Boston University:
Tree, Critical Mass, Kill the Hostages play RAIL benefit

On February 27th RAIL hosted a benefit concert at Boston University to
help fund the Massachusetts RAIL contingent to the Jericho '98 march
and RAIL teach-in in Washington DC. The concert featured rockin music
from local bands Tree and Kill the Hostages and the New Jersey group
Critical Mass.  Jericho '98 is a march to free prisoners incarcerated for
their political views and activism. RAIL is sending a contingent to this
march (March 27th) and hosting a teach-in on the criminal injustice
system the next day (March 28th).

Kill the Hostages lead off with a hardcore anti-authoritarian set. RAIL
had not heard their music before so we can't offer a commentary on the
politics of Kill the Hostages but we encourage our readers to check them
out since they were willing to play for a fundraiser to help fight the
criminal injustice system.

In between performances we had an open mic. RAIL members read letters
from prisoners and offered commentary on the nature of the criminal
injustice system as well as the larger issues of how and why we need to
fight imperialism with communist leadership. Other folks performed
poetry and read essays or made announcements about upcoming events.

The second act was Critical Mass (see review in MIM Notes #156). They
performed some excellent political hip hop that focused on the criminal
injustice system and the evils of capitalism. Critical Mass is touring the
country promoting the Jericho march and RAIL has hosted a few concerts
with them. Most of the audience came to see the local bands but many
people were drawn in by the compelling music and politics of Critical
Mass who had a large crowd shouting "Off the fucking Pigs" while the
cop (who the university requires at all concerts on campus) stood outside
to "keep the peace". Da Wizard, one of the members of CM, made a point
of making the cop uncomfortable because "when cops are near me they
make me uncomfortable so let's make sure he knows he is not welcome
here."

Critical Mass promotes anarchism as the solution to imperialism. RAIL
disagrees that this is an effective position: only with military force will we
be able to keep the imperialists from coming back to power after they
have been overthrown. But even with our disagreement with their
anarchist positions, the overwhelming majority of Critical Mass' music
has an excellent political message and our unity in fighting the criminal
injustice system made Critical Mass' performance an excellent addition to
the concert.

Headlining the concert was Tree, a popular Massachusetts band with 3
CDs out and a large following. Tree is also promoting the Jericho march
and played the benefit to help with our efforts to fund the RAIL
contingent to the march. Tree does a lot of environmentalist work and
also features some good anti-imperialist politics.

In their song "Homefront" they say "I raise my fist for Justice/I feel
unmade/Ifeel betrayed/in the U.S.A." This song salutes the I.W.W. and
Tree seems to go along with the pro-white working class line that white
folks in this country are, on the whole, exploited by the capitalists. RAIL
doesn't buy this when we can see that even though white workers make
less than their bosses they still earn quite enough to be bought off and
supporting imperialism as a group. Tree's song "X-Communicated"
features lyrics attacking religion as an opiate of the masses: "Reaching for
the bible/like a junkie for the needle/Fucked up fundamentally, you're
fucked up/Leaning on your church/like a cripple on a crutch/There's a
white devil among us." They go on to point out the connection between
religion and capitalist authority of the white nation: "I hold all you right
wing christians in suspicion/There's a white devil among us/There's a
white devil in office/Devouring all the stupid fucks."

A lot of the youth who came to see Tree were not into the music for the
politics. But this provides an excellent opportunity to influence youth and
we salute Tree for keeping the politics in their music and hammering on
the messages. RAIL made sure to insert a strong political theme into the
show and we challenged all the youth to check out our literature, find out
the facts about the system for themselves and take seriously the task of
changing society for the better.

The benefit was a big success: we raised over $500 and everyone who
attended seemed to enjoy the show. And, of course, we made sure they all
got copies of MIM and RAIL literature.