Wacko!
July 25, 2019 12:01 AM   Subscribe

David Koresh wasn't just a charismatic cult leader but a gifted musician. Here's a song from a discogs-banned compilation "cult sounds" among others of Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven's Gate and the Fleetwood Mac's Jeremy Spencer and Children Of God. This youtube channel has more songs of him, such as "Sheshonahim" and "Waiting So Long". And for my collector friends, probably Shoko Asahara's music costs ~$100 on discogs.
posted by avi111 (14 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This isn't getting a good reception at all, sorry. -- goodnewsfortheinsane



 
It doesn't sound that good.
posted by lauranesson at 12:05 AM on July 25, 2019


Like, I mean, I sing way better than this dude and haven't tried to convince a number of humans that I'm a messiah only to lead them to their deaths along with the deaths of children. I think this post might should be taken down. You're cool, avi111, as far as I know.
posted by lauranesson at 12:11 AM on July 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'll note that discogs-banning usually comes from "this compilation or reissue is unlicensed" or "this release is by a hate group". Here it's probably the former - I've never heard of the label that's doing the reissuing.
posted by solarion at 12:50 AM on July 25, 2019


I... don't feel great about this. The Waco siege was a tragedy of law enforcement incompetence, arrogance and dishonesty, and David Koresh is probably the least important part of it historically. I think he's, still, all these years later, a massive distraction from the real dysfunction in American society, government and policing that Waco reflected.

He is not absolutely lacking in amateur talent, but I don't feel like this justifies drawing attention back to Koresh himself: the world has wasted too much attention on him already, and there doesn't immediately seem to be anything in his music to justify digging him up again.

I think talking about Waco remains important, but that talking about Koresh actually functions as a distraction from that.
posted by howfar at 1:09 AM on July 25, 2019 [10 favorites]


Shoko Asahara's also a cult-leader who's responsible for lots of dead people

Wait...Asahara was a mass-murderer. Koresh was a piece of shit, doubtless, but he and Asahara are just not comparable as criminals or historical figures. Placing emphasis on Koresh's "responsibility" for Waco, and thus distracting from the enormous culpability of the US and Texas governments in the deaths, is a reflection of the way that all news reporting at the time parroted an official line about the siege. That discussions continue to focus on Koresh in that way (or at all: the guy was a nobody) shows that efforts to obscure inconvenient historical realities continue to succeed.
posted by howfar at 1:31 AM on July 25, 2019


Should make clear that it's not a personal criticism. It's just that discourse around Waco is so corrupted by disinformation that I feel like it's actually counterproductive to talk about it without continual caveats. The fact that Waco is a foundational event in the mythology of the Christofascist movement that is currently threatening US democracy and possibly human life makes that doubly important, especially on left-leaning forums.

It's important for us to recognise outrages of state violence for what they are. At this point in time, though, it still feels like right-wing idiots actually have a better understanding of what actually happened at Waco than many educated people on the left. Maybe I'm wrong and everyone understands and just doesn't need to express it, but I'm not sure that's right.

None of this is a defence of Koresh: abusers and cult leaders everywhere can go fuck themselves. But Waco is a really important event and I think it's important that we're extremely careful with how we talk about it.
posted by howfar at 1:59 AM on July 25, 2019


And then there was Charles Manson's sub-Monkees folk-pop, with songs like “People Say I'm No Good”.
posted by acb at 2:27 AM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Church of Misery promised to release a song about Shoko Asahara called "Subway Poison Gas Attack," but as far as I know they never did. I wonder if it was a little too close to home in Japan.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:19 AM on July 25, 2019


Wut?
posted by sjswitzer at 3:29 AM on July 25, 2019


The Beach Boys recorded Charles Manson's "Never Learn Not to Love".
posted by ouke at 3:50 AM on July 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Woah, never heard that one. Dennis Wilson was the one who got kind of snared by the Manson family people, right? I wonder if that's why he's the one singing.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:02 AM on July 25, 2019


Come out, and live with a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country.
posted by the painkiller at 4:08 AM on July 25, 2019


Why would anyone want to listen to or perpetuate the music made by murderers and cult leaders?
posted by mermayd at 5:02 AM on July 25, 2019


This? Is the best of the Web? THIS?
posted by Faintdreams at 5:03 AM on July 25, 2019


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