Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hakim | Greatest Hits



Listen to "Wala Waled"

Pick it up here.

As snow pours down into New York, thousands of people remain without power--to say nothing of those who have lost their homes altogether. (The fate of more than one of my co-workers.) So it seems almost criminal to pull down this uber-celebratory disc of polycarbonate plastic to rip for you all this evening. But, then, we do have something to celebrate tonight: The United States seems to be on the verge of slowly--key words "verge" and "slowly"--shifting a bit to the left. 

Legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Same-sex marriage in Maryland and Maine and probably Washington? (I've sort of lost track of that.) Tammy Baldwin elected as first openly gay senator in Wisconsin. More women in the house of reps now than ever before. That whole Todd Akin thing shut down by Claire McCaskill in Mizz freakin' Zouri while in Indiana, God's Will intending for Richard Mourdock's political career to get fucked. Finally, President Obama reelected, despite having pissed off just about as many liberals over the last four years as he has conservatives.

Yes, I know that close to half of the voting population voted for that other guy. And that celebrating your gay marriage by getting stoned is not legal in most states--or federally, for that matter. And that Michele Bachmann, a woman who believes that slavery was eradicated by our founding fathers, that getting vaccinated for HPV leads to mental retardation, and that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government, actually held her house seat in Minnesota. (Having lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul for six years in the 1990s, I am extremely disappointed with my former state mates.)

But, still. As even conservative poll aggregation enthusiast Dick "I Goofed!" Morris seems to be realizing, the United States is a multi-culture, not a mono-culture. And we sort of showed that, kinda sorta, via last night's elections. 

So, in celebration: Could there be anything more life-affirming, more get-you-up-off-your-ass-and-dancin', than Hakim? I found this best-of album at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street a couple of days after Sandy had passed and picked it up to lift my spirits. A few days after that, I offer it to you, for yours.

6 comments:

  1. Hakim? Haha, that's funny, really. Such an oddtastic choice, Gary.

    No-one here in the Middle-east was surprised by Obama's reelection. Actually, quite few here do give a damn about the USA. I heard that the country is now going to witness one of its worst-ever economical tailspins. Even Wall Street journos are predicting the worst is yet to come (unlike the POTUS' own victory speech where he claimed that the "Best is to come").


    In another similar vein, I wrote a beat-poem last night for this occasion, dedicated to a girlfriend who lives in Chicago, Illinois. Here's it:

    Ct'd.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Anomaly of The United States of America: Oh-Bummer! Obama won!
    A Beat Poem.

    Dear, Obama:
    You won nothing and has now, the best seat in an anomaly
    Called the United States of America; this union;
    This place of malfunction in unison
    Given a time to develop into fixed fictional mayhem
    An appearance at the end of the world of stagnant idealism
    A creation of European madness
    A dictatorship felt in safety of unaccountable schemes
    Like a dead dog full of maggots
    After its masters left it more than half a millennia ago
    Proclaiming freedom by taking it from others
    A country made on a roster of statistics and experiments
    With only freedom taken away as the catalyst
    Useless minds, with paradigmal choices
    Electoral citizenships of the keypaded doom clucks
    Conspiraled war tacticians on terror like a dick in the robin eye
    Diseased prohibitorial problematics with the federal recognition
    Slow progress stale as a dreamt idea called ‘The Dream’
    A struggle to build burdens and debts instead of life
    And anthems sung for deities bred with force and power
    Flags made out of symbolism for the Devil
    Co-tested in old manuscripts revealed in revelations
    A country writhed in sodomy and sex like a bouncing ball
    And mega-boards and giant TVs distributing consumee pathologies
    Going from analog to digital lost in the dialogue
    The modern-day Gog-a-Magog
    Where words are used as truncheons in lieu of a massacre war
    Appalling speeches ululatory killer machines
    Wading through the fat, fickle-minds of millions’ dreams
    Fed like parasites on diets full of toxics and tease
    Beneficial chaos for the money-making idiot idolators
    U.S.e-lessly nauseating with required capabilities
    Of the fool, hero, beach-bodied lover, and the badass whore
    Shitlessly boring like their charismatic president puppets
    Suckling chemicals independent like air in an asshole
    The message says on the bottle ‘Live and Let Die’
    Statism, anarcho-capitalism, presidentialism. You-name-it-ism
    The type they throw your way you fix in that hole
    Idiolised filth continuously reposed
    Races, faces, places, ... Sit and do nothing: There you go
    Because you’re Big on their confusion and it hurts them to be you
    Amerivolutionary bastards with their inexcusable crimes
    Improving this piece of old shit picking it back to life
    The game unnerving for these electing Amorons
    Fault-filled peasants, yokels, rubes, hicks and horny bucoles
    Politishitians kill their speech for the win, oh yeah
    For the winner is acting inside the most valuable stage
    Peace is violent and violence is peace they adhere
    Mass-class-holian en-mass riots will soon appear
    Oh, the plotholes, the ramified people of ol’Bailey boobah
    Rehearsed in super-pooper-computer like a film comic
    Dirty tricks and sacrificial assassinations for the public galore
    Securazy safe-sacks and cops’ asses playing court
    Christian zealotry and the Judaical damnation
    Topple this, top that, one day-more-crazy every damn day
    Cosseting to schizophreniac Dr. brain-wash Ron Paul
    The philosophers’ ring shoved in communitarian, secularity states
    Who’s going to take charge? Of what, I should say?
    This Corupporation? Those English kings?
    Rockefellers, Morgans, the megalocracies
    Rulers of ideologies dead from times Roman
    All for one common purpose of rebuilding Babylon
    Or, so they want you to believe and conceive
    Oh, sheeple fuck off! You nefarious human filth
    You oral fixations and première works of doom
    Veterans of the United States Americans paying in their lives
    The Living Checks, Security-Numbered factorials
    Made Gods of the Already-Made dainty fanfare
    Exhausted, yellowing, frayed ray-caked mannequins
    Psychotic, insulated, animotional, dirty nobodies
    Societal strata-fucked high-minded useless street spenders
    Miracle dildos conferring in the human-billfolds of cock and cash
    Entertainmentalists smoking their paradise to ashen cinders
    Teutonic mad-hats of the old tantrums headless, faceless, and averse

    Ct'd.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who could blame you, Blamericanusholes?
    You look good only in shit-brown tan
    Hiding there in your shit-choked shelters of magical bauds and bytes
    Yeast-infested FaceBook is at the helm now
    Tell-tales and signs of how the ground no longer loves you all
    Oneiric cataclysm of contextual retweets, of tweeple poos
    Visionaries of hung journeys Kerouacian wikidiots
    Filtering sunlights through beeping ‘Beam me’s of protocol malls
    Tiptoeing in asphyxiational reap rape and sexual wanderlust
    Licking your lips to hairgina views of shaved and paved perversions
    You’re drunk with power and hormonally-fucked so to speak
    Your ideopathos makes your non-existent minds weak
    Beauty? Boastful foul mouths of the ghost-bellowed brains
    Cancerous prima facie’s paying in the doll-ar dazzle dues
    You are the politicians’ paradises and preachers’ hells
    Hymnified bullshit of the Now Salvation of your ills
    The earth will bear you no more
    Superman is dead, clinching his jaw so tight
    Far from righteous he was the snake oil of your foil
    And gently, soon, you’re going to fall
    Like a petal’d wedding mold falling smelling of death
    The earth will be your chamber’s execution hall
    The sun has whispered its secrets old and young
    Spitting you soon some of its breath
    Oh, devious skies come and comet-spew your tongue
    A nuance on this dirt is camera’d in doom at last
    Soon, the U.S. will get its ass handed to it fast
    Let’s roll the film, now: Hollywood is good

    Action!

    OBAMA WINS THE ELECTION!

    Yeah, babe! Let the endtimes roll.

    H.H.

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  4. This sounds great! It may replace Dancing in the Streets, the current song to reflect my post-election mood.
    I was very happy with the election results, Michelle Bachman aside. I got nearly everything I wanted. It was better than Christmas.

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  5. gays can smoke weed while getting married in washington gary. it's a pretty great time to be an american.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love your taste in music and eclecticism, your writing and now, even more, your politics. Thank-you and...congratulations!!

    ReplyDelete