working class struggle, the civil rights struggle, the peace struggle. Music and culture have always been a critical component in both voicing and amplifying struggles for social justice.

I was transformed and encouraged by the music from groups like The Clash and Public Enemy, who made me feel less alone in my worldview as well as created compelling art. And that made it seem like change was possible and that change could sound kick ass at the same time.

more....