journal . Ben Sommer


December 11, 2002

Another ones bites me

I can't stop squeezing them out.

Dmitri Shostakovitch is remembered - politically - for treading the fine line between speaking out (in code anyway, through his music) against Stalin and doing the public bowing and scraping necessary to get any of his music performed. His Fifth Symphony is supposedly a 'response to just criticism' that he was not communist enough. Most people now read this work as a tight-lipped repudiation of the strangling effect a socialist state has on its people. A bitter irony is that this criticism totally escaped the understanding of the rather dim Stalin and his thugocracy, and the Fifth was regarded by them as the beginning of Shostakovich's rehabilitation. People who know me may regard this lyric as my own 'response to just criticism'...

Right Wing Fiend

I carry on so obnoxiously
prodigal son or a right wing fiend?
pontificate with a chip on my shoulder
argue with Dad over the liberal order
well, they say young conservatives have no hearts
I say old liberals have no heads
would you rather be a liberal without a head?
I can help you on that point with my foot-long machete
angry young man
angry young man
angry young man
angry young man
right wing fiend
right wing fiend
gotta come clean
I'm a right wing fiend
I rock this scene
with my fist pumping
can't stop saying it
right wing fiend
I awakened at age fifteen
to left wing plots and conspiracies
government taxes my paper route money
and gives it out to the homeless and junkies
well, they say that I'm too young to know who I am
I'm old enough for an NRA card
I'm packin' heat for the militia man war
soon I'll come knockin' and ask who you are
[ paraphrase of instrumental section of 'Who Are You', chanting 'right wing fiend' instead of 'who are you' ]
my head is itching with free market schemes
I'd give a hippie a case of the fleas
if you wanna live a communist life, be my guest
you'll be scrubbing my boots for the rest [of your life]
well, they say young conservatives...[etc.]
conspiracy
conspiracy
conspiracy
conspiracy
right wing fiend
right wing fiend
hail to the chief
I'm a right wing fiend
the chicks all scream
when I do strip tease
hung like the devil
a right wing fiend

December 5, 2002

Animal Freakout

I have ramped up my animal rights activism to the point I am devoting an entire page on this personal site of mine to propaganda. Check it out.

Whoa I'm on fire

I am gonna make a super killing on the next album. Finishing up the 5th song to go on it. This one is very funky, has a soulful hook but with a hard-edged electric sound - cause everything today has to be hard-edged ;')

Baby Mother

baby mother
like Sally Struthers
she cries and blubbers
if I had my druthers
I'd ditch my baby mother
she was a royal baby
raised by Esterhazys' butler
and Sound Of Music nanny
with songs to make her pious
für Mütterland Öesterreich
and now she is a mother
a gap-toothed welfare sucker
she squirts them out by the hour
and hits me up for cash at Christmas
here son, meet your mother