Of the topics snared and bitten and stomped to colourless mush;
Gulf War Syndrome. Media Distraction / Media Subversion (“Become The Media!”). Military Strategy (“All we’re doing is planting the seeds for more Osama Bin Ladens!”). Medical Insurance (“What kind of twisted, fundamentalist, Christian Nazi logic is this? The life of the unborn child is sacred… But once they’re born? Fuck ‘em!”). The Iraq War (“Hey, I support the troops when I say Bring Them Home!”). National Security. The importance of local elections. The worth of individual action - however slight - in the face of condescending snobbery from the More Radical Than Thou elements. The loss of American jobs to China.
And so on and so forth.
This extraordinary spiel sets the tone, more or less, for the remainder of the set. Incredibly incisive critique coupled with brilliantly rabble-rousing sloganeering, deeply distressing facts and figures nestled alongside the kinds of asides that have a fella hunched and spluttering with the laughter careering out his face like a herd of rabid gazelle.
Upon reflection, also, a fella notes that, in his continual emphasis herein on the importance of grassroots politics, of local elections, of “widening the base of the pyramid”, Jello is concerning himself not only with problems but with real, workable solutions - long-term solutions that may take a year or twenty to bear fruit, but which, in their very far-sightedness, are steeled against the disappointment and sense of futility that might otherwise have gripped hold the soul with, for example, the re-election of George W Bush. Biafra, it becomes apparent, never expected anything else. These things don’t change in a few months, or a year or two years. The work put in now is in service of a reward or series of rewards flittering up out the cracks in the stone maybe a decade hence.
At near four-hours long, In The Grip Of Official Treason is immense and demanding. It requires a sharpness of ear and brain that most likely isn’t gonna hold out much further on first listen than the hilarious, scathing attack on Hilary Clinton and her “friends” near the end of the first disc - “These people are not our friends!”
What it requires is that the listening be spread out over three days - a day per disc - and even then, each disc in itself has so much goin’ on that the chances of picking it all up on one spin are nigh-on impossible. Too often the mind will bound towards this or that revelation or musing as a woebegone sailor to the sirens, and will reel around those rocks for maybe forty-five minutes, contemplating and assessing, before returning to the shore, only to find that the disc has ended, that the applause and the hooting has stilled and that nowt but the hiss of the radiators or the batterin’ of the wind at the windows and doors remains.
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