riot folk
i stumbled into quite an amazing time tonight. it started out with a bus ride
The Bus Ride:
i ride the bus sometimes because the bus system is pretty decent here in lansing. but i usually dont have the patience to wait for the bus i need to get onto, so i just hop on any old bus and take as close to my destination as possible, but then i usually miss that closest point so i ride the entire route back to the point i missed. this usually turns a 5 minute ride into a 34 minute extravaganza. but today i got on the number 1 bus and rode it downtown. i was on my way to magdalenas tea house for a show a couple kids on the street told me about. forgetting what street i had to get off at, i hopped off when i felt close and walked until i saw it. around a four block walk.
The Talk:
i walk into the doors and they ask for a donation so i give them the dollar i was going to use to ride the bus back to my dorm (about a 40-50 minute walk). i go sit down and they talk. the talkers are part of the uprise tour. they are on a 20 city journey talking about Counter Recruitment. they talked for a couple hours and showed some video clips from "SIR, NO SIR" a documentary about soldiers of vietnam opposing the vietnam war, and just from the clips they showed, it looks very good. they told stories about iraq (one member of the group was a soldier for the past 4 years) and they told a lot of "what is really going on" and they spoke about globalization and how all the money made from oil in iraq is just put in the hands of american companies. and how EVERYthing is privatized there. they made many parallels with the vietnam war, mostly having to do with activism. and they brought up many things that i never even thought of. the biggest being that in order to effectively stop the war, we cant protest by ourselves, we need to befriend iraq veterans and soldiers themselves. the anti war activist cant be anti soldier. they have to work together. they also touched on some numbers about the number of awols from the iraq war and the number of people just refusing to fight(they were surprisingly high). with out soldiers there is no war.
and on a side note: on my way to the show, i lost what i little faith i had in the democrats.
Then the Music:
Ryan Harvey: this guy is one of the organizers of tour and also a folk singer. and a pretty fucking good one too. super politically charged folk. with an energy and amazingness and passion unlike anyother i have seen.
and then The Boxcutters: they were supposed to play first but they forgot shit and had to run home. and then they played an "i wanna be against me, but i also only want to sing and masturbating and our drummers huge penis, but dont fuck with us because we are fucking punk rock" set. filled with johnny cash, against me, and shitty originals about nothing at all
The Begging:
i went outside to go back to my dorm i wanted to take the bus but i had no change. so i asked. and the friendly people gave me a dollar and forty cents. (that means i made forty cents today!!) then i walked to the bus stop, only to realize that the bus wasnt running anymore. I almost got hit by a delivery man. i got a little over half way back when i realized i needed to practice.
The Music Building:
i went in and played my bass until about 12:45. and then some one stormed in and yelled at me because i was supposed to be out of the building at 12. so i walked back to my room.