I was looking for songs earlier on All Music that referenced 2011 and came upon the following, courtesy of a brilliant guitarist for two seminal bands of my youth, Keith Levene, of the Clash and Public Image Ltd.
Here's the song. It's called, simply, 2011 and it's from an EP called Violent Opposition
It's from around 1989, certainly a very transitional time for music.
To me this is just sheer brilliance. It's rock, and post-rock and post-punk, all at the same time. It would make a good companion piece to the music of such Krautrock auteurs as Can and such post-rock musicians as Tortoise. And of course, one hears the deep, throbbing groove of dub reggae, an element that Levene brought to PIL during his time with this seminal group. Of course, it was a form of dub mixed with other elements.
Taking this up for a bit of musical/sociological/semiotic interpretation, though, I can't help but think about both the intensity of this instrumental track and the possible meanings of the expression "violent opposition," which, like the name, "the clash," refers to conflict, but with perhaps a bit more intensity. And politics being a struggle, according to post-Weberian sociological definitions, over the "legitimate use of force" by political institutions, particularly the state, I can't help but wonder, as we roll into the year that the song references, whether or not we might see the kinds of violent opposition occurring recently in other places happen here, particularly given the likelihood of a growing class divide, political inertia in Washington, and a divisive rhetoric that marks all of our discourse and makes reasoned arguments a near impossibility. What will happen if enough Tea Partiers wake up from their slumber and realize that they have been duped?
Time will tell, I suppose.
In the meantime, another set of prophetic imagery, this time from the poet Yeats, springs to mind.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
As well as one more video
Now, excuse me as I go fish out my PIL albums.