So, as Blasphemous Guitars started to work Cure songs into the set a couple of years ago, we brought back Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name Of..." just because it's fun to put a song that isn't angry over it.  "Killing An Arab" fit perfectly and usually got the best response in our set, even though I always was waiting for the wrong person to hear it the wrong way.  Well, a few months ago some "gray hairs" asked for their money back at the Belly Up, possibly because of the song.  We never found out exactly why.  My dad was there and said there was no way we should be doing it, despite my continually lengthier explanations before we'd play it.  Even though he's the last person who'd get what made the mashup great, it made me think hard about doing it, knowing some folks might've been so offended that they asked for their money back.  If you walked in on the middle of it and there was a Jewish guy onstage screaming about killing arabs, I could see how one just might not see the hilarity of the context.

I thought doing it at U31's Feel The Noise was a fairly safe bet.  It was, by far, the audience with the most people who'd know the Cure song that we'd played to in a long time.  It got a huge response but right after our set, our friend Karen told me that there were some people that wanted to kill me because of it.  Apparently, she'd tried to calm a guy behind her down mid-song by explaining the song's origins coming from Camut's The Stranger.  I would've loved to have seen that.  Slowly, ALL of my friends started asking me if I'd seen the guy freaking out and giving me the finger through the whole song.  I hadn't.

When I got outside, some friends stopped me to talk and I realized someone was hurling insults at me from a few feet away.  His friend came over to talk to me and soon I was getting "constructive criticism" from two non-Arabs, mostly that we shouldn't do the song because of what's going on in the middle East right now.  Fair enough, even though there hasn't been a time in over 60 years (600?) when there wasn't something awful going on.  They had a valid point but they were drunk, so validity turned to stupidness more than a few times and the main guy even threatened two innocent bystanders at one point.  My favorite part was probably when the friend kept repeating that we were a good coverband so I asked Angryguy if he'd liked us before we played the song and he didn't have the guts to tell me no.  I had to beg it out of him but he said that U31 is supposed to promote independent music and that they shouldn't ever have coverbands play there (sorry Dottie!). 

Afterwards, tons of strangers were coming up to us and saying how great it was and screw that guy.  Yeah, freedom of speech blah blah blah but just because these guys weren't even really sure why they were offended doesn't mean someone more articulate couldn't and shouldn't be. The song is ridiculous anyways so I don't mind cutting it from the set, which most everyone is finally admitting is probably a good idea.  Even Robert Smith now changes it to "Kissing an Arab" (laaaaaaaaaaame). I did get Angryguy to smile when I told him we might change it to "Grilling Of A Bagel".  Score one for the Jews!

Sadly, the "Arab" part of the Cure medley didn't make this video because Angryguy distracted the cute cameragurl but enjoy part 2:




See if you can pick out parts of Lovesong ("I will always love you"), Hot Hot Hot and Friday I'm In Love. Filmed in extreme darkness cos that's how we roll.  Thanks to the other 99.8% of the hundreds of folks who seemed to like us just fine and Gabe & Saul for having a sense of humor enough to invite us. We won't be posting our semi-rehearsed medley of MGMT's "Kids" & Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize" but people seemed to appreciate the effort.