(neutron is a long-time friend of this blog, and a talented musician to boot. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Wow! It’s been a crazy month, but with 3 days to go, we are 47 pre-orders away from funding Project: Courage and Consequence COMPLETELY on grassroots funding. The fun part is coming…

Karl Rove is coming out with a memoir called “Courage and Consequence”. We are putting out a compilation LP by the same name that is coming out before his book. Songs about, pertaining to, or answers to Karl Rove specifically. We are going to culture jam his memoir and wreck his special day by dominating google results, amazon sales, etc.

We also are making a hell of a compilation.

This is a completely grassroots effort funded by donations and pre-orders.

If you would like to help, please go to http://www.karlrovebook.net

$948 or 42 pre-orders of $20 each to go! There is still time.

Great article in this weeks East Bay Express (I’m even on the top right of the cover) about the Project.

All of that below the fold.

Thanks to the East Bay Express’s Rachel Swan for the excellent feature article in this weeks paper.

I big feature article in the East Bay Express about this record just came out.

Warning: plenty of explicit language within.

Observeth:

Bands of Courage and Consequence

by Rachel Swan

Indie rocker Conan Neutron has colorful ways of describing George W. Bush’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove. He offered a few examples over beers at the Uptown Nightclub: “Master of lies and manipulation.” “A man with blood on his hands.” “Shameless tactician.” “Lying salesman.” “Gandalf behind the scenes.” “Unconscionable, soulless asshole.” That’s only the beginning. Neutron also faults Rove for “all these wars that we’re still embroiled in, our economy being screwed, and gay marriage being used as a wedge issue.” Then there’s that “porcine face,” which, according to Neutron, resists even the softest lighting or the finest airbrushing techniques.

“Did I say ‘cocksucker?'” he added, his voice rising to a crescendo. Mere mention of the name “Karl Rove” is enough to get his blood boiling, and spur another fusillade of insults.

Neutron’s well-entrenched animus stems from eight years of watching Rove serve as “Bush’s brain,” by issuing terror warnings and launching warrantless wiretaps, among other offenses. Like many of Rove’s detractors, Neutron blames the erstwhile Chief of Staff for engineering our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, what really got Neutron was Rove’s recent comeback attempt, in the form of a new, self-aggrandizing autobiography. The title was the real clincher, Neutron said: “Courage and Consequence? Are you kidding me?”

Even as the ink dries on the pages, Neutron is planning his own project to coincide with Rove’s March 9 book release. Originally, he wanted to create a one-off band that would perform songs about Karl Rove, and show “what the book should actually be about.” The idea was to create a “Google bomb,” like the one that Richard Kim and Betsy Reed created with their Sarah Palin parody, Going Rouge. When Neutron broached the subject with friends, their response was so overwhelming that he decided to take the idea one step further. He devised an entire compilation of songs that go against the Rovian grain. He named the album Karl Rove: Courage and Consequence, in the hope that it would steal hits on Google and perhaps even trick right-wing book-buyers into purchasing the wrong product. Barring a lawsuit for copyright infringement, Neutron says his main goal is to mess with the retired politician “in some small way” – even if it only amounts to a few less book sales, or a slightly lower Google ranking.

To Neutron, Rove’s memoir and book tour is the equivalent of playing a show at the Hemlock Tavern: “You pump the show. You set it up. There’s a solid routine to it that basically includes a lot of people kissing your ass.” Thus, he continued, even a beleaguered politician can find ways to steer clear of critics. There’s a real danger that Rove could successfully reframe history, or at least capitalize on a legacy of bloodshed and domestic surveillance. It’s enough to get an activist rock musician hot under the collar. “He needs to be answered, and I don’t see that happening from anyone else,” said Neutron. “So I’ve elected myself curator of that.”

In fairness, he has all the right job qualifications. Thirty-one-year-old Neutron grew up in Modesto, where he was the small-town misfit with blue hair, guitar skills, and erudite parents – they named him for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (He added the Neutron part in 1996 and won’t reveal his real surname.) At age seventeen he moved up to the Bay Area, took a job in IT, and started the first in a series of offbeat rock bands, called Replicator. As frontman and lead guitarist, Neutron gave the band its distinctive nerdy stamp, writing songs with odd meters and Philip K. Dick references. Replicator enjoyed an eight-year tenure in the local club scene, and paved the way for Neutron’s second band, Mount Vicious (which broke up in August). In 2004 Neutron helmed Bands Against Bush, a precursor to the Rove project with its own, similarly seditious compilation. Neutron said that Bands Against Bush landed him on a federal watch-list. He was sure of it, he said, because in 2005 all his parking tickets went immediately to collections, and he received jury duty notices about every six weeks. He couldn’t pass through an airport security checkpoint without getting pulled out of line.

To complete Courage and Consequence in time for Rove’s book tour meant Neutron had to follow a pretty aggressive timeline. He hatched the plan on November 29, which allowed him four months to corral the bands, record the songs, mix the album, and set the marketing campaign in motion. Neutron also formed a new band, called Victory and Associates. Thus, he got to contribute an anti-Rove ditty of his own, entitled “Lies and the Lying Liars That Sell Them” (a spinoff of Senator Al Franken’s new book). Victory and Associates will perform its first show on March 18 at the Hemlock, several weeks after Courage and Consequence hits the streets.

It seemed improbable: a protest album with no financial backing, no promotional machine, and a deadline that brought everything down to the wire. But Neutron saw himself as a fearless David ready to fight Rove at all costs, even if it meant selling plasma to press up a thousand copies of the LP. Even he was surprised by the sudden onslaught of support. Thirteen bands signed on, ranging from local favorites (Heavenly States, Poster Children), to relative unknowns (Lambs of Abortion, We’re Gonna Fight the Eskimos Next). Some came so late in the game that Neutron had to request a prerecorded, premixed track. Even more shocking was the response from fans, who made pledges on Neutron’s web site to help fund the album. Neutron responded, in typical fund-drive fashion, with a tiered gift system. Five dollars guarantees a digital download, twenty dollars gets a digital download and copy of the vinyl LP. The sky’s the limit, he said. “Donate a thousand dollars and you get to write something in the liner notes, a kiss on the forehead, dinner with me – I don’t know.” As of last week, the album was already 34 percent funded by outsider donations, enough to give Neutron a little courage and consequence of his own. Or as he put it, “It takes a village to fuck an asshole.”

http:/www.karlrovebook.net

not bad! not bad at all.

42 preorders to go.

There has already been a great diary on the East Bay Express recycling stale insider dogma by calling Ellen Tauscher “moderate” instead of using the label “big business” which is far more accurate.

But that wasn’t the only major blunder by New Times Media reporter Chris Thompson. The more glaring example of his failure to understand the dynamics was his dismissing of the viability of the primary challenge to Tauscher. Thompson said that this was a “pipe dream” and declared that Democratic Party activists “won’t win” despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

That is what “they” said about Tauscher bagman Steve Filson in CA-11 who was stomped by 24 pts in last year’s primary in a more conservative district right next door. It was a landslide, he was beaten like a drum. Filson is a punchline in East Bay politics.

That is what “they” said about the primary campaign against then-Congressman Jeffery Cohelan who was again in a neighboring district to Tauscher but lost his re-nomination even with the union support Tauscher won’t enjoy.

That is what “they” said about Joe Lieberman, who had been the Democratic Party VP nominee yet also lost his primary in no small part to the netroots.

If you want to know what bands are playing, check out the East Bay Express. But don’t expect them to help you understand political dynamics they don’t get.