SOUNDTRACK: NUCLEAR POWER TRIO-“A Clear and Present Rager” (2020).
Today was one of the best days America has seen in four years.
Because here’s an EP to rock your politics off.*
Nuclear Power Trio is a band made up of Vladimir Putin on bass, Kim Jong-un on drums and Donald Trump on guitar. And they totally rock. This first song from their new album is an absolutely rager, as the title says. It’s a three and a half minute instrumental that starts off with a monster riff and some really hightech fretwork from Putin on the bass. When the main “verse” comes in, Trump shows his amazing dexterity on the eight string guitar. He plays surprisingly tasteful licks in between the shredding. This is some pretty classic rocking instrumental stuff ala Joe Satriani, but with the whole band totally keyed in.
A big surprise comes a minute and 45 seconds in when an unnamed fourth member (in the video he appears as a secret service agent) plays an gentle acoustic guitar break, allowing Trump to do some gentle volume-controlled notes. This quiet section happens twice and after the second one, Putin just goes mental on the bass while Kim Jong-Un shows what impressive double bass capabilities he has.
The video for this song is rather disturbing.
But I gotta say, I’d much rather have these three nutcases in a kick ass band than in charge of any country.
[READ: September 24, 2020] The Space Merchants [an excerpt]
During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney, a gorgeous box of 12 stories. It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different). You can get a copy here. This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998. Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others. As it says on the back of the box
Their future. Our present. From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of 12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.
About this story, which was translated by Andrea L. Bell, Romney writes
the wonders of robot-controlled automation allow people to live in ease within the perfect mechanism of a programmed city–but in the end lead to ineffable discord within the mind of the protagonist.
This story was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. The story follows P. as he makes his way through his daily life in Arconia.
P. is an evaluator. But P. was distracted. Not only did he not mind having evaded his work, he felt euphoric about it. This was not normal. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 