my response to the $700 bank bailout and the pending $35 billion (yes, 35, they raised it by $10 billion over the last week) bailout for the car companies. the finished version is gonna be on our next album but i didn’t want to wait a year to put it out for ya’ll so here it is. hella raw, recorded in 1 take, live in my living room.

If you’re as pissed as I am that banks that finance the rape of our planet and carmakers that produce gas-guzzling tanks that pollute our air and have outsourced most of their best paying jobs to other countries get billions in corporate welfare while the rest of us go broke, maybe it’s time we organize and DO SOMETHING about it.

www.workersolidarity.org
www.protest.net
www.iww.org

and, of course, www.beltainesfire.com for more music.

Posted: December 12th, 2008 under hip hop, music, video.
Comments: none

’sup folks -

this one goes out to hip hop artists in particular.

i’ve had this idea for a concept album floating around in my head for a while but haven’t had the time to sit down and write it all out, and as i was thinking about it again yesterday i realized it would make a great compilation.

the comp would be called ‘letters from the underground’ and the idea is an album made up of songs that are all letters from members of an underground revolutionary cell.  the setting is a dystopian not-too-distant future where the threat of ‘terrorism’, rising oil prices, and looming economic collapse have allowed corporations to seize control of everything directly and set up a ‘ruling committee’ made up of the heads of all the biggest corporations that rules all of north america (and from there most of the rest of the world) by direct decree.  it’d be light on the sci-fi ish, heavy on politics.  Something like an updated version of 1984, but told with personal stories and a variety of perspectives and in the form of music.

the letters could be about anything - how much someone misses their family, a poem for a comrade who’s been killed by the pigs, political rants about the system, ballads about if and how nonviolent resistance is still possible, songs about direct action and underground organizing in the face of heavy repression, even accounts of hunting down and assassinating members of the ruling committee, anything.

it’d be distributed online for free as a promo over the rapanarchists.net site and include links to websites and info for all of the artists who contributed.  i’d like to have it be a compilation of only explicitly anarchist hip hop artists, but if there isn’t enough interest I’ll open it up to other genres of music as well.

If you’re interested, let me know.  we need 8-14 tracks total to make this work.  feel free to forward this if you know someone who’d be a good addition to the comp.

the deadline to send in tracks would be end of july, august at the latest.

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under hip hop, music.
Comments: 4

Live video of Beltaine’s Fire performing ‘Desert Sunrise’ at the Beale St. Bar & Grill in SF.  Big ups to Cory for shooting the video for us.

Posted: May 7th, 2008 under Beltaine's Fire, hip hop, politrix, video.
Comments: 1

I’ve just gotta take a second here and throw out some massive respect to ICE CUBE, for dropping some real shit to start off the year and putting it all in perspective for motherfuckers that want to complain about how violent Rap music is. fuck ya’ll. get the government to stop torturing and murdering people all over the planet and then maybe we can talk about violence in music.

Posted: January 6th, 2008 under culture war, hip hop.
Comments: none

this is an older video, from 2004 I think. i found it as i was digging through the content from my old site and figured i should post it up here.

the video was taken at the CAI open mic in SF that used to run on the street corner at 16th and mission. big thanks to Louis Yansen who hooked me up with this video, he took it for his documentary on the modern radical movement post-sept. 11th. The film is called “Stirring it Up: The New Dissenters” and you can find out more about it here.

Posted: December 12th, 2007 under culture war, hip hop, video.
Comments: none