Fuck Revolutionary Music: Enter The ShiبShiبs

Welcome to my new band, 'The ShiبShiبs' (pronounced 'Shibshibs'). I play bass. The official description of the band goes something like this:

Because of today's uprising pseudo-religious stream in Egypt, Bonzo, Spanker and Dirty were to go with the flow, joining the Vox Populi. While loaded with booze; they managed to compact all of their different spiritual trances and thoughts into 'The ShiبShiبs'.

Although 'The ShiبShiبs' were conceived as an antithesis to the cultural wasteland soon to be imposed on us by the Muslim Brotherhood,  this is actually my reaction to my social network feeds being constantly engulfed with terrible generic pop/rock songs since January '11. All containing either the words 'Revolution', 'Midan' and 'Tahrir' in the title. I can't stand them, not one single one. Don't get me wrong, if the as-yet-nowhere-near-finished revolution (despite what the songs try to make us believe) has inspired creativity, great. I've seen some beautiful gems (mainly painted across the streets of Cairo) since last January. What gets me is that they're mostly using the revolution as a crutch to sell their bland style of uninspired Egyptopop, which the masses then gobble up. It's a clever plan, using reinvigorated national pride as a tool to sell bad music that panders to the lowest common denominator, replacing the word '7abibi' with 'Thawra'.

Why not do something DARING and ADVENTUROUS (like the January uprising)? Probably because that won't appeal to Randa and 3aza who need their musical dosage to be safe, diluted and restrained. If you can't condense it to a catchy and irritatingly loud ring tone to proudly display your slave like status on the metro, then forget about it.

How to tell the difference between revolutionary music as art or as a product? Simple. Did they record a cheesy video in Tahrir? Are there a lot of V signs, smiling veiled Egyptian girls and flags?Are the sheep on your friends list, the ones who were initially against the uprising because it scared them, then went to Tahrir during the last days to get their picture taken by a tank sharing it on Facebook and Twitter? Then I think you have your answer.

Anyway, here's our first song. It's about bitches. Our fanpage can be found here.

ARCHIVE: The Army Are The People (Remix) / (الجيش هو الشعب (ريمكس

I wish I'd started this blog earlier. For years I've been playing with audio, images and videos and have generally just had them scattered all over the place and would inevitably lose master copies (and sometimes whole copies) in various formats/hard drive failures. I now see that this is a nice place to collect links to all my creative works, not so much for other people but so I can find them! Fortunately I found a treasure trove of lost songs and photos (under my other pseudonym 'Hector Osbert') on an old hard drive belonging to my mother. I will collect and post older stuff here and intertwine them with newer thought ejaculations.

I'd like to start with this one, it's actually not that old but I never really got to show it to many people. During the last Eid El-Fitr (feast celebrating the end of Ramadan), the SCAF jumped at the opportunity to dish out some juicy propaganda with the general message of 'The army are the people - fuck with us and you're only fucking yourselves'. One of these videos can be seen here:

I laughed so hard at this that I'm pretty sure I was only seconds away from exploding a blood vessel in my brain. What cracked me up the most is just how plain awfully it was executed. The soldier looks on edge and plays with his gun like he might need to whip it out at any second and mow down some unarmed civilians and the definitely not cute little girl (granddaughter of a general perhaps?) looks terrified. This inspired a quick re-edit:

My only regret is that I didn't have the ability to cross out the 'هو' and replace it with 'قتل' in the end credit. That would have made it read, 'The army killed the people' (which they unfortunately did very shortly afterwards on the 9th of October). Still, I'm happy with the result of an hour's play on Windows Movie Maker.

Mohamed Naguib Yousef Qotp Elkashlan: "We have had enough of corruption"

Mohamed Naguib was Egypt's first president, not Gamal Abdel Nasser as many people think. In fact, the regime that Nasser instilled (passed onto Sadat, Mubarak and now headed by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and that we're still fighting today) seems to have taken measures to erase him almost entirely from public consciousness. Here's why:

"He wanted to phase out the political influence of the military and return the country to civilian rule, believing that the role of the military was not to rule the country, but rather to protect those in power. The army, he thought, could interfere to change a corrupt regime, but then it should withdraw."

Almost 60 years later, we're still fighting for the truly civilian rule desired by Naguib. On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood was starting to get a lot of support at around the same time so it may be very likely that they would have assumed control had democratic elections taken place. All I'm sure of, is that Egypt (and the entire Middle East) would have been a very different place had he not been deposed by Colonel Nasser.

Here's a picture of him on the cover of Times Magazine with the rather ironic quote "We have had enough of corruption".

فن بانداوي

Egyptian pop culture mash-up of two post-revolution icons:  The Sad Panda and Nude Photo Revolutionary.