Tom Morello & others Join Occupy Guitarmy

As many of you radicals know, this May first is International Workers Day, (also known as May Day), and the Occupy Movement is calling on people to participate in a General Strike (No work, no school, no business as usual). Over in New York, specific plans have been made for large protest marches that will include a "Guitarmy."

A call has been made for a 1000 musicians to enlist and other blogs have reported that The Nightwatchman, (AKA Tom Morello), will be leading this guitarmy to Union Square where he will be performing at 4 p.m. alongside artists like Immortal Technique, Ben Harper, Das Racist, and others. Morello has showed the Occupy Movement a lot of support; he's played some sets at a few of the Occupy encampments around the country, including in L.A., and even did a dance party for Occupy at SXSW earlier this year.

Here is what Pitchfork Media has said about the march route:

Morello will also lead a "Guitarmy" of 1,000 guitarists, string players, and singers that will march from New York's Bryant Park, through midtown Manhattan, down to Union Square, culminating in a performance at 4 p.m. An open rehearsal for the performance will begin at 12 p.m. in Bryant Park, to practice Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land", Sergio Ortega's "El Pueblo Unido", Willie Nile's "One Guitar", the Nightwatchman's "World Wide Rebel Song", and the traditional protest song "We Shall Not Be Moved".

The song list seems pretty tame and lame to me, but this is still a pretty cool idea!

Tom Morello at OccupyLA

The LA Weekly's West Coast Sound blog had a good piece today about Tom Morello's recent visit to Occupy LA this past weekend. He was there performing as The Nightwatchman on Saturday as part of a music festival to celebrate the one-week occupation of City Hall.

The author of the post mostly gets into the role of music in protest -- specifically in this Occupy movement that started in Wall Street (NYC) and has spread to hundreds of towns in cities and towns across the nation. (The Nightwatchman is also set to perform at OccupyWallStreet tomorrow).

Morello had some great lines in the interview, like: "I think that music's combination of harmony, rhyme, truth and groove speaks to the reptilian brain of human, in a way that's different from the written or spoken word...Check the historical record -- you don't win unless you've got an excellent soundtrack."

There were many other musicians at the festival, but Morello was probably the most popular. (In fact there has been a lot of cool bands playing at OccupyLA since day one and I hope to blog more about these bands next week).

Here are links to a few official videos from the Occupy LA media team: The Nightwatchman performing Maximum Firepower and Worldwide Rebel Song.

By the way, Morello has been pretty busy lately. He had a new Nightwatchman album recently released, and today was the official release of the first issue of a comic book he is writing, (which I hope to review soon)!