Fall Out Boy has made a very cringe cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," the original itself already a piece of canonical cringe. But that's not what it sounded like to me at 8 years old, when it first became a massive hit. At the time, it was like reading Pynchon and DeLillo combined: a complex web of esoteric 20th-century lore I would have to spend years decoding. This was, of course, because I knew almost zero history yet.
Plus, it was a list song, and I really liked those. Another was "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M. They were really in the same category. "Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide." That could have just as well been some of Stipe's impressionistic mumble-jumble. I didn't know what any of that stuff was; I thought it said, "Start with a homicide, turnin' up the little mind."
I thought it might be fun to re-do Fall Out Boy's redo, but instead of doing a shot-by-shot remake with new and less photogenic actors, I would try to recreate that sense of esoteric parataxis I felt originally. My version is both more personal and universal than Fall Out Boy's; it departs more drastically from Joel's version and references it more specifically; its zeitgeist straddles both eras, rather than trying to be the nostalgia of the present moment; it forms a secret history of the same, but is one that is not to be trusted, which is mere honesty.
I've been teaching myself piano, but it remains to be seen whether this tune has enough gas for a third fire.
Robert Anton LaVey, Borges, Burroughs Barthelme;Al Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard, Old Mother too;Pizzagate, Gladio, Mad Men, Michel Foucault;Bernays, Burzum, Borat, Billy Jo-el Boogaloo.Fight Club, Brave New World, They Live, Gilmore Girls,Bill Nye the Science Guy, and The Catcher in the RyeSpielberg, Kubrick, Agents in the MatrixNeuromancer, Tiny Dancer, Twilight Language, goodbye[Chorus]Zodiac, Leo Strauss, Lewis Carroll, Mickey MouseSex magick, Chaos magick, magick with a “k”Atom-Waffen, Antifa, Megadeth, MetallicaZionism, Mugwump jissom, Mormon CIAEpstein, Weinstein, Ed Kemper, Ed GeinYaweh, Wotan, Michael Jackson, Peter PanAlan Moore, Alan Watts, Tesla, TavistockWolverine, Cyclops, Hippies were a psyop[Chorus]Age of Aquarius, Dr. Hilarius,Hassan Sabbah, Black Sabbath, Sabbatai ZviRed Army Faction, NeoreactionJohn Dee, Crowley, Ayahuasca, LSDJack White, Jack Black, Jack Parsons, KerouacHP Lovecraft , HG Wells, Octopus, In-Q-Tel,Age of Horus fun, admiral MorrisonI feel Black-pilled, I just read programmed to kill.[chorus]Hand of Death, Manson, "Stranger in a Strange Land"Bowie, Berlin, Baphomet, EsalenSchizo-phrenia, British BeatlemaniaCrispin Glover, Zizek, Francis Edward Dec,4-20, 88, Hell’s Angel’s, Heaven’s GateJFK – CIA, what else do I have to say?[chorus]Uri Geller bending spoons, Freemasons on the moonNambla, Roy Cohn, Evola, adrenochromeTwin Peaks, Twin Towers, The Thalidomide KidEnd the Fed, Paul is dead, no-one heard a word I saidMK-Ultra, PKD, Uncle Ted KaczynskiRockefeller, Rothschild, Jimmy Saville Oscar WildeArtichoke, Fukuyama, Monarch, GematriaInfotainment, Infowars, I can’t take it anymore