THE GOOD PART WE READ BOOKS SO YOU DON’ T HAVE TO

Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB (Faber and Faber) By Jaime Lowe

Ugly Hate Machine

White-power music takes a digital path to the mainstream

“[ODB] didn’t follow the
law, he never seemed
to have his driver’s
license (suspended or
not), he almost always
had drugs stashed in
the glove compartment,
and was ghetto enough
to get caught, but not
enough to know how
to use the law.…ODB’s
response when pulled
over in Queens with
20 vials of crack in the
glove compartment
and a baggie of
marijuana was, ‘O cer,
can you please make
the rocks disappear?
The kids, they look up
to me.’ He assumed
that by announcing
he was ODB, he could
just be ODB.”

, Brutal Attack’s Ken McLellan wants to be heard. Only, what he wants people to hear are self-described “white power” anthems with lines like “This is the Final Solution / Our turn / They’ll burn.”

Unsurprisingly, McLellan, whose group has been labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as “one of the oldest hate bands in continuous existence,” has run into some obstacles. Most record stores don’t sell his music. Ones that do risk protest by activist groups like Turn It Down and the ARA (Anti-Racist Action), both of which target retailers that distribute white-power music. “Because stores wouldn’t carry us, selling records used to be laborious,” says McLellan, 44. “We relied on mail order. We relied on concerts.” Not anymore.

For $9.99, you can download Brutal Attack’s anti-immigrant, pro-white Tales of Glory from iTunes. It’s a buck cheaper on Amazon.

A physical copy is yours for $16 on CD Baby. For

McLellan and others like him, white-power music’s availability through mainstream online retailers holds the promise of a success immeasurable in money. “We’re far

more interested in spreading our point of view,” explains Je Schoep, manager of

NSM88 Records, which sells music online by bands like Grinded Nig and Inborn Hate. (Schoep is also the leader of the National Socialist Movement.) “If people can hear communist sympathizers like Rage Against the Machine on iTunes, then they should have the right to hear music that celebrates white culture. The Beastie Boys and other Jewish artists might support banning ideas, but we don’t. We support the American way.”

According to University of Dayton sociologist Paul Becker, who’s written about white-power music, the presence of bands like Brutal Attack, Skrewdriver, and Final War on high-pro le music sites is no surprise.

“White power follows societal trends,” he says. The real concern is accessibility. “In the past, someone interested in the music may not have wanted to go into a store looking for it.” Now it’s a click away.

A legal click. “The United States isn’t as strict about censoring hate speech as some other countries,” explains New York University law professor Amy Adler. “Unless a song says, ‘ We are going to hurt these people, at this time, on this day,’ it’s probably going to be okay.”

But for Turn It Down’s Nora Flanagan, morality, not legality, is the issue. “Companies could choose not to sell this stu ,” she says. “Instead, they hide behind the First Amendment. Refusing to make money from racism isn’t censorship; it’s the right thing.” Flanagan points to MySpace, which removes racially o ensive pages from the site, as an example of commendable behavior.

While CD Baby has donated to charities and nonpro ts portions of its proceeds from albums it calls “troubling,” neither the company nor Amazon plans to limit its sales of possibly o en- sive music. (i Tunes, which o ten stocks this music via third-party digital distribution, declined comment.) According to spokesperson Patti Smyth, Amazon “doesn’t feel it should be deciding what’s right for consumers. That’s a slippery slope that we don’t want to be on.” Similarly, CD Baby president Brian Felsen cautions against overreaction: “This is still a micro-niche we’re talking about. It’s competing against a huge diversity of voices.”

McLellan, though, thinks his music’s subculture status is due to change. “Being sold in mainstream places shows that white power isn’t so taboo anymore,” he says. “ Attitudes are changing.” Of course, recent election results suggest being taboo isn’t nearly as much a problem for McLellan as is being, well, wrong. DAVID MARCHESE

THE ALBUM
RECIPE
The All-American
Rejects’ Tyson Ritter
reveals how they cooked
up When the World
Comes Down

158 days in a recording studio

4 mustaches grown

1,000+ beers

13 days
writing in a
cabin in Raven
County, GA

160 beef or
bean-and-
cheese
burritos

1 week shing
in Ewok Lake
at Skywalker
Ranch

When the
World Comes
Down

“We cut this record to tape and avoided as much digital interfacing as possible. We had to play perfect performances instead of 23 skidoo, some Pro Tools action, and then—bam!—you’ve got a record in two weeks. The whole thing was a milestone, like going through puberty at age 23.”

UGLY HATE ILLUSTRATION BY THE HEADS OF S TATE ALBUM RECIPE ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVER KUGLER

IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS. GO TO SPIN.COM JANUAR Y 2009 27