Posted by ZeD on January 24, 2004 at 11:42:32:
I like these words. Cool.
ZeD
A Born Again Savage in Cyberspace.
~ Angela Pancella
Little Steven lives an old-fashioned idea
putting a message in the song. Those who
used to be good for some political content
in the music (Bob Dylan for example)
have gone from the political to the
personal (with his introspective Time Out
of Mind). Little Steven is still railing.
He'd be shouting into the dark, if it weren't
for the Internet. Like an increasing number
of musicians dropped by record labels
long before their creativity runs out, Little
Steven has formed his own record
company, Renegade Nation. He's hawking
his product, a new CD called Born Again
Savage, directly to his target audience on a
website, www.littlesteven.com.
Long years ago he set up his scheme for a
five-record-long song cycle, tackling, in
order, the Individual, the Family, the State,
the Economy, and Religion. With a scheme
like this he couldn't revert to personal
issues as he matured, the way so many
have. He had talked about the Individual
already, on his first album. And unlike
most performers with overtly political
stances, he could not feel he was just
retreading the same ground after awhile,
since each disc would so radically shift
focus.
But really, is what he's talking about five
separate issues or five facets of the same
problem? The answer is in the first song,
Lyin' in a Bed of Fire, on the first album of
the cycle, Men Without Women. As he
explains on the website,
"I had to start with a song that
would not only set up this album
but set up all five of the albums
to come. Every first song of
every album would lay out the
main theme of that record, but
this one had to lay out the main
theme of my life!"
Born Again Savage is the completion of
the cycle, the "Religion" CD, replete with
titles like "Saint Francis," "Lust for
Enlightenment" and "Tongues of Angels"
and lyrics like "Prophets once upon a time,
their words the law of the land/They used
to look so regal in their psychedelic
colors/There's no place for them now, in
the land of the bland" (from "Face of
God").
The music is good, straightforward rock,
well-suited to the potent mix of
spirituality, sex and politics in the lyrics.
Little Steven has been in the business
some twenty-five years, and has produced,
written songs with, or performed with
everyone from Artists United Against
Apartheid to the E Street Band (with
whom he is now touring). With his
connections he pulled together some fine
players for the new album÷his own guitars
and vocals are backed by Adam Clayton
(of U2) on bass and Jason Bonham (John
Bonham's son) on drums.
But the full Little Steven experience is not
provided in the music, raw and
in-your-face as it is. As befits one who
professes such regard for psychedelic
prophets, www.littlesteven.com is a
wildly colored haven for the spirit of
protest. If you feel the purpose of the '60s
was to change the world, not just to
encourage tuning in, turning on and
dropping out÷this is the site for you. Here
is a man who got fed up with the political,
economic and social status quo, and has
done enough homework to speak
intelligently about what all has gone
wrong.
Go and read, absolutely read, all the
essays on all the albums. Little Steven
wrote them specifically for the site. He
reports on an epiphany he had, just before
he started his solo career, when a
"German wise-ass" accused him of putting
missiles in his country. At first he tried to
distance himself from his country's foreign
policies, but then, he says, "I reluctantly
came to the conclusion that I was an
American citizen and maybe some
responsibilities went with that. So okay
I'm putting missiles in this guy's country
and I start reading books to see what else
I've been doing since World War II." But
Little Steven wasn't content with reading
damning essays about US foreign policy.
Before he wrote his songs, he went out and
met those who were affected. His
essays÷compelling reading, every
one÷talk about crossing from West to East
Germany ("It was the first time I ever
missed advertising on billboards. There
was no color."), negotiating for his life
with South African revolutionaries ("The
topic of conversation for the first hour was
whether or not they should let me live."),
and meeting Nicaraguan President Ortega's
wife ("After you spend a little time in
politics you learn where the power is and
try to get to it as quickly as possible. In
politics, as in life, the wife is usually a
good place to start.")
There is revolution just in the presentation
of this material in this format. No
journalist, no EmptyV, is acting as middle
ground between you and Little Steven. He
gets to say exactly what he thinks and you
get to listen in.
It's curse and cure on the Internet, both at
once all of these sites, that actually say
something but to find them you have to
know what you're looking for. In a society
so used to being spoonfed information turn
on the TV and news comes pouring out we
need to relearn how to dig for the truth.
The truth may be alarming, but it's worth
finding.