JoseCuervo
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When all is said and done, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" may end up best remembered for a profound silence -- the seven minutes President Bush remained, after learning that the country was under attack, in front of a Florida elementary school class, quietly reading a book about a goat.
But Moore brought the noise, too.
The use of music in his blockbuster film made for pithy editorial comment, sardonic humor and memorably jarring scenes: The Go-Go's sing-songy "Vacation" blared as Moore documented Bush's extended postelection stay at his Texas ranch; chords instantly recognizable as belonging to J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" chimed when Moore analyzed Bush's failure to take a military medical exam; a photomontage of Bush family and associates buddying with Saudi royals, set to REM's "Shining Happy People," played like an MTV video; American soldiers in Iraq chillingly shared a song they'd piped into their tank as a battle cry -- a heavy-metal tune with the refrain, "The house is on fire / Burn, motherf--, burn!"
Moore's anti-Bush offensive rolls on, fortified mightily with less than a month to go until the presidential election. Today, more than 3 million copies of the DVD version of "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be dropped on stores and Web sites, along with two new Moore books and two new compilation CDs -- all of which seem aimed at moving both product and swing voters.
"Fahrenheit 9/11: Original Soundtrack" (Rhino/Warner Bros.) collects the songs that underscored Moore's narrative, including obscurities such as Joey Scarbury's "Theme From 'Greatest American Hero' (Believe It oOr Not)" -- hilariously juxtaposed in the film with Bush's "Mission Accomplished" flight-suit photo-op aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. The problem with the soundtrack is that, with the exception of, say, Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," these tunes lose their meaning when taken out of context.
But "Songs That Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11" (Epic/Sony) is a different animal.ÊA collection of 14 tracks selected by Moore but not featured in the film, this CD answers the rhetorical question -- I don't recall anyone actually asking it -- What was playing in the director's headphones as he prepared to bash Bush? More important, it remains squarely, as the politicians say, on message, accurately supporting Moore's political agenda in powerful and specific ways that hold up simply through listening to it.
"When I make a film," Moore writes in promotional copy, "I take my portable CD case and place in it a series of albums that reflects the mood I am in.... It is not easy to crash Capitol Hill to ask congressmen if they would like to send their sons to Iraq. Music helps get us there."
The music Moore chose helps remind us, too, that issues surrounding the Iraq war -- especially inequities in terms of who actually does the fighting -- are not new concerns. Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" was recorded 35 years before Moore stood on a Washington, D.C., street corner, trying in vain (and mugging for the camera) to persuade members of Congress to encourage their offspring to enlist. When John Fogerty sings, "It ain't me / I ain't no senator's son," his reference to the privileged few who avoid combat, now as then, sounds timely and unforced.
We're still very much mired in the unrest of Vietnam -- and in wartime concerns that first entered popular debate two generations ago -- so it's not surprising Moore loaded up his Walkman with Vietnam-era anthems such as Creedence's. And, because Moore loves to play the Everyman, he quite naturally turned to America's best-loved Everyman troubadour, Bob Dylan, and to this generation's closest approximation, Bruce Springsteen.
When Dylan sings, "You never ask questions when God's on your side" on a track from 1964's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," he helps establish just how little the times really have changed. (He could be singing about modern Islamic fundamentalists, Bush's neocon cronies or both).
On Bruce Springsteen's heart-wrenching version of "Chimes of Freedom," Dylan's 40-year-old lyric -- "The chimes of freedom flashing / Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight" -- reinforces Moore's assertion that exerting power does not always equal sending troops, and does so with elegance.
Moore may be a heavy-handed ranter on screen and in print, but he's got an ear for beautiful subtlety as a DJ. Singing Dylan's "Masters of War," Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder articulates the theme that ran through both Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11'": "You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled / Fear to bring children into the world."
The crunching guitars of Zack de la Rocha's "We Want It All" comes as an unwelcome sonic barrage after Dylan's acoustic charms. But the track successfully echoes the Orwellian reference Moore used at the end of his film: "Someone's at my door screaming hate is love," goes the lyric, "that silence is security and war is peace."
There's humor in these selections: Joe Strummer's winking introduction to the Clash's "Know Your Rights": "This is a public service announcement ... with guitar!" There's tenderness, too, as in a Dixie Chicks Stateside lament, "Travelin' Soldier." And just one miscue: "Where Is the Love?" by the Black-Eyed Peas (suggested by his nieces, Moore claims) sounds out of place, a decidedly unhip attempt at hip-hop inclusion.
