"Right now there's a rift between my dad who's a Bush backer and me," Gillette said. "The main thing I see about the music is young kids listen to musicians more than they listen to their parents. I know when I was young I'd go to my room and listen to a record."
Videos to accompany the group's song "Ornament" are due by Sept. 15. Winners will be chosen by a panel that includes Jeff Cohen, a prominent entertaiment attorney, and will likely include judges from the American Film Institute. Op-Critical will enter the best videos at the Indie Music Video Festival.
Gillette says the goal of the project is to "get people involved." He points to the rich political music protest landscape of the 1960s as a model, where music fueled a broad anti-war movement.
"Back in the 60s music played a big role in terms of political and social change and there's no reason why it can't be done now," Gillette said.
"We want videos that have staying power, that make a cultural statement, and that have an emotional component to them so that they will influence youth," he added. "Politicians spend hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars on ads to influence middle class America, and they basically ignore young people totally; and we feel like the music videos are like the cultural statements or the ads for young people, so we hope to get them involved and influence them to make the right decision in November."
Op-Critical was banned from shooting video at Arlington after officials discovered the film was being used to protest the war. But their sample video - which shows Frederick's grieving widow and his young son dealing with the loss of a father to a war fought on foreign soil - provides a vivid illustration of how music can be tooled to influence political sentiment.Next Page 1 | 2
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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)
