by Hob Pithers

stolen from Journal of Popular Music(vol.XXI #8, 10/95)

"Alternative rock" often symbolizes a vaguely progressive social rebellion. The genre's name itself implies to its' fans not only an "alternative" to the "classic rock" of an older generation, but also an "alternative" set of values and priorities. However, even as "alternative" increasingly dominates the Billboard charts, the possibility of real social change in North America seems less than remote. Rebellion is increasingly limited to consumer choices, to buying Fugazi cassettes or green hair dye. So although savy marketers are enjoying unprecedented success selling the symbols of rebellion, grassroots social rebellion is waning. In this context any political message expressed in "alternative" rock songs by "alternative" bands becomes more of a stylistic pose than rebellion. It is a way of selling the band. This is just as true of born again christian rock bands as it is of Rage Against The Machine. But Rage Against The Machine faces the added problem that their "revolutionary" message is being sold and consumed in the same context as any other commodity, reinforcing the status quo their message critiques. Should we accept this as inevitable?

A post-punk band from Chicago has a compelling answer. Kill Yr Boss is the first CD by DragKing(there is no connection to the British queercore band Sister George whose seminal album Drag King was recently rereleased by San Francisco's OutPunk Records). It's an attempt to communicate political ideas and feelings. The title invokes an immediate revolt in the imperative voice. Of course hating your boss is an American tradition as banal as Dagwood's distain for Mr. Dithers. But the simplicity and violence of the statement "kill your boss" draws on a more recent precedent, NWA's song "Fuck Tha Police"(that song, from the record Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988 echoed Eldridge Cleaver's statements in the '60's, see: Post-Prison Writings & Speeches, Vintage Books, 1969).

Kill Yr Boss will not have the liberating effect that "Fuck Tha Police" had, but it might offer something equally valuable, a vision which connects an honest reaction to life in the contemporary U.S. to an authentic grassroots revolution. The cover of the CD is made of thin paper, no jewel case or digi-pack, unlike the mass produced product of the major labels and their imitators. On the front is a photo dating from the Paris Commune of 1871, when the working class inhabitants of Paris took over the city, set up their own government and appropriated factories to be run by worker collectives. In 1911, V.I. Lenin described the Paris Commune as "an event unprecedented in history" because "up to that time power had, as a rule, been in the hands of landowners and capitalists, i.e., in the hands of their trusted agents who made up the so-called government"(In Memory Of The Commune). DragKing offers it as a startling counter example to the smug hedgemony capitalism enjoys today.

The Paris Commune was essentially an experiment in self-government. Today the ability to participate in the decisions which affect our lives seems remote. Most of us are so used to taking orders at work, so used to looking for loopholes and evading punishment that we can't imagine making our own rules. Even the landscape we live in is increasingly outside of our control. There are no public street corners to preach from, there are only the climate controled walkways of the shopping malls. We are more likely to watch professionals play basketball on television(inbetween volume enhanced commercials), rather than play the game ourselves.

We are increasingly isolated from each other. As more and more information comes from fewer and fewer sources, the value of information seems to increase with the distance of its source. Instead of speaking with co-workers, neighbors or friends more North Americans are tuning in their televisions. The days when soapbox speakers could convince us of anything are long gone. Confronted with a stranger asking political questions most of us assume we are facing a fanatic. If we talk to each other at all it tends to be in the context of an economic transaction or as a boss to a subordinate, not as one person to another. Most of us who are working spend the majority of our waking hours in an environment completely controled by our employer, wearing a costume prescribed by our employer.

Meanwhile, modern nations compete with each other in a mad rush to surrender their sovereignty to multinational corporations. More and more policy choices affecting our lives are made by corporate directors. Decision makers are accountable only to their superiors in the corporate hierarchy. Free trade zones and international trading treaties such as NAFTA make it clear that workers must organize across borders to even have a chance at bargaining with their multinational employers. Even so, here in the United States the fastest growing union in the AFL-CIO between 1983 and 1993, the Service Employees International Union(SEIU), looses so many members annually that it had to organize 40,000 workers a year to create a net gain of only 8,700 workers each year. Workers trying to organize internationally are taking on an even more difficult task.

And not only are fewer and fewer of us joining unions to defend ourselves from the domination of our employers, fewer and fewer of us are joining anything. Robert Putnam, director of the Center For International Affairs at Harvard University, wrote in the winter '95/'96 issue of American Prospect that in the twenty years between 1973 and 1993, the number of North Americans who attended speeches or rallies dropped 36 percent and those who went to town or school meetings dropped 39 percent. Membership in such mainstream American groups as the PTA, the League of Women Voters, the Red Cross, the Elks clubs, or bowling leagues have declined by 25 to 50 percent over the last 20 to 30 years.

So the idea of working people getting together and making the decisions which affect their own lives seems more and more incredible. When the Zapatistas burst onto the international scene it was stunning. No one had predicted the Zapatistas' New Years uprising in Chiapas. (Chase Manhattan Bank's patrician advise to the government of Mexico, that it "will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy", shows how far reaching the effects of the EZLN's uprising were.) The idea that something like the rebellion led by the EZLN could happen here in North America seems even more incredible, but no more incredible than the Paris Commune did before it happened.

So even though the Commune disappeared in a bloodbath more than a hundred years ago retelling its' story is still worthwhile. The rebellion which grew into the Paris Commune began with a refusal to obey. Troops under the command of the national French government which had just surrendered to the Prussians refused to follow orders. They had been sent to retrieve cannon from the National Guard held in working class neighborhoods around Paris. But the residents of Paris still hadn't accepted the Prussians victory and didn't want to surrender the cannon with which they hoped to defend Paris from a Prussian march on the city. Troops sent to Montmarte refused to fire on the crowds which had gathered. Instead they arrested their own commander and shot him. Eventually the French government had to retreat to Versailles. Adolphe Theirs, the head of the national government who had sent in the troops, later explained, "businessmen were going around repeating constantly that financial operations would never be started up agsain until all those wretched were finished off and their cannon taken away". Though this recounting predates the Chase Manhattan memo by more than a hundred years the similarity is clear.

The National Guard took over the abandoned Hotel de Ville as a headquarters. But since the uprising against Theirs' government had been spontaneous and unexpected, there were no leaders ready to take charge. The National Guard Central Committee held city-wide elections eight days later. Of the 227,000 people who voted most were working class. The left-wing vigilance commitees which had attracted only a small proportion of the vote in the national election a month previous now had a strong majority. The few moderate republicans elected soon resigned.

The Commune was based on the idea of popular sovereignty first raised in 1793. Those elected to represent the people were to act as delegates, not as parliamentary members. Delegates were subject to recall by the people. It was their duty to report back and remain in constant touch with the people. The Commune decreed that the salaries of all administrative and government officials, irrespective of rank, should not exceed the normal wages of a worker, and in no case amount to more than 6,000 francs a year. The Commune did away with the standing army, and armed the whole people. Because the National Guard failed to pursue Theirs' army while it was in retreat to Versailles, the Paris Commune spent the rest of its' existence fighting a defensive war as Theirs and his forces tried to retake the city.

The proceedings of the Commune itself were chaotic. Few delegates had political experience, though some had experience in trade unions. Their debates were often rambling, matters being dropped rather than pushed to a decision and entirely unrelated points being raised and then persued. The delegates to the Commune, though untrained in politics, were willing to try new ideas and act on their ideals. DragKing is similarly uninhibited and untrained. For DragKing the punk credo, Do It Yourself(D.I.Y.), means much the same as the "popular sovereignty" of the Paris Commune. DragKing make music whose precedents(Capt. Beefheart's Magic Band, The Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Steel Pole Bathtub, Tragic Mulatto, Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, etc.)are warped and reinterpreted with enthusiam. Their music is made in much the same spirit as the were the laws of the Paris Commune, spontaneously, and unrestrained by agenda.

The Commune took up demands that had been formulated by the labor movement during the preceding twenty to thirty years. Rents owing for the period of the siege were canceled but otherwise the rights of private property were not questioned. After much debate a three year delay was granted for the payment of outstanding bills. Taken together these particular measures shocked bourgeois opinion outside Paris. The Commune set up unemployment exchanges in the town halls and abolished night work for bakers despite opposition from the employers. Forty-three separate cooperatives were formed among the many craft industries in the city. The most pressing social question facing the Commune was that of unemployment. It took the radical step of allowing trade unions and workers cooperatives to take over factories not in use in order to start up them up again. However more extreme suggestions that all factories should be taken over by the workers were rejected.

The Commune also tried to provide basic elementary education for all. The reform movement was strongly against the church schools which amounted to just over half the schools in Paris. National Guards were used to evict priests and nuns from schools and replace them by republicans. The Commune proclaimed the separation of church and state, and abolished state salaries for priests.

Women's education was given special attention having being the most neglected area. A special commission was formed with an all female membership to oversee the attempts made to set up girls schools. Day nurseries to be situated near the factories were also proposed as a means to help working women.

During the early days of the Commune Paris it was described as a "festival of the oppressed". The atmosphere within the capital was not that of a city under siege. Instead Paris seemed to be celebrating a city-wide holiday. In fact the people of Paris had something important to celebrate. They were governing themselves. They had stood up to generals, bosses and priests. They had stood up to their government and chosen their own representatives from within their own ranks. Without the (dubious) benefit of a vanguard party, political experience or even any leaders they had created a new society and in doing so changed history.

One of the people who might have emerged as a leader during the period of the Paris Commune was Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), a French revolutionist who was prominent in European radical movements of the 19th century. Although he spent nearly half his life in prison, Blanqui became a symbol to many in the worker's movement.(Interestingly, Blanqui maintained that the workers needed to be led by a small, dedicated minority and that a successful revolution would have to establish a temporary dictatorship in order to carry out the necessary transformation of society--views that were later adopted by V. I. Lenin and the Soviet Communists. Perhaps if Blanqui hadn't been imprisoned the Commune wouldn't have developed its' uniquely egalitarian character. Perhaps also Blanqui would have convinced the National Guard to pursue Theirs' troops as they retreated to Versailles and the Commune would have survived.) But although he was elected the president of the Paris Commune, he was in jail at the time.

The fact that the Commune accomplished as much as it did during its' brief existence without the benefit of experienced leaders (such as Blanqui) is heartening even today. As the liner notes of DragKing's CD remind us, too many experienced revolutionary activists are imprisoned in the United States today. The liner notes specifically call for the release of several prominent activists, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Eddie Hatcher(who has since been released after he was diagnosed with AIDS), Carmen Valentine, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Standing Deer, and geronimo ji jaga (Pratt) as well as "all political prisoners". If there were to be a rebellion on the scale of the Paris Commune today it rely as much on the untrained and uneducated as it would on veteran activists.

Certainly many of the revolutionaries who were active during the late sixties and early seventies in the United States have served time in U.S. prisons. Certainly the leaders of active resistance against the status quo have had almost no access to major media outlets such as television. The long American tradition of grassroots activism is absent from most school curriculums. And yet young people continue to resist the domination of authoritarian structures. Like the working class of Paris in 1871, they instinctively reject domination.

If Kill Yr Boss has a narrative theme it is one of everyday grassroots resistance. When Cyndi Elliott just reviewed "Kill Yr Boss" in a recent issue (#35) of the national music magazine Puncture, she noted, "Kill Yer Boss wonders what it means to be in a "subculture" at a time when such a thing doesn't exist except in ad execs' heads--and when no one seems to resist mainstream culture anymore. DragKing do, and their relentless resisting makes this great modern punk rock.". Kill Yr Boss documents spontaneous rebellions to meaningless work dominated by authoritarian hierarchy("Snarl", "Attack Nerve Epicenter", "Autostumbler"), racial categorization("Miscegenation"), the way in which language confines/defines thought("The Invisible Hand") and the ways in which oppositional subcultures are bought and sold("Rift", "Unsweetner"). The CD reveals thoughtful people struggling with the confines of their lives, the inevitable trade-offs, feelings of depression and the futility of resistance. In fact the difficulty of continuing to struggle despite constant defeats is an important concern in many songs(especially explicit in "Attack Nerve Epicenter").

Like the Ex, or God Is My Co-pilot, DragKing's ideas are expressed both in their thoughtful lyrics and in their adventurous music. As Cyndi Elliot wrote, "form matches function". DragKing is willing to cover a wide stylistic terrain. The band is happy to build on many different influences often within the same song. Each member of the group plays several different instruments, suggesting that instrumentation is dependent the requirements of an aesthetic vision, not the restrictions common to rock bands(bass, drums, and dominant guitar). This does not make for predictable music. Songs can shift genres midway. Certainly the listener is never sure what to expect next. As Jon Worley stated in Aiding and Abetting, "DragKing does everything wrong in terms of mass acceptance". But what would you expect from a band which declares regret at having "traded autonomy for spending power", because "a paycheck's nothing more than a bribe"(from "Snarl").

Kill Yr Boss documents a thoroughly independent artistic expression of resistance. In a society where almost every utterance is made in the context of the market place, DragKing is driven by a rejection of market forces. Like their role models, the Parisian Communards, DragKing dare to imagine another world. They believe that we can "turn...history around"(from "Attack Nerve Epicenter"), and in the Paris Commune they find historical evidence to support that assertion. DragKing uses its' small soapbox(a poorly distributed independent release) to champion unpopular causes, such as the release of political prisoners. To contemporary listeners they admit the difficulties faced by advocates of revolutionary change. They admit the dominance of multinational corporations. They admit that they too are tempted to "trade... autonomy for spending power"("Snarl"). They admit the attraction of selling out and buying in. They admit even the most despairing pessimism, especially in "Unsweetner" and "Autostumbler". But still they continue to struggle, because "in struggle there is redemption"("Attack Nerve Epicenter").

Even better, they invite others to follow their lead. The photo of the example of the Communards illustrates how people can seize power and govern themselves, that they have in the past and that they may yet again in the future. Then the liner notes explain just how much it cost DragKing and IMP Records to put the CD together, thus demystifying the CD itself. By explaining how the magic trick was done DragKing change the meaning of the CD. It is no longer a credential, evidence of DragKing's legitimate postion as art-makers. It is a blueprint, an example, a possibility.

Bibliography

Boime, A. (1995). Art and the French Commune. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Edwards, S. (1971). The Paris Commune: 1871. Newton Abbott, Devon, Great Britain: Victorian & Modern History Book Club.
Edwards, S. () (Edited by), The Communards of Paris, 1871.
Giles, Jeff: "The Myth of Generation X",Newsweek 6/6/94
Jellinek, f. (1965). The Paris Commune of 1871. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
Lacayo, Richard: "Everybody's Hip(And that's not cool)", Time 8/8/94
McClellan, W. (1979). Revolutionary Exiles: The Russians in the First International and the Paris Commune. London: Cass.

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