I haven’t seen any news of any kind, online or on TV since Friday, and I haven’t missed anything. I may have missed things, but it hasn’t affected me one way or the other. Since at least 90% of it is lies, it’s a pointless exercise. As I said on Friday, it’s not even funny anymore. The media is poison, it’s psychological warfare. It’s domestic terrorism, even. When I hear people say things that are completely out of character with their idea of themselves as being decent rational human beings, I know how they got there. They’re blissfully unaware of it though. It’s disturbing, but at least I know what the problem is. I can’t really change it however, because the programming is decades in the making. The programming is part of people’s DNA at this point. I don’t want to participate in the psyop any more, even as an observer of the circus. Since I stopped looking at shit online, I have a lot more time to do things. It’s quite incredible. You should try it. It’s like fasting, instead you’re not consuming mind slop that’s corrosive.
Speedy Keen (far right) could be Townsend’s brother with that hooter.
Enough of that. I was listening to a song yesterday which was the number one song for three weeks in the UK in 1969. It’s basically a Pete Townsend production. He produced it, arranged it, and played bass under the pseudonym Bijou Drains. It was written by Speedy Keen who played drums and sang on the song. Keen shared a flat with Townsend and was his driver. There isn’t much information about the reason or the meaning of the song. The lyrics are fairly self explanatory. Keen said he didn’t take it very seriously. “It was a reflection of what I was seeing at the time,” he told ZigZag in 1975. “I wrote it about two months before we recorded it and we put it out as a joke.” Several artists have recorded their versions. There were at least 28 different cover versions as of 2021.
I listened to two of them. The first by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers attacks the song with a sledge hammer. The drums are far too loud and the whole thing blusters its way to an unhappy conclusion. They didn’t seem to know what to do about the barrel house piano section in the middle, so it’s just skimmed over fairly inelegantly. The third verse goes,
“Hand out the arms and ammo
We’re gonna blast our way through here
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here
And you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now”
In 1993, perhaps that kind of call to arms wasn’t cool for Hollywood liberals, but it’s doing the song a disservice to leave it out in my opinion. It’s a “meh” reworking as far as I’m concerned. Petty should have left it alone. The other one I heard was from 1973, by a group called LaBelle. They started out as Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, which later just became LaBelle. LaBelle’s version is called “Something in the Air/The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Personally I would rather this track had never been recorded. It’s a funk interpretation of the song which just about destroys any connection musically to the original whatsoever. The original version opens up like a beautiful vista. It’s like reaching the crest of a hill and seeing a beautiful valley below. It is played on guitar in an open “E” tuning which gives it an effortless feel. It feels like a song about promise and hope.
The LaBelle version ignores any and all of that, skipping over everything with just one verse ( I think, I have no desire to hear it again to check) which quickly degenerates into a racial politics rant and an half-assed attempt to turn the song into some kind of Black power anthem. Essentially spewing anti-white rhetoric until the end, it’s an abomination and vandalism in my opinion. It’s the musical equivalent of a flash mob robbing a clothing store. I hope the song writer earned money from it, but it’s largely ill-gotten gains I would say.
Speedy Keen died of heart failure in March 2002, but the song will go on. It might be time for a resurrection. This “throwaway” song that wasn’t really taken seriously by its author, has even more relevance today than when it was written I think. If the generation who made it number one ever needed some inspiration to try and halt the death march that the west seems to be on, this would be the perfect vehicle to inspire them 54 years later. It’s going to have to be sooner rather than later though. I’m not overly filled with confidence of anything remotely like that happening.
Here are the full lyrics.
[Verse 1]
Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here
And you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 2]
Lock up the streets and houses
Because there’s something in the air
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here,
And you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
[Instrumental Bridge]
[Verse 3]
Hand out the arms and ammo
We’re gonna blast our way through here
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here
And you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now