“The Last Refuge of Scoundrels” Playlist (reposted from Facebook)
The music has a lighthearted sound to it, but this is the song where The General Electorate’s SYNTHETIC BONES album begins getting darker. Written in March of 2016, the song is a reminder that nationalism, fascism, and jingoism are all phony forms of patriotism embraced by the lowest common denominator (and leveraged by the wicked) to move power away from democratic processes and towards dictatorships and totalitarianism.
This was the first track on the album to truly sound like a full-fledged 80s synth pop track, and an early one at that. Consequently, the artists in the playlist (those who influenced the sound) are on the early end of the 80s synth pop movement: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, A Flock of Seagulls, Thomas Dolby, The Nails, Ultravox, Kraftwerk, Yazoo, Fiction Factory, and Dollar, for instance. Of course, even among those artists, some established a long-standing place in the canon of popular music and artful pop; so, too, do some of the artists chosen for remaining in the spotlight from the earliest days of synth pop through the present: David Bowie, Eurythmics, New Order, and Spandau Ballet. And of course there is one contemporary artist who didn’t emerge until this millennium but whose sound is so closely aligned to the esprit of early 80s synth pop that I couldn’t resist including: Goldfrapp.
Please give the playlist a listen AT THIS LINK, and feel free to share with anybody who loves 80s synth pop and wants to hear some modern analogs who are carrying that torch. Every share who plays my track will help contribute indirectly to my bottom line. Also don’t forget that ALL of The General Electorate’s tracks are available on iTunes for purchase (or CDBaby if you want to pay nine cents less per tune and see us get a larger share of the take), or you can order hard copies directly from me by private messaging me!
LAST REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS LYRICS:
What could go wrong? Oh, what could go wrong? With the nastiest of men with the basest of motives And a mountain of money and an implacable throng. What could go wrong? What could go awry? An unshameable ego, a voracious need tor power, Glass panes on steel girders and his name writ in the sky.
And this is who will lead us. This will make us great. As we goose step in our guccis to gild our brand of hate. Bankrupt souls, of sanctimony, full! "Peace" purchased on a credit line of war, Not Matthew's Messiah, he's a China shop bull. The evidence is steaming on the floors.
What could go wrong? Oh, what could go wrong? With the nastiest of men with the basest of motives And a mountain of money and an implacable throng. What could go wrong? What could go awry? An unshameable ego, a voracious need tor power, Glass panes on steel girders and his name writ in the sky.
But he'll wrap himself in the rhetoric, rain thunder at dissent. Wrap himself in patriotic colors and clergy's cloth when it's convenient. It's not a slippery slope: it's a blind cliff course You're headed to, can't be reversed Patriotism in the last refuge of scoundrels. Religion is the first.
What could go wrong? Oh, what could go wrong? With the nastiest of men with the basest of motives And a mountain of money and an implacable throng. What could go wrong? What could go awry? An unshameable ego, a voracious need tor power, Glass panes on steel girders and his name writ in the sky.