Equator – Boogie
If you’re looking for advice on how to make it in the music world from the people who managed to do it, prepare to be disappointed. No, not all advice is terrible. But you’ll certainly have a lot less fun once you start following it.
Read most autobiographies and business columns produced by rockstars, and they’ll tell you that, first and foremost, you must start treating your band like a business. That’s an insight for anyone trying to get rich off of music but depressing news for anyone trying to find something even greater than material wealth.
You also get the impression and desperately hope that from Jim Morrisson to a young Van Morrisson, from Howlin Wolf to Johnny Thunders, the people who did manage to find that special thing while prowling the stages of the world would feel disgusted at the idea of phoning it all in for a paycheck.
There’s only one thing that Equator really want you to know about their band – they are here to give it their all. On “Boogie”, they search for the very essence of rock music, and they’ll use every twist, turn and wiggle to get there. Equator doesn’t play songs. The musicians let the songs play them. This isn’t about music necessarily. It’s about squeezing the very last drop of life out of a tune, out of a night out and out of life itself. They don’t teach that in the Gene Simmons School of Business, but they wouldn’t want you to lose focus of the business.
Cherub Tree – MADONNA
It’s really easy to lose sight of what is really important. And, the people who know this and the way to exploit our collective weaknesses end up working either in marketing or, if they’re truly shameless, in politics. They’re the ones that can mastermind a crisis. They can make you forget about the issues of an entire community. And, worse still, they can be convinced that everything is alright when it’s not.
We desperately need protest songs more than any other type of song. And we particularly need them when things are good. It’s pointless to complain that things are terrible, partly because censorship follows these events. And it’s not that important to write any new love songs or hippie anthems. We have plenty of those. Artists should use the freedom that they have to write songs that encourage those freedoms to be long-lasting.
On the surface, Cherub Tree’s “MADONNA,” is just a modern, catchy, angry pop-punk song. But if anything really is on the right side of history, it is this kind of music. This isn’t a complaint song. It’s a tune that ought to remind us about how few rights women have had throughout history and how easy it is to do that even in the most modern countries in the world. I’d rather Cherub Tree’s righteous, pissed-off music this Christmas than have someone dressed in a Santa suit singing carrolls and selling me merch about a perfect, peaceful world.
