BS: Music as a WMD

Subject: BS: Music as a WMD
From: GUEST,Richard H
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 01:06 AM

A former classmate who ended up as a nuclear physicist once told me the real big money in science lies in developing weapons that can devastate and kill like never before.

Likewise I heard this morning that Heavy Metal music was being blared at Falluja at warp volume and no doubt the Heavy Metallers and Rappers are raking in big bucks in royalties from the military.

Music has of course been long used in warfare. Joshua's brass section brought down Jericho and bagpipes have probably won the Scots many victories.

So why shouldn't the rest of us cash in on this windfall? I took up the bow a few months ago and now play a mean (some would say, lethal) fiddle which has people and livestock scattering even unamplified.

Would any other Mudcat guests with similar talents be interested in putting together a CD of "Music that kills" which we could sell to the US military for a vast sum and donate all proceeds to Mudcat?

A small gesture of appreciation for our time spent here.

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:34 AM

I've got my Piano Accordion... and a Bodhran...

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: greg stephens
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 03:12 AM

I could play "Puff the Magic Dragon" on my banjo, which would give bin Laden food for thought, I would guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:04 PM

Depends what you want to destroy. There's an Irish slow air named "Planxty I(E?)rwin" that I believe increases the amount and flow of peace, joy, and love in the world every time it's played. Put together a fiddle, whistle, uillean pipes, etc. and record that on a "loop". We could end war and enmity pretty thoroughly, in time.

Weapon of Misery Destruction, IMO.    Tw

Yeah, yeah -- old hippy. I know. We may never die, except the druggies -- and some haven't faded away yet, either.   Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: GUEST,donuel
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:11 PM

Beyond music there is a crowd control weapon that utilizes very low frequencies to disrupt a person's nervous system. It works with controled explosions sonicly amplified and directionalized.
Sypmtoms include extreme nausea and bleeding.

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:15 PM

It's said that the music of G F Handel froze the collective consciousness of the German people at the C17 level for about 250 years.

Then along came Hitler and got it flowing again - but it's still not clear exactly WHERE it's flowing. Or even why.

daylia


PS Does anyone know who Hitler's favorite composer was? Might be of some help here ...

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: mg
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:16 PM

I know most of the verses of 99 bottles of beer on the wall..I can't remember if someone else does too..if so we could do a duet. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: ToulouseCruise
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:17 PM

I had a couple friends sit in with myself and the regular guy in my duo -- one with a drum kit, the other with an acoustic guitar. We recorded the night, and though I have yet to hear it, I have the strange feeling that the Pentagon will be offering me millions of dollars for its potential as a WMD (Warbling Musical Deluge).

Brian...

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:37 PM

a few thousand repetitions of Vaughn "MushMouth" Monroe singing "My Heart Knows What the Wild Goose Knows" oughta bring them out of the mountains of Afghanistan, surrendering en masse...if that doesn't work, we bring up the big guns..Bob Dylan and William Shatner in a duet.

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 02:50 PM

Here's an article about how Hitler used music as a WMD on his own people. Looks like no German composer was left unsullied.

Reaching back into the 18th and 19th centuries, Hitler mobilized Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Bruckner and Wagner to stir the masses in a musical language that was purely German.

Today, in cultural terms, the Nazis are usually remembered for what they were against. In music, this meant Jewish composers like Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Mahler, Jewish librettists like Stefan Zweig and myriad Jewish musicians. It also meant atonal and avant-garde music by the likes of Arnold Schonberg, Alban Berg and Kurt Weill, as well as jazz, swing and anything associated with black American music...


The last paragraph is rather interesting ...

A more chilling reminder of the regime's identity with music comes at the end of the exhibition: a recording of a Berlin radio broadcast on May 2, 1945, in which one Karl Hanke announced, "The Fuhrer is dead." Hanke's long paean to Hitler then climaxed in music. The chosen work was Schubert's Eighth Symphony, the "Unfinished." For the defeated Nazis, it was a metaphor for Hitler's life work.

In light of this discussion, that Symphony just might get Finished yet!

daylia


PS   Sorry if I'm just not getting the humor here. I love music, I consider it sacred .... and to think of it being used as a WMD makes me wanna haul off and HIT SOMETHING (not someone but something) REAL HARD!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 09:24 AM

How about we just play records of Leonard Cohen and watch it drive the enemy into killing themselves.
My Mum used to subject me to the torture of Cohen in my wee small days and that was always my feeling after hearing him.

muppitz x

Subject: RE: BS: Music as a WMD
From: Genie
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 12:03 AM

Actually, I think I recall hard rock and/or rap music being used by our intelligence officials, in conjunction with 24-hr-a-day bright lights, to "soften" or "break down" prisoners in the past.

But, hey, if electric guitars and the odd banjo can't make a perp talk, you can always supplement WMD with some well-timed SBD!   §;-D