On October 18, I helped host a ZOOM No Kings virtual rally, meant to include & encourage resisters who couldn’t attend in-person events.
We didn’t want droning speeches, and had no canned list of answers to the question of “What Comes Next??” —except for recalling Dr. King’s concisely profound quote from an elderly civil rights marcher: “We jus’ got to keep on keepin’ on!”
So besides inviting attenders to check in, shout out & share a bit, I searched for online music videos to vary the tempo and keep toes tapping.
I wanted tunes and videos that were on point, uplifting, but also irreverent and funny: in my experience, humor is not an option or luxury for resistance movements, it’s a necessity. Music too.
But is the MAGA-47 Resistance producing any songs that were up to snuff?
I knew of one. It appeared in my Facebook feed unannounced a couple months ago. Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer and a 20-person string band & chorus came together with an instant earworm on one of the season’s persisting themes:
And then there was this new thang called AI, supposedly sweeping the world. A doomsayers chorus is crying out that it will soon kill or enslave us all.
Interesting. But in the meantime, were any of its early adopters putting AI to work to help foil the monarchical coup??
I soon found the answer: not just Yes, but “Hell, yes!” In the current profanity-laced argot. In fact, AI videos already came in a wide variety of genres. The one that first knocked my socks off was a near-perfect parody of Jimmy Buffett’s monster 1977 hit, Margaritaville. The resistance title–
#2 — natch, is Mar A Lago Ville.
The AI visage was uncanny, not only in its resemblance, but in its evocation of the emotional emptiness that echoes like tinnitus behind the gilded facade:
AI’s potential in parodies came across even more strongly by plundering classic movies. The first that really struck home was a reworked clip from The Sound of Music, the highly-suspenseful scene where the Von Trapp family face a full concert hall in German-occupied World War Two Austria, on the cusp of attempting to escape Nazi pursuers. In the film, Christopher Plummer sings tenderly of Austria’s national flower, the Edelweiss.
In the video, “Edelweiss” becomes
#3 – Epstein Files, and for me at least, the bit and the scene worked powerfully.
But AI has highly talented real-life competition in this burgeoning field. Leading the pack in my view, is the Marsh family, which I’m tempted to refer to as The Fab Four (Plus Two), because they’re spearheading a new “British Invasion.” (For young readers, this is a reference/homage to The Beatles. Look it up.)
Ben & Danielle Marsh and their four kids are from Kent, England, and during the pandemic lockdown, their homebound musicmaking became a time-filling side hustle, which is now approaching the cusp of real stardom.
Parodies have been staples of their output, and in recent years more and more of these have been aimed at the “target rich environment” of the multiple Trumpian catastrophes unfolding across the pond.
I selected four, from a significantly larger number:
#4 – Fun Fun Fun (Til her Daddy Takes the Iphone Away),is non-Trumpian, and reworks the 1964 Beach Boys ditty into a hilarious self-deprecating satire of our current addiction to small screens.
#5 – Measles & Polio Down in the Schoolyard, a skillful tribute to Paul Simon, and a well-deserved needling of the renegade Kennedy anti-vaxxer now working so feverishly to cripple American health policy.
#6 – Freedom of Speech, a title that’s self-explanatory, to the calypso -ish tune of Under The Sea, from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It includes a clueless cameo by JD Vance. And
#7 – Bohemian Trumpsody, for this Autumn 2024 plea, the family took on Queen’s legendary, multilayered Bohemian Rhapsody lament, and applied it to the imminent U. S. electoral calamity of November 2024. It’s a challenging piece, one they refashion in a brilliant performance.
There’s lots more Marsh material on YouTube, and at their website.
But back to AI and movies: a pounding disco beat keeps the next video, by “Executive Odors,” moving through nightmare scenes wrenched and twisted from 1977’s smash Saturday Night Fever. The film’s signature tune, Stayin’ Alive, is revised into a well-crafted parody—
#8 –Sayin’ A Lie, Sayin’ A Lie, starring a morbidly obese Trump, fixated on his golden toilet, then masquerading as John Travolta’s Tony Manero, and spreading corruption and degradation everywhere he goes. Fever is a powerful film, and Sayin’ is a potent commentary.
By contrast, while The Sound of Music is not my personal film favorite, its backdrop of rampant fascism, can’t stop firing many imaginations. So it gets a twofer on this list, with a shot at the Project 2025 crusade to reverse the progress of women’s rights and roles. There’s a natural target for a remix in Julie Andrews’ song about Favorite Things. But it took a witty New Zealander, Shirley Serban, to get it so right, in:
#9 – My Favorite Things About Project 2025,
Among my many favorite things here, is watching Andrews bouncily beaming as she chirps coercive couplets such as
“Give birth on average each 43 weeks,
Do not argue. Just agree when he speaks.
Yes, I’m far right,
And these teachings,
Might seem kind of mad,
But then I remember my husband is king,
And forget all the rights once had . . . .”
Back in real life music, a folk singer/songwriter from my generation belted out what immediately seemed right for the session’s closing. Tom Paxton, who is 87, has been a working musician for three generations, and is now only semi-retired. He wrote and led the emblematic song for October 18, and for these weeks after, which is:
#10 – NO Kings Here:
Not in my America,
No Kings Here,
Not in my USA . . . .
I found dozens more videos, and new ones appear daily. I’m interested in hearing from other viewers: which of these tops your chart? Which got the most laughs? Exposed the most truth? Plucked the heart strings? Uplifted the spirit? Or which new ones are not-to-be-missed?
Whatever— Keep on singing, and keep on keepin’ on.