I’m sitting here, in a bedroom slowly being readied for a move-out, naked and slightly chilly. I’m listening to one of the greatest albums of the 90s and considering the notion of pop-cultural “correctness”.
Bad Religion was one of the most “correct” bands of the 80s and 90s. The most correct, I’d wager, is Rage Against the Machine. That group may well be the most correct of all time, even if most took them neither seriously nor literally at the zenith of their influence. Our loss! (Free Leonard Peltier.)
“Progress” is playing while I do what I’ve done for the last few days: I get angry in the morning about the state of Israel and their brutal apartheid. I gape and gawk at my tax dollars blowing up apartment buildings in Gaza. I nearly work myself to tears thinking about the base injustice and inhumanity of it all.
And then I scroll Tinder for a bit, never intending to do anything other than scroll. Maybe I masturbate afterward because I became sufficiently horny from the mere thought of maybe one day dating again(?), maybe I don’t. I probably should. My mom’s dad and my dad’s dad both had prostate cancer, after all.
I get out of bed and try to forget that I live in a fallen world, a late-life convert to gnosticism without a shred of spirituality. I experience intermittent success.
“You” is also a very good track. “You”–>”Progress” is a very good two song block. Everyone should go out and buy a copy of “No Control”.
5 stars