It’s Got a Beat and You Can Froth to It

Attention, downloaders! Music writer Taylor Parkes has come up with a compilation of “Right-wing Rock” songs which shows that winger musicians may be better than winger comedians, but only just. From the anti-evolution ditty “The Monkey Song” to Leroy Van Dyke channeling David Horowitz in “Mister Professor,” there’s something to gag everybody. Touched Mix has the links and some commentary to boot, as with “Bush Was Right” by the Right Brothers:

World-class suckers The Right Brothers might not know what “cognitive dissonance following disconfirmed expectancy” means, but if they look it up they may just find a picture of themselves. MTV’s decision not to playlist this song proved, according to the Brothers, that it is guilty of liberal bias; presumably, this also applies to the countless Clear Channel rock stations who also didn’t play it.

Along with stuff that sounds like background music for the dinner-party scene in Freaks (L’il Markie’s “Diary of an Unborn Child,” anyone?) there’s music of undeniable quality (Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” The Kinks’ “Get Back in Line”) along with guilty pleasures like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” (though Keith is awfully anxious these days to let people know he’s a registered Democrat who was only joshin’ with the Dixie Chicks). There’s also at least one certified classic: “Taxman” by the Beatles:

This track’s electrifying brilliance is undimmed, but so is the Daily Mail-reading repulsiveness of its message. Yes, the top rate of tax in mid-60s Britain looks like a misprint, and yes, it must have hurt like hell for nouveau-riche scruffbags like The Beatles. Nonetheless, the fact that George Harrison wrote his famous gripe at having to contribute towards schools and hospitals while sitting next to the swimming pool of his Esher mansion does leave a distinctly un-fab taste in the mouth.

There’s also some pop culture history. Who knew the Strawbs were a bunch of Tories? Maybe if I’d been able to get through even one of their records I’d have figured that out.