Pepper Spray Cop meets The Defiant Ones

I really like the design of Charge's album cover for The Defiant Ones. Colin Viebrock did an amazing job capturing our anarchic mishmash sensibility, sort of bleak Pythonesque collage. So I was very amused to see in my in-box this morning a note from Colin linking to this instant classic from the exploding pepper-spray cop meme, using an image that appeared as part of our cover art. The act of the cop is of course unconscionable. But it's amazing to see how that act is exploding through the culture as a touchstone for people's anger and disgust at our financier overlords. Here's a great collection of images from the meme. The way the image is playing out reminds me of this classic image from the sixties, except evil and totally ass-backwards, which typifies the current crush-the-majority zeitgeist.

And here's Colin's design from the inside cover of The Defiant Ones, for our own cheery take on the glamour-show that is war (see more images from the cover-art on the pages of our website). The background photo that appears in both images is actually an archival photo from the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Some conflicts just keep echoing through history.

The Occupy Movement's message sometimes seems confused. I went to check out the original site at Zuccotti Park when I was in NYC at the beginning of October. There was a motley collection of protestors, drum-banging hippies (argh), and yes crazy-people with out-to-lunch placards, but there was an energy to it, and the conviction that people need to stand up and say enough. There are so many things going wrong around the world right now, from the economy to the environment, it's clear the problems are huge. And NOBODY in power is DOING ANYTHING. Then when the cops resort to such casually blatant thug tactics, it's obvious that we're in one of those spasmodic moments when the values at the top and below are totally misaligned. I'm still angry about the self-interested douche that was elected Toronto's mayor by scared, self-interested people. Something's gotta give. Vote the fuckers out.