Journoganda: Hardcore message for softcock hacks
12 December 2021
KEITH JACKSON
NOOSA - Simon Jackson was born in Papua New Guinea and spent the first 10 years of his life there before returning to Australia to complete his education.
As a project manager with Microsoft, he crossed the ditch to New Zealand around 2010 and, apart from a short stint in the PNG highlands in 2011, has been there since, managing Cloud IT projects for Microsoft’s large customers in the Asia-Pacific region.
A CEO client has written of him: “My mate George schooled me once on what made a capable project manager, ‘they know when to play hard ass, kick ass or kiss ass,’ he said.
"George knew his stuff and so does Simon. People you can trust to ‘tell it to you straight’ are hard to come by.”
Well, that’s Simon’s day job, and he's good at it, but it's his music I talk about here.
Simon is also a prolific songwriter and musician heading up Auckland group The Sand Spiders delivering mainly in the alt rock area on topics we all should care about - climate change, social equity, love and a better world.
In the ‘hard ass, kick ass, kiss ass’ dimension, The Sand Spiders use of hardcore punk to deliver their message and is strongly of kick ass' calibre.
Hardcore punk came out of California in the late 1970s characterised by fast, high energy songs with aggressive tempo, stripped-down instrumentation and shouted, in-your-face political lyrics.
The genre quickly spread internationally, particularly in Europe, and has maintained the rage for the last 40 years, including skipping cultural boundaries with Muslim hardcore bands springing up in Canada, Pakistan, Indonesia and the US of all places.
Since 1999, the hardcore punk festival Fluff Fest has been held each July near Plzeň (Pilsen) in the Czech Republic. Next year’s thrash is scheduled for 29–31 July if you’re in town.
Pilsen invented beer and the Czech Republic invented my wife, Ingrid, so I have a special affinity for the place.
Anyway, to cut to the clash, Simon Jackson & The Sand Spiders have just released (or more likely it escaped) a new song, Journoganda.
Steeped in hardcore punk’s uncompromising severity, Journoganda condemns the declining honesty and morality of journalism in our post-Trumpian era.
This sad era of fakery, bias and propaganda in which large, influential chunks of the fourth estate have lost their grip on the historic role of the press to hold power to account and bring truth to the people.
You can link here to Journoganda and sing along to these lyrics if you’re in the mood.
Journoganda
note taker
spectator
fourth estate
take it down like a waiter
making air space
for traitors
playing it back
just like they paid yacompliant
justifying
fake news
made into headlines
spreading lies
to make your lines
the party needs to get
your story rightno room for truth
this is not the newsjournoganda
tell us the truth
tell us the truthpress passes
full access
so many questions
nobody's asking
prepackaged
manufactured
billionaire press
serving fascistsliving off the propaganda
this is not the news
Simon Jackson - "free loader / voice over / sold their soul / to please their owner"corporate clone
megaphone
toe the line
for your donor
free loader
voice over
sold their soul
to please their ownertreating us like fools
this is not the news
Simon, sorry, reading is my better, than hearing which is my lesser.
Smiting at vantage nodes stunningly succeeds sans verbal delay.
My take, your treatise, societal gasp, urgent utter despair, non-sence journeyed, worded struth.
Apology from me at use of commas, lest readers surmise that I jest.
Add to that, my hearing has always required for me to make sense out of sounds that seem to fit each surround, such that some readers avert their eyes from that mirror of sounds which I write (as meant of meaning, or lamentably of meanness).
So, Simon, as to (possible) detractors of your lyric, I add, I don't want to hear of it, but I'm making no sound observation.
And as there can be fun in sundry circumstance, did you see the item "Italian bishop apologizes for telling children Santa doesn't exist"?
See: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/11/europe/christmas-santa-claus-italy-bishop-apology-scli-intl/index.html
Yeah, really, reported, "we talked about the need to distinguish what is real from what is not."
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 13 December 2021 at 08:47 PM
Two of the most egregious examples of rabid jingoism involved Murdoch's UK tabloid "The Sun".
These included its "Gotcha" headline following the sinking of the ancient Argentine battleship the General Belgrano in May 1982 by a British submarine and "The Truth", which was plastered across its front page immediately following the Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster in 1989:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/apr/07/pressandpublishing.media
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/how-the-suns-truth-about-hillsborough-unravelled
The relentless propaganda is now quite evident via Fox News, Sky News, Breitbart News Network and MSN and many others, including the ABC and SBS.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot
Posted by: Bernard Corden | 13 December 2021 at 10:10 AM
Nice lyrics Simon.
Perhaps the most telling example of the sorry state of journalism in Australia is its apparent indifference to one of its own currently imprisoned in the UK at the behest of the USA and their CIA.
Hardly a peep out of them when the judge gave the okay to deport Julian Assange to the US for trial on treason charges.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 12 December 2021 at 08:13 PM
"I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction" - Aneurin Bevan
"This is my truth, tell me yours" - Aneurin Bevan
The last quote from Nye Bevan became the title of a studio album from a Welsh alternative rock band, the Manic Street Preachers.
The final track on the album is entitled SYMM, which is an acronym of South Yorkshire Mass Murderer and refers to the involvement of police in the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_My_Truth_Tell_Me_Yours
Posted by: Bernard Corden | 12 December 2021 at 07:48 PM