Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
It occurred to me the other day that a couple song lyrics on this album deserved their own post... This album was among my favorites for a while. In fact, listening to it while writing a paper had a seriously disruptive effect on my thinking. Immortal Technique played Macalester with Jean Grae once and it was pretty good. I said hi. The artwork in 'Revolutionary Volume II', featured above, was indeed pretty goddamn sweet, Secret Service-freakout worthy. The second song here implies that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, and that Bush just takes orders on his cell phone from the same guys that sabotaged Senator Wellstone.
In some ways I used to be more skeptical, but as time has passed, it just seems more and more relevant... Check out this interview, his site is over here. Looks like he'll get another album out sometime this year.
In the cocaine song I always thought the lyric was "these walls have ends," not "ears." That seemed clever, as the war on drugs is basically an ugly joke that arcs right back to the top of power. After all, any real geopolitical player would be involved with the one good that gets them the best arbitrage over geographic space. When I finally get this site over to Drupal, there's going to be a whole section on this...
In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?
In the meantime, check out 'Crack the CIA', a 9-minute video posted on the Guerrilla News Network site a while ago, is a pretty good introduction to the Barry Seal and the Iran-Contra-Cocaine nexus, Mena AK, Michael Ruppert's confrontation in a packed, angry Los Angeles community meeting with CIA director John Deutsch with stories of covert operations channeling powder into California during the 1970s and 80s. Good stuff. 9 minutes...
Immortal Technique: Revolutionary, Volume II (2003). Peruvian Cocaine: (f/ C-Rayz Walz, Diabolic, Loucipher)
[Intro: from the film "Scarface"]
Host: I've heard whispers about the financial support your government receives from the drug industry.
Guest: Well, the irony of this, of course, is that this money, which is in the billions, is coming from your country. You see, you are the major purchaser of our national product, which is of course cocaine.
Host: On one hand, you're saying the United States government is spending millions of dollars to eliminate the flow of drugs onto our streets. At the same time, we are doing business with the very same goverment that is flooding our streets with cocaine.
Guest: Mmm-hmm, si, si. Let me show you a few other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy.
[Beat starts]
*Two Men Speak in Spanish*
[Immortal Technique - Worker]
I'm on the border of Bolivia, working for pennies
Treated like a slave, the coke fields have to be ready
The spirit of my people is starving, broken and sweaty
Dreaming about revolution (REVOLUTION!) looking at my machete
But the workload is too heavy to rise up in arms
And if I ran away, I know they'd probably murder my moms
So I pray to "Heso Preisto" when I go to the mission
Process the cocaine, paced and play my position
[Pumpkinhead - Cocaine Field Boss]
Ok, listen while I'm out there, just give me my product
Before we chop off ya hands for worker's misconduct
I got the power to shoot a copper, and not get charged
And it would be sad to see your family in front of a firing squad
So to feed your kids, I need these bricks
40 tons in total, let me test it, indeed I (*sniff*)
Shit, this is good, pass me a tissue
And don't worry about them, I paid off the officials
[Diabolic - Peruvian Leader]
Yo, it don't come as a challenge, I'm the son of some of the foulest
Elected by my people...the only one on the ballot
Born and bred to consult with feds, I laugh at fate
And assassinate my predecessor to have his place
In a third-world fashion state, lock the nation
With 90% of the wealth in 10% of the population
The Central Intelligence Agency takes weight faithfully
The finest type of China white and cocaine you'll see
[Tonedeff - American Drug Distributor]
Honey I'm home, nevermind why our bank account's suddenly grown
It's funny, we're so out of this debt from this money we owe
Woulda ya...mind if I told you I had two governments overthrown
To keep our son enrolled in a private school, and to keep ya tummy swollen
C'mon, our fuckin' home was built on the foundation of bloody throats
The hungry stolen of they souls, of course this country's runnin' coke
I took a stunted oath to hush the one's who know
But CIA conducts the flow of these young hustlers who lust for dough
[Poison Pen - Drug Dealer]
I don't work in the hood (Hit my connect)
Plus what's really good, they supply for the hood
These dudes fucking crack me up, scrutinize like we inferior
Petrified when we meet in my area (calm down)
My dude's'll shoot until I say so, got the loot?
Give me the YAY YAY like Ice Cube, so don't play with my llello
We won't stop for you bastards
Must choose (?), chop it and bag it
[Loucipher - Undercover Police Officer]
Taking pictures and tapping phones
Debating snitches and cracking codes
Past a couple, blast the fo',
Want any hustler stacking dough with probably crack the blow
And my overtime is where your taxes go
I gain your trust
Get you to hand weight to us because we paid up front
On the low with cameras taping ya
Getting pop away? The prison sentence is going to
Make the officer leave with two ki's out the evidence room
[C-Rayz Walz - Prison Inmate]
Out the evidence room (*Said with Loucipher*)
Went my fame, truck, boat or plane, they watching you
You think you got work? They copping too
We control blocks, they lock countries
Ya own companies, we had nice cars and sneaker money
Now there's players out there, talking 'bout the holding
With bugs in they house like they down South with windows open
Your dough ain't long, you wrong, you take shorts and (?)
Feds will be up in your mouth...like forks and spoons
So enjoy the rush, live plush off Coke bread
Soon you'll be in a cell with me, like Jenny Lopez
In school, I was a bully, now life is fully a joke
I keep a flow on a boat for Peruvian Coke
Players do favors for governors and tax makers
Fat Quakers smoke crack and sex acts with bad mayors
The walls got ears, you big mouths probably scared
Not prepared to do years like Javier
[Immortal Technique Speaking]
The story just told is an example of the path that
drugs take on their way to every neighborhood, in
every state of this country. It's a lot deeper than
the niggas on your block. So when they point the
finger at you, brother men, this is what you've got to tell them:
[Wesley Snipes - from "New Jack City"]
I'm not guilty. YOU'RE the one that's guilty. The
lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords,
all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just
like you did with alcohol during the prohibition.
You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick
the ballistics here: Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem.
Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing
is bigger than (Immortal Technique). This is big
business. This is the American way.
"Cause of Death" - same album... with an intro from... Mumia Abu Jamal!
To think about the origins of hip hop in this culture and also about homeland security is to see that there are at the very least two worlds in America. One of the well-to-do and the struggling. For if ever there was the absence of homeland security it is seen in the gritty roots of hip hop.
For the music arises from a generation that feels with some justice that they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in
schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison. They grew up hungry, hated and unloved. And this is the psychic fuel that seems to generate the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth and the climb above the pit of poverty.
In the broader society the opposite is true, for here more than any place on earth wealth is more wide spread and so bountiful. What passes for the middle class in America could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world. They're very opulent and relative wealth makes the insecure. And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as saying military intelligence, or the U.S Department of Justice.
They're just words that have very little relationship to reality. And do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon? Do you think duck tape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safer?
From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal...
[Talking]
Immortal Technique
Revolutionary Volume 2
Yeah, broadcasting live from Harlem, New York
Let the truth be known..
[Verse 1]
You better watch what the fuck flies outta ya mouth
Or I'ma hijack a plane and fly it into your house
Burn your apartment with your family tied to the couch
And slit your throat, so when you scream, only blood comes out
I doubt that there could ever be...a more wicked MC
'Cuz AIDs infested child molesters aren't sicker than me
I see the world for what it is, beyond the white and the black
The way the government downplays historical facts
'Cuz the United States sponsored the rise of the 3rd Reich
Just like the CIA trained terrorists to the fight
Build bombs and sneak box cutters onto a flight
When I was a child, the Devil himself bought me a mic
But I refused the offer, 'cuz God sent me to strike
With skills unused like fallopian tubes on a dyke
My words'll expose George Bush and Bin Laden
As two separate parts of the same seven headed dragon
And you can't fathom the truth, so you don't hear me
You think illuminati's just a fuckin conspiracy theory?
That's why Conservative racists are all runnin' shit
And your phone is tapped by the Federal Government
So I'm jammin' frequencies in ya brain when you speak to me
Technique will rip a rapper to pieces indecently
Pack weapons illegally, because I'm never hesitant
Sniper scoping a commission controllin the president
[Hook]
Father, forgive them, for they don't know right from wrong
The truth will set you free, written down in this song
And the song has the Cause of Death written in code
The Word of God brought to life, that'll save ya soul...
Save ya soul motherfucker...save ya soul..
Yeah, yeah, yeah
[Verse 2]
I hacked the Pentagon for self-incriminating evidence
Of Republican manufactured white powder pestilence
Marines Corps. flat (?) vest, with the guns and ammo
Spittin' bars like a demon stuck inside a piano
Turn a Sambo into a soldier with just one line
Now here's the truth about the system that'll fuck up your mind
They gave Al Qaeda 6 billion dollars in 1989 to 1992
And now the last chapters of Revelations are coming true
And I know a lot of people find it hard to swallow this
Because subliminal bigotry makes you hate my politics
But you act like America wouldn't destroy two buildings
In a country that was sponsoring bombs dropped on our children
I was watching the Towers, and though I wasn't the closest
I saw them crumble to the Earth like they was full of explosives
And they thought nobody noticed the news report that they did
About the bombs planted on the George Washington bridge
Four Non-Arabs arrested during the emergency
And then it disappeared from the news permanently
They dubbed a tape of Osama, and they said it was proof
"Jealous of our freedom," I can't believe you bought that excuse
Rockin a motherfucking flag don't make you a hero
Word to Ground Zero
The Devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th
The New World Order was born on September 11
[Hook]
[Verse 3]
And just so Conservatives don't take it to heart
I don't think Bush did it, 'cuz he isn't that smart
He's just a stupid puppet taking orders on his cell phone
From the same people that sabotaged Senator Wellstone
The military industry got it poppin' and lockin'
Looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz Doctrine
And as a matter of fact, Rumsfeld, now that I think back
Without 9/11, you couldn't have a war in Iraq
Or a Defense budget of world conquest proportions
Kill freedom of speech and revoke the right to abortions
Tax cut extortion, a blessing to the wealthy and wicked
But you still have to answer to the Armageddon you scripted
And Dick Cheney, you fuckin leech, tell them your plans
About building your pipelines through Afghanistan
And how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan
You might have some house niggaz fooled, but I understand
Colonialism is sponsored by corporations
That's why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations
Tell me the truth, I don't scare into paralysis
I know the CIA saw Bin Laden on dialysis
In '98 when he was Top Ten for the FBI
Government ties is really why the Government lies
Read it yourself instead of asking the Government why
'Cuz then the Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die..
[Man talking]
He is scheduled for 60 Minutes next. He is going on
French, Italian, Japanese television. People
everywhere are starting to listen to him. It's embarrassing...
You better watch what the fuck flies outta your mouth...
Just got back from Hibbing, where my aunt's documentary, "Tangled up in Bob," screened twice to packed, appreciative crowds of locals and Dylan fanatics. (sign up on the site to find out when the DVD is coming, and for now, distribution is the big question. Listen to the MPR feature)
Like Hibbing's other claim to fame (aside from Kevin McHale), the world's largest iron ore open pit mine, the film is defined by empty space, the negativity of Bob Dylan's ties to this place. It chronicles the early years - starting in Duluth, ending in Dinkytown. The nut of it is the people that grew up with Robert Zimmerman, but then met Bob Dylan.
As one of his old university buddies said to me, he was a "pathological liar" whom they often didn't believe. They didn't buy it when he disappeared for a couple months and reappeared, claiming he'd cut a couple records in New York. He also variously claimed he'd been out west, an orphan and a carnival operator. This blank-slate kid from up north created a person like a jacket (the jackets came about when Rebel Without a Cause opened in Hibbing).
The man today is some kind of distant prince, under layers of grit and stories self-applied, and I guess that's what's so interesting about my aunt's film: it zaps away these layers to a tiny old core that was apparently doomed from the moment he went down Highway 61 to the U.
But then again, casting away the past and fashioning a fresh persona like some ad executive is the lasting boomer legacy – the rolling stones that can't handle the moss.
Dylan Days, a multi-day festival around his birthday, is a weird, ironic event in that particular flinty up-north way. It's basically a stubborn rejection of Dylan's rejection of Zimmerman, and of course a small town's bid for tourist dollars. Hibbing's downtown was strikingly busy and vital, though: several commercial streets of businesses that are usually doomed these days.
"Zimmy's" is the bar around which all social life revolves – it played host to a singer-songwriter contest with generally mediocre results. But the guy singing about the Wellstone assassination was funny, and certainly the favorites were three local dudes under the group "Kevin Garnett" who rapped Hurricane to perfectly selected samples from DJ Mosquito Beats. Their original entry was a well-done "I'm Bob Dylan, You're Bob Dylan, We're all Bob Dylan" rap. It deserved Internet video fame for sure. On the way out, Mary and I were treated to a badass freestyle on the Pat Tillman friendly-fire Army coverup conspiracy, which I really liked.
the childhood home
At the post-screening dinner with my family friends and the "stars" of the film, I sat next to Phil, the first subject, who hung out with him in the Dinkytown days. He was talented, but not some amazing person, Phil and another old scenester told me. They hung out, played at coffeeshops, after bar closing they tapped kegs in basements. Compared to today's local underground, culture goes in cycles, I thought. Who among the musician types I know will turn out to be the star? And how many more are just starry-eyed idolators?
After the screening I sat on a rock in the Hibbing Community College parking lot. Zimmerman's old English teacher came out. His contribution to the film was charismatic, and one experimental interview sparked my aunt's interest in doing the project. Just days after he and the 'star', professor of creative writing Natalie Goldberg, went around town in a moped, he suffered a terrible hip fracture and now requires a walker. Zimmerman sat in the front row of his class.
The cousin of Zimmerman's high school girlfriend (who was a blonde Lutheran vixen in leather) came over and said hi to him before he got in the car. A simple twist of fate – Dylan was Dylan, writing those anthems only two years after he got out of there. Like the chaotic butterfly conjuring a thunderstorm, if the teacher hadn't been there, if the girl hadn't been there, that guy wouldn't have become the Guy. The masters of war, the watchtower and its princes, it was all a crap shoot from a weird kid that played the piano. He couldn't have been Dylan without covering that place up – and in a very peculiar way, my aunt's idiosyncratic, shot-from-the-hip documentary exposes this invisible side – dragging the stubborn troubadour out of his myth.
Outside Zimmy's, the gruff Hibbing guy who claimed he got him stoned for the first time (and of course they say Dylan got the Beatles high for the first time, markedly damaging global civilization), told me, it was a terrible thing he gave up for stardom. "We sit here, bowing to his star, while he can't even go out for a beer with his friends."
My aunt Mary Feidt has worked on documentaries for a long time. Long ago she used to work at the WCCO investigative unit, and since then has been involved with a number of major projects including HBO's America Undercover and PBS Frontline. After quite a few years of painstaking work, the first documentary she's fully produced and directed, "Tangled up in Bob: Searching for Bob Dylan: A Minnesota Story" is going to be aired to Dylan's hardest core of fans at Dylan Days in Hibbing tomorrow, though it was formally released a while ago. It's also going to be screened Friday and I'll probably go up with my dad and Uncle Dan to check that out. Here's the press release.
It was a long slog of a production. They got in a bad car accident at University & Snelling after shooting around Dinkytown (everyone knows that Dylan lived where the Loring Pasta Bar is today. This is below the Witch's Tower that I tend to associate with being all along the Watchtower, but that's just me). I have heard about the production process on a number of Macs, using Final Cut Pro and about 5 portable hard drives.
One of the tough things was that, unlike that p0nk Scorcese, they could not license any of the music for the production, which is a big deal for legal matters and distribution. This meant that a lot of weird and unknown gems that they uncovered from visiting eccentric Canadian guys couldn't go in. However, there was still a bit of Fair Use law to skirt, such as when Dylan's old High School English teacher sings along to a song – that was apparently enough of a critical modification to get by.
The following was featured in StarTribune's ItemWorld on Jan 19 but has since vanished off their site:
Bob Dylan, M.I.A.
I.W. felt right at home in Taos, N.M., last week when author Natalie Goldberg ("Writing Down the Bones") and Minneapolis-bred filmmaker Mary Feidt premiered their mini-documentary on Bob Dylan's Minnesota roots. "Tangled Up in Bob" (www.tangledupinbob.com) follows Goldberg's search for the former Bobby Zimmerman to Minneapolis, where she interviewed buddies Erik Storlie (meditating on icy Lake Calhoun) and John Palmer (serving cheese at the Wedge Co-op). Then off to Hibbing, where she wormed her way into Dylan's childhood home and fell in love with Bobby's high-school English teacher BJ Rolfzen, who called Dylan "the Shakespeare of our time." Musicians Spider John Koerner and Tony Glover also make cameos, but Dylan, per usual, remains elusive. As Glover recalled a 1959 encounter in Dinkytown, Bobby boasted he'd been out West, but "we suspected he'd gone to visit his folks in Hibbing."Tangled" will air May 24 at Hibbing's Dylan Days. -LINDA MACK
On a side note, MPR has a music wiki with a Dylan entry?!?!
The movie has been noted here, and its premiere at the trippy Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM is noted here. And by trippy, I mean that Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence and the gang probably took a lot of peyote there, and Lawrence painted the bathroom. My family stayed there once and this room was sweet. Odd coincidence. Anyway.
The film is also being screened at a Zen Center in Mary's current home of Santa Fe on May 31. It's been linked to at this Dylan site. In 2004, MPR's Cathy Wurzer did an interview with my aunt.
Oh yah, the bonus thing. I might be related to Bob, actually, via my mom's family. My mom's grandfather was a Zimmerman (or Zimmermann) from Duluth. Bob's family were Zimmermans from Duluth. How man Zimmermans could Duluth have had in those days? (I guess that would make me a bit Jewish too. Shalom!)
Major story in the Duluth News Tribune:
Dylan, revisited: HIBBING: A new documentary on Bob Dylan's early influences ends up as an ode to the Midwest.
BY LEE BLOOMQUIST - NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
HIBBING - Like many Bob Dylan fans, filmmaker Mary Feidt and her friend Natalie Goldberg, a creative writer, came to Hibbing to learn more about the songwriter's formative years.
They came away with much more.
"We kind of marched around and did things that people would do as a fan," said Feidt, a filmmaker from Santa Fe, N.M. "We went to B.J.'s (Dylan's high school English teacher B.J. Rolfzen) house, and B.J. started talking. After about 10 minutes, I said, 'We have a story.'
"What we found out is that this is an interesting town and an interesting part of the world. This (film) is as much about Hibbing as it is about Bob Dylan. It's about how the place where you grew up affects who you are." "Tangled up in Bob," a 68-minute documentary tracing Dylan's upbringing in Hibbing, gets its first public screening at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Hibbing Community College theater. The screening kicks off Dylan Days -- a music, writing and arts celebration.
This year, the event includes a "Blood on the Tracks" concert, a singer/songwriter competition, literary readings and a bus tour. Dylan was born in Duluth as Robert Zimmerman and raised in Hibbing. His 65th birthday is Wednesday.
"We've been getting a lot of attention every year," said Aaron Brown, Dylan Days spokesman. "We get a lot of Dylan pilgrims who have followed Dylan's career, and we've gotten international attention." Feidt's original film, more than three years in the making, will be the center of attention on the opening day of the four-day event.
Feidt and Goldberg first came to Hibbing in December 2003 to begin filming. Goldberg is a native of Long Island, N.Y., who now lives in Santa Fe. "When we went up there, the idea was believing that Dylan was a genius and the voice of our generation," Feidt said. "We said, 'Let's see if this place has anything to do with what you've become.' We did find out a lot about him. I believe he took a lot of things from Hibbing that were a part of his life."
In the film, Goldberg acts as a guide. She talks to Hibbing residents who knew Dylan, visits local sites linked to Dylan and has a coffee conversation with Rolfzen at his home. "It's just a wonderful film, and ultimately it's not about Bob," said Goldberg, the author of 10 books that have been translated into 14 languages. "It's about all of us. It's really more about Hibbing, place and the Midwest. It's a sweetheart poem to Hibbing."
During filming, Goldberg said she fell in love with Hibbing and its people. "To tell you the truth, I expected them to be more rough," Goldberg said. "What I found were people that are open, warm, intelligent and accepting of us. I just came back from France, and I tell you what -- I'd rather be in Hibbing."
Dylan gained a lot from Hibbing, she said. "If you read 'Chronicles,' he talks about the weather all the time," said Goldberg. "And even now, on his first radio show on XM Radio, his first show was about the weather. I also think he was influenced in that he continued making new songs and not just playing the old ones," Goldberg said. "And that's a Minnesota value."
The film has received a private showing in Santa Fe. After its debut in Hibbing, Feidt hopes to show it at film festivals and release it to the public.
In addition to footage shot in Hibbing, the crew traveled to Shreveport, La., to interview radio personalities who worked at KWKA, an AM station that Dylan listened to as a youth, and from which he ordered rhythm and blues records. Another portion of the film is shot in Dinkytown, a coffeehouse neighborhood in Minneapolis that Dylan frequented. Dylan's fascination with polka music and with his Jewish heritage on the Iron Range also are explored in the film. Iron Range people and local scenes are shown.
"I wanted to go home to Minnesota and tell a story," said Feidt, whose mother grew up on the Iron Range. "It's kind of a valentine to Minnesota."
The film isn't a Dylan biography, she said. Instead, it's designed to leave viewers pondering how their childhood affected their adult life. "There's a story of a Dylan childhood everywhere," Feidt said. "In the last scene, she (Goldberg) goes home to her hometown. It's all sort of about what she learned about Dylan and herself. What we learned is you can go looking for Bob Dylan in Hibbing, but you won't find him -- you may find somebody else."
One cool facet of life in Minneapolis that I've checked out since moving here last October are the underground venues sprinkled around the city, in basements, apartments and the backs of shops. I hesitate to write very much about this, because the police play a bit of cat-and-mouse with these venues. Some have names, some don't. Some have MySpace pages, some don't. Just after my first visit to one venue, (either just minutes or the day after I left), the police busted them up and reportedly said that they couldn't have any more shows. Ironically, it's located about four doors down from the police station, and it only took them about two or three years to notice all the loud anarcho-punk music playing just off their alley.
According to rumor, some young teenager emailed their friend that they were going to get wasted there, which in turn was intercepted by their evil mother, who consequently called the cops, who trumped up the situation and claimed everything was out of control. For the record I have not seen anything illegal happening at any of these places, and it seems that the folks running them are responsible and law-abiding. Really.
Last night I was at a show featuring Harlequin, Faggot and some other noisy rock in an apartment at an undisclosed location somewhere in the middle of South Minneapolis, a show which would have been done at the first place, had Evil Mom not ruined everything. This venue had no discernible name, therefore it should remain anonymous. The show went late, well after midnight. I threw in a few bucks for the bands and everyone had a really good time. The shows are often free, people don't hassle you. Sometimes the groups there are kind of cliquish but the people-watching is usually pretty good. There were triple mohawks three feet in diameter and punkish kids wearing 3-D glasses. I'd never seen moshing in an apartment before. These locales are a great place for bands just starting out to get a gig and figure out how to make it work. Basically, it's your authentic twin cities youth culture at its most granular level.
The Alamo House is one that does have its own MySpace site. It is worth noting that a lot of shows are organized using MySpace.
Also the Playhouse Studios are more of a slack hip-hop-oriented venue/recording studio that keep a MySpace site as well (formerly known as the Wookiefoot Mansion). The Kremlin is another venue that is apparently doomed to evaporate at the end of May, as the landlord didn't want to let them keep the lease. Their last show will be on May 28, I'll let you try to Google that for details. Here's a video on YouTube from the Kremlin.
(We have added the category "Kulturny" to the site, which is the Russian term for culture. In the new version of Hongpong.com, Kulturny is going to be one of the main top-level categories)