Since November 4, I’ve also been holding my breath, waiting for Obama to rip off a rubber mask in best Mission Impossible tradition and reveal himself to be Tom Morello, in recent years most visible as left-wing folk activist The Night Watchman, but best known for his stellar guitar work with Rage Against The Machine. When Obama first broke into European radio, I kept thinking that Tom Morello was getting a lot of coverage, as the Harvard alumni share a clear, clipped way of delivering their sound-bytes. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded Tom becoming President of the United States as he has done nothing but talk good political sense since materializing in the Californian music scene in the Early Nineties.
But since November 4, Obama’s voice seems to have dropped by a tone, so all signs of future mask-ripping have vanished. In the run-up to election night, I had the chance to speak to quite a few American musicians and once again, it was a joy to encounter people who might be downcast about the situation in their country but still talk about politics with enthusiasm and relish. Randy Newman told me that the misdemeanours of the Bush administration meant that he’s had to make up less stuff about America in recent songs, and Dave Wyndorf of Monster Magnet thinks that many of our present troubles stem from Ike Eisenhower having sold the US out to the military-industrial complex he later demonised. I didn’t get a chance to talk to John Mellencamp, but he also had interesting things to say, i.e. that the only achievement the baby boomers could claim as their own was the smoking ban. Mellencamp stuck his neck out by telling the Deutschlandfunk that although he supported Obama, he wasn’t sure the Democrats had made the right choice of presidential candidate for the 2008 election. I’m glad he’s been proven wrong.
