Various Artists: Axis of Justice: Concert Series Volume 1

When Fahrenheit 9/11 was kicking up a cloud of controversy prior to its release, and when it was gathering up record-breaking box office and French movie awards, and when it eventually became enshrined as an emblem of both a new kind of politics and a new kind of filmmaking, my recurring thought was: what happens to this thing if Bush wins? What made it seem worth the fuss was its pragmatic rather than its artistic value. Its massive audience seemed like it could be enough to tip the balance in a close election. Now that it’s been unmasked as preaching to the choir, Michael Moore’s habits of grandstanding and disregarding facts and logic when they don’t suit his cause are doubly, if not triply, annoying. The wave of liberal artists and writers and filmmakers that followed Moore into the fray always seemed like cheaters, employing cheap rhetoric and twisted facts without remorse, but, I reasoned, they were useful cheaters, helping to balance out the Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs of the world who had been using the same tactics for years. But then on November 3rd, with all the righteous rage amounting to yet another loss, this alliance made me feel like I had woken up next to Christina Aguilera. I just wanted to take a long, hot shower and get the hell away.

And now along comes Axis of Justice: Concert Series, Volume 1, a CD and DVD set that makes me want to go back for another round of disinfectant. Put together by Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Serj Tankian (System of a Down), the Axis of Justice put on a series of concerts for the striking L.A. grocery workers which featured Chris Cornell, Flea, Jurassic 5, Pete Yorn, Wayne Kramer, and a few lesser lights. This soon took on a life of its own, turning into an anti-Bush, anti-war musical conglomeration. As with most such events, the music tends to get drowned out by the cause, but the first two tracks, an all-“star” version of “Where the Streets Have No Name” and Chris Cornell and Maynard James Keenan doing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”, aren’t half-bad. Cornell is a particular highlight, and his continued relegation to the lowest reaches of pop obscurity sounds all the more undeserved here.

That, however, is the last bit of pleasure you can expect to get from this package, and it soldiers on for a long time afterwards. The rest is bad politics, bad music, or both. On the bad politics side, you have lots of facile sloganeering, distilled in its purest form by Knowledge, a spoken word artist whose art seems to consist of making rhymes out of the most outraged sentences in Adbusters. Did you know that war is bad? Cause if you already knew that, you might not be all that edified by Knowledge’s “President Evil (Iraq Poem)”, an effort that makes Knowledge’s hatred of George Bush pale next to his hatred of subtlety. On the bad music front, well, anything run by the guy from System of a Down is bound to suck pretty hard, but the failures on Axis of Justice are only partly his fault. These all-star hootenannies are doomed from the get-go to being less than the sum of their parts even when their parts are a bit more distinguished than the ones used here. “(Free Jam)” and “Piano Improvisation” are to be avoided at all costs for self-evident reasons, and “Get Up, Stand Up” is purely for fans who like their reggae blindingly white.

Yet this low point is eclipsed by the true nadir, coming in the form of the Nightwatchman, that veteran of liberal rock comps, that earnest champion of the people, that interminably pompous jackass. He sings, “No one knows who gave the orders / No one asks about the crime / No one looks behind the curtain / And no one questions why”. Except for the Nightwatchman himself, of course, and maybe the Working Man. It’s this air of self-congratulation combined with an us vs. them mentality no less reductive and insulting to reason itself than anything to be found on Scarborough Country that makes Axis of Justice so insufferable. In an age in which thoughtful, political discourse is as endangered as it’s ever been, the last thing we need is a bunch of pop musicians pairing third-hand Mother Jones-isms with flaccid rock, rap, and folk. You can make a good case against Bush and the war, but if Axis of Justice proves anything, it’s that you shouldn’t try to make that case with guitars.