The Bobs are at it again, and it’s every bit as good as it always is.
Where to begin? I love Bob Vylan. Easily my favorite punk artist. Earlier this year, I made the 4-hour drive to Chicago to see them on what might be their last US tour ever, and the show was incredible. A brilliant blend of punk with politics. Socially aware, active, defiant, and demanding action and change in the face of corruption. These themes have been constant through the years of music. A few months after that show, Bob Vylan was headlining a festival in their native England, live on the BBC, when their calls for an end to genocide in Israel drew the outrage of the political elite in London and the US. Despite thousands of people chanting in unison, an investigation into the band was started to see if they violated the UK’s hate speech laws. 4 different levels of police launched investigations. Five months later, no charges have been filed, but the cases are still listed as open. Bob Vylan’s publicist dropped the band, and other festivals dropped them from their lineup out of compliance with the government’s scare tactics and claims of antisemitism. To be very clear, Bob Vylan is not antisemitic, and their chants were only after making it abundantly clear that Bob Vylan stands with those who oppose genocide, that they do not oppose Jewish People or Israelis, but fuck the IDF and anyone committing genocide. They chanted for a free Palestine, a free Sudan, a free Congo, and freedom to all people everywhere. The US immediately and permanently withdrew Bob Vylan’s visas.
However, while the governments suppressed their message and tried to ruin their careers, while festivals capitulated and dropped the band from their lineups, the people of the world took notice. Their albums and songs soared to new heights and stayed up for months. Other bands dropped from festival lineups in solidarity, and people demanded refunds. Festivals that capitulated lost money. New festivals and venues invited Bob Vylan to play to larger crowds than ever before.
Then, in early October, Bob Vylan announced a new single- “Sick Sad World”. I assumed this song would address Palestine, genocide, or at least the media and government’s attacks on the band and their hypocrisy in calling his words violent while sending literal bombs and money to Israel to continue the very real violence of genocide against Palestinians. In an unsurprising turn of events, I was wrong.
The song begins as if it were written to be released in October, with a very Halloween-esque intro, “ooh, it’s getting scary outside”. Of course, he’s not talking about ghosts or goblins, but the same state of the world he’s been criticizing for years. The first verse covers topics like media propaganda, increased poverty, a shitty economy, the inability to get a job with a criminal record, inflation, the rising cost of food, no jobs, and working in mines. The clever wordplay through the verse is very on brand for Bob Vylan, where a single word from one line might have its meaning twisted a little to lead to the next line.
The second verse is one of my favorite verses in any Bob Vylan song, where the subject turns to policing, falsifying reports, and a lack of accountability.
The lyrics in the song are great, but the rhythm is what really makes the song. It’s catchy all the way through, and the tempo is solid, but after the second verse, the rising tension builds up heavier and heavier before breaking with another round of the repeated refrain of “it’s a sick, sad world” in a way that begs for aggression.
I don’t know if this is a standalone single or a sign of more to come, but for now, I’m just going to be happy that I got some new Bob Vylan letting me know I’m not mad for realizing that I’m living in a sick, sad world.
One of my biggest passions is educating on police and state misconduct. I am a firm believer in the dismantling of the police infrastructure. The current system is corrupt in design, intended to maintain and enforce inequality, but also forced to pit police against citizens in an us vs them mentality, and to give corrupt power to officers without checks and balances. For the rest of this review, I’m going to take the lyrics from the second verse, in order, and give an example from the US where this is demonstrated. Bob Vylan wrote these lyrics from the UK, where they are every bit as applicable. Inside my paragraph will be a link to a news article about the incident that I cited.
“I see this pig in his shit stealing what isn’t his”.
In September of 2024, a Charlotte police officer was given a mere 2 years’ probation for stealing $900 from a man he arrested and sliding it in the door of his patrol car. The man was pulled over for speeding and then found to have a warrant for his arrest. When the officer searched him, he pulled $900 out of the $8000 that the man had on him, and hid it in his patrol car door while at the police station. The victim immediately called the officer out, and the other officers on the scene initially refused to search the officer who stole the money. When he did get busted abusing authority and stealing from the public, his punishment was less than what the general public would get for the same crime.
“Take a life or take some innocence, the jury acquits.”
Tyre Nichols was murdered by the Memphis Police on January 7, 2023. Police claimed they pulled him over for reckless driving, but street cameras show that he was following traffic laws and not driving recklessly. Moments after police ordered Nichols out of his car, they began beating him with batons and kicking him. Nichols managed to get up and flee the scene on foot, but was caught again about 100 meters from his mother’s house, where officers kicked, stomped, punched, pepper-sprayed, tased, and baton-whipped him to death as he called for his mother. The officer colluded and lied on their police reports, manufacturing claims for the reason for the stop, false allegations of resistance, and they called EMTs who waited 16 minutes before administering aid, while talking with the police, as he desperately needed medical intervention that may have saved his life. 2 of the police officers pleaded guilty. 5 officers were found guilty of federal crimes. However, the officers who pleaded not guilty, who did all the same acts as those found guilty, were acquitted by a mostly white jury.
“Nobody’s Safe, these sickest even target women and kids”
In Aurora, Colorado, a woman took her kids and two of her nieces to have a girls’ day out and get their nails done. They went to a salon, but it was closing, so they went back to their car and started looking up other nail salons when the police decided to run their license plate. There was no reason to run their license plate; they were sitting in a parked car in a parking lot full of cars. The reason was racial profiling. When they ran the plate, it came back as stolen, but that is an incredibly difficult mistake to make. The car that shared a license plate that was stolen had Montana plates, but they were in Colorado with Colorado plates. The police pulled all 5 people from the car, handcuffing the mother and two of the 4 children and having them lie face down on the concrete for 30 minutes while they searched the car and looked for evidence. Nobody posed a threat- but that’s not the point. Nobody is safe. The city settled a lawsuit for $1.9 million.
“The bad apple leaves a sour taste. The remedy is to cut the whole tree down, if not now, then when? Relying on reform, you see how much money they spend?”
The US spends $135 billion per year on policing its own residents in just state and local police. That is more money than any country in the world spends on its entire military other than the US, China, and Russia. The US also just approved a budget of $170 billion from taxpayers for ICE to police our streets. All of this excludes the estimated $100-150 million per year in settlements for police misconduct.
“And still lying when their colleague puts a life to an end”
While I mentioned the Tyre Williams case where police conspired to lie about the details of the case, this time I wanted to highlight a rare case where the liars got caught and convicted- and one with less deadly consequences. In this case, two officers went to arrest a man on a warrant. The man lived in his parents’ basement, and the parents let the police in. They led them to the basement, the song came out of his room, and the cops had him turn around and face a wall. He did, and then the police grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Whether he said something can’t be determined, but he clearly wasn’t physically resisting. One police officer beat the man with his flashlight on the back and legs while the other punched him several times. Neither officer wore body cameras. The man’s father ran upstairs to get a cell phone to record, but by the time he got back downstairs, the police were lifting the now handcuffed suspect and leading him from the house. Neither officer filed a use-of-force report. One officer says he doesn’t remember if the man was taken to the ground. Both officers say the man was never struck, that he never resisted, that there was no reason to use force, so they didn’t. They denied that anything had happened at all.
They didn’t notice the CCTV camera in the wall in the basement that recorded the entire incident without sound. Both officers were fired for perjury. Police will always lie based on the amount of evidence that they believe exists.
Written by Gimp Leg
