Looking for a revolution

Today's post, I warned Ely, was likely going to be a manifesto.

Most workdays are fueled by tiny bursts of caffeine and larger battles with self-motivation. For me, I'm powered in part by a deep love for what I do and in part by deep resentment about the myriad levels of total apathy involved in what I do. As such, I want to write fist-waving paragraphs on the nature of this beast and what, if anything, one can do to help right the situation.

And then it keeps me at work through seven-thirty and by the time I roll home, my brain is mostly turned off, and the manifestos are laid aside. Here, though, are a few things I would like to say about Against Me!

Against Me! is a band with the kind of fans who feel passionate about their older work and very angry about their newer work, a band who has the kind of label that gets the album leaked months before street date but doesn't pull together a digital strategy or preorder backup plan to help deal with it effectively, and also a band who actually manages to sing really compelling songs about digital strategy, about anger, and about throwing in the towel all together. If I were them, I'd feel defeated, but they just keep making records.

Some people would probably say similar things about me. There's a line in this song that probably explains why we do it at all, and it goes like this: "Do you remember when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?"

Here is a link to the digital EP preceding the June album that contains this song.

Against Me! - I Was a Teenage Anarchist