buckle up, learning to love the bomb again

So there’s protest mu­sic built of de­fi­ance (think Ohio) and there’s protest mu­sic made of resignation. 

A pow­er­less­ness that feels more like a slow mo­tion lament that can’t help do much more than play in the per­verse hu­mor of the dire situation. 

If you weren’t around in the ear­ly 1980s, it’s re­al­ly hard to un­der­stand what hap­pens when
Doom im­pends for so long that it transcends
Giv­en and
Af­ter­thought and be­comes part of The Rou­tine.

At the time, the Con­stant Saber Rat­tling and specter of Im­me­di­ate World­wide Nu­clear Ruin be­came that kind of present that soaks it­self into the at­mos­phere so that even things that aren’t about it have no choice but to be at least a lit­tle about it. 

Liv­ing next to an Air Force base (lit­er­al ground zero) in Tor­nadoland meant you had no short­age of con­trails and siren tests to test your nerve. Is that con­trail arc­ing too much? It’s not the third Sat­ur­day is it? That siren could be cur­tains for all of us. 

At times the anx­i­ety would make you tense if a tv sta­tion took too long be­tween com­mer­cials. You’d grab the re­mote and start chan­nel flip­ping for ei­ther re­lief or confirmation. 

The Nu­clear End Of It All fig­ured in all too fre­quent night­mares stoked on by apoc­a­lyp­tic flicks like The Day Af­ter (1983),

the BBC’s Threads (1984) (nev­er ever ever watch Threads if you plan on sleep­ing again), 

and it had no choice but to seep into the mu­sic as well.

99 Luft­bal­lons (1983) made it playful, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Dcd1aUcE

Two Tribes (1984) made it disco, 

and Men At Work’s It’s A Mis­take (1983) made it real on a lev­el that stung deep­er by be­ing so per­son­al to how we were all ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it: A lan­guid shrug of gal­lows res­ig­na­tion. Our fate was pre­des­tined and well out of our hands and we can’t even re­al­ly do much with it but shake our heads at the sad ab­sur­di­ty and just kind of drag on. 

It’s a ter­rif­ic song and prob­a­bly one of their best, so none of that is a cri­tique of the art itself. 

In fact, it’s to its cred­it that this is not a Change the World song. 

It lists along in the pow­er­less­ness of a hor­rif­ic sit­u­a­tion and through that cap­tures a ter­ri­bly spe­cif­ic fla­vor of hope­less­ness that I/we haven’t felt since 1983.
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2018 Ja­son Malmberg.

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