Another working class British band from the punk/ post-punk era with a "Nazi-esque" name, Blitz (as in blitzkrieg) with their strangely affecting song New Age.
What's often overlooked is that adopting Nazi imagery in the 1970s and early 80s was one of the best ways working class kids had to stick two fingers up to a fusty and stifling establishment, which, saw Churchill and later Mrs Thatcher as icons. Such behaviour must be seem in a context of revolutionary anarchy rather than any of the death camp, racial purity nonsense that it is now routinely associated with.
The swastika of punk iconography and fashion, ironic songs about death camps, and the band names -- Joy Division/ New Order, London SS (Mick Jones), Theater of Hate, a.k.a. "The Pack" (the Wolfpack), and later Spear of Destiny, etc. -- all redolent of England's worst nightmare: the Nazis!
Like Oi, of which Blitz were a part, football hooliganism, and even the much misunderstood National Front, the invocation of the Third Reich was totemic rather than political, a sign of an assertive working-class street culture. For this reason, rather than being opposed by the Left, Oi and other ostensibly "Nazi-esque" manifestations of White urban youth, should have been supported by it as an "authentic culture" in the sense meant by Adorno and Horkheimer the leaders of the Frankfurt School. In betraying Oi, the Left essentially betrayed itself.
LYRICS:
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
as minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say
is the kids don't care
When I hear
I sense a rhythm
I feel the beat
I hold your colour
When you've got me running
and you stop my machine
You try to tell me something
that has never been
When you stop me running
with my own pack
You know you got me swearing
that I'll get my own back
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say is the kids don't care
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rhythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
As minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
And the kids everywhere
And all I gotta say is the kids don't care
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
as minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say
is the kids don't care
When I hear
I sense a rhythm
I feel the beat
I hold your colour
When you've got me running
and you stop my machine
You try to tell me something
that has never been
When you stop me running
with my own pack
You know you got me swearing
that I'll get my own back
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say is the kids don't care
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rhythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
As minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
And the kids everywhere
And all I gotta say is the kids don't care
0 comments:
Post a Comment