Shut Up and Sing

Discovered there was a "Music Documentary" festival on this week in Lund, and flipping through the films I saw that a film about the Dixie Chicks called "Shut Up and Sing" was being shown this evening.

So we drove through the rain and got ourselves "Member Cards" for 50 SEK in order to be able to buy tickets for the nowhere near sold-out film. A tad different than the Berlinale...

I really enjoyed the film. I hadn't realized that the comment that one of the singers made about being ashamed that Bush was from the same state she was, Texas, was just something that had sort of slipped out. The reaction in the States was sickening.

Ignorant "patriots" denounced them, stomped on their CDs, made all the radio stations south of the Mason-Dixon line refuse to play their music, even made death threats. I mean, come on people, freedom of speech is in the Constitution, there is nothing to get worked up about here. Makes me happy not to share a passport with these people. One guy even said that freedom is speech is fine if you don't do it in public (!)

Especially watching these people waxing patriotic in 2003 about the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and about how fast they are going to win the war in Iraq - in 2008 it has a very bitter edge.

The bravery that the women showed as they went on stage in Dallas, Texas, despite the death threat was just magnificent.

I liked best seeing these three really tough women who just love to sing and play instruments and love their families and get high on being on stage with all those fans and who are the best selling women's band DESPITE the radio boycott - way to go, Dixie Chicks!

Got the CD "Fly" playing in the background as I write this, it's the only Dixie Chicks CD up in Sweden. Gotta make sure I have them all when I get back to Germany. They sing a special kind of country that I kind of like - not the "Stand By Your Man" stuff, but real woman stuff. Small-town US stuff. Emotional stuff.