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Monday, December 11, 2006

The Rock Revolution Continues

The Right Brothers have just released their fourth album, “No Apologies,” and since the fellas—who were nice enough to send me a copy of the new album—are blogosphere mainstays, I thought I’d jot a few things down about the new songs and offer a few samples from the album, which is an excellent piece of work.

The Right Brothers are Frank Highland and Aaron Sain, two friends and, when not polemicizing, professional record producers and songwriters in Nashville, Tennessee. (For a long while most professional music recording in America was done in Nashville. New York and California, along with Dallas, are host to many of the studios nowdays, but Nashville remains the recording capital—and not just for country music.) Since they were already expert at the art of composing, recording, and then digitally editing music, The Right Brothers had an impeccably professional sound from the beginning.

The Right Brothers had released two excellent albums with a country flare before a rock and roll music video launched them. The video was “Bush Was Right,” a two and a half minute video that soared across the Internet in the spring of 2005, when the War on Terror, particularly the Iraq theater, sparked pro-liberty revolutions in a handful of eastern nations. Much of that progress remains, and some has been stemmed by Islamists. But the song, perhaps the most politically-informed rock tune ever, did remain. And The Right Brothers received all manner of guff in their inboxes from angry liberals amazed that a rock band might dissent from the mainstream. (If you’d not noticed, virtually all ‘rebellious,’ ‘dissenting,’ ‘revolutionary’ rock and roll music is lockstep leftist.)

On the new album, Frank and Aaron dedicate an entire song, “What About The Issues,” to the strident ad hominem nature of these critiques from the Left. The two have every right to pose that question. There is no deficit of political music that engages in parody and name-calling, but very little of it even attempts to turn actual political argumentation into lyrics and music. The Right Brothers have done that time and time again. Consider “Trickle Down,” from their second album:

If the rich man didn’t spend his cash on cars and boats and planes/ there’d be a lot of average joes out of work today/ his money helps america’s economy to thrive/ the rich man keeps the working man working and alive

Can any leftist rocker successfully explain Marx? And if one did, would people actually buy into it?

Another song, “Shut Up and Teach,” is just a brilliantly enjoyable piece of music. It takes as its topic the Ward Churchill set—university professors short on intelligence and long on intellect, who profess views and conspiracy theories rather than lessons and facts. (Grace be that Dartmouth does not really have any of this sort, but the Churchill affair demonstrates that the problem is real.) The album also contains the obligatory global warming tract; this one called “Global Whining.” And just for the joy of it, “The List” is a song consisting entirely of the calling out of annoying liberals.

There is no question The Right Brothers fill a void. No one expects rock and roll to double as an op-ed page, but as far as musical political commentary goes, Aaron and Frank provide some of the best. And they’re conservative, which means they are truly rebellious.

AUDIO CLIPS:

Shut Up and Teach

The List

Stop Global Whining

What About The Issues?

Posted on December 11, 2006 01:23 PM. Permalink | E-mail This