Boulder made the national news again.

 

Actually, our fair city has been building rather impressively upon its reputation as the People's Republic in the last month.

 

A Halloween night riot after police broke up a block party on University Hill pulled some national traction, given that it was the tenth in a series of Fight-For-Your-Right-to-Party civil disobediences in the last few years.

 

A group of Boulder High School students who stayed at school overnight after the election fretting about the state of the country under a second Bush term got a second day reprieve in the news cycle when Rep. Mark Udall stopped by to assure the students that they wouldn't be facing conscription when they graduate.

 

And now we have the case of yet another Boulder High School student (or perhaps worried parent, the caller wouldn't give her real name) who called a local talk radio station on Tuesday and accused a Boulder High School band scheduled to appear at the school's annual talent show on Friday night of threatening the President of the United States during a practice.

 

According to news reports, this budding Young Republican first said that during a rehearsal, the band, which apparently dubbed itself Taliband for its one-time appearance at the talent show, changed the words to "Masters of War," a 1962 Bob Dylan song that castigates weapons makers, to include President Bush among its accusations.

 

Later, she amended her original claim and said the band threw up computer images of President Bush on a screen behind them while they played the song, as one news story reported, "implying a threat to the President."

 

Now, admittedly, the song's last verse, which appears on Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, expresses the hope that those who assemble weapons and munitions will all die and even "suggests" that their graves might be trampled upon, but, well … I can't argue this point any further without laughing out loud. Nobody complained when Tim O'Brien recorded "Masters of War."

 

Though he has performed it countless times - once in 1991 at the Grammys when it was interpreted by the media as a screed against the first Gulf War waged by the current president's father -- nobody has accused him of threatening anyone, even though Dylan suggests in another song that the president "sometimes must have to stand naked."

 

I wasn't privy to the talk-radio conversation, but I am assuming nobody asked how a high school band projecting images of Bush on a screen behind a band playing a 42-year-old song for three minutes during a Friday night in the auditorium a thousand miles west of the White House could be in any way remotely construed as a threat -- even if they changed the words to include Bush.

 

Reason and common sense, however, are in short supply in situations like this, and - here's where we head off into Neverland -- somebody eventually called the Secret Service to investigate.

 

Two agents were dispatched to the school. The principal showed them the lyrics to the song and the band's plans, and they left reassured that the country would be able to survive this three-minute high-school talent show assault on everything we hold decent in our society.

 

But that wasn't enough. As is our wont in America when breasts fall out of brassieres at inappropriate times, so to speak, we had us a damned "controversy" on our hands.

 

Yep. As in television coverage: "Can a Boulder high school band perform its controversial song onstage? Details at ten."

 

And newspaper headlines. "Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush," said ABC News on Friday. "Colorado High School Talent Show Turns Political," Reuters crowed. Though the stories showed the right level of skepticism, the Daily Camera waded into the headline silliness: "Boulder High Taliband Stirs Controversy" for the initial story, "Boulder High Band Draws Notoriety" on the Secret Service follow-up and "Controversial Band Gets Through 'War'" on the morning after the performance.

 

If that last headline sounds a bit anti-climactic, it was accurate. In a simple twist of fate, about 6:30 p.m. on the Friday night of the talent show, a friend who writes for a national music publication and had another assignment asked me to attend the Boulder High talent show on his behalf.

 

By the time I got there at 7:10 p.m., vans from KOA, News 4 and Fox 31 were in the parking lot.

 

The auditorium was sold out, students, parents and media, with people sitting in the aisles by the time the show got underway just after 7:30 with a faculty band challenging the student groups to rock harder than them. They tore into "Rockin' in the Free World," which includes a nasty verse aimed at George Walker Bush - it was written during his presidential watch - for the failure of his "thousand points of light" programs.

 

When the lights on a News4 camera behind me came on for a couple of seconds to test the equipment during an early act, students in the section where I was sitting hissed in derision, "Hey, we're trying to enjoy a high-school talent show over here."

 

I thought that was funny.

 

The student emcees made much mirth at the expense of the media, poking fun at the television cameras and joking about secret service agents in skits between the acts.

 

The media would have done better covering two Russian students who did a mind-boggling juggling act that belonged in Cirque du Soleil.

 

There were classical pianists, a guitar player who picked "Here Comes the Sun" on acoustic guitar, Ashlee Simpson clones, singers and bands who sang over their own music and others who used pre-recorded backing tracks. There were more than enough would-be Eminems, and a breakdance team that I could have sworn employed a few seconds of Body Count's "$%#@ Tha Police."

 

Each act, no matter how good or bad, was greeted with uproarious applause.

 

The "band" in question came on last, about 9:15, introduced as Coalition of the Willing. There was only one dim stage light, and spotlights swirled around the hall, so you couldn't see much: female vocalist in full Goth mode, two electric guitarists, bass and drums, a lap synthesizer player, and, I think, a banjo and trumpet -- the latter instruments swallowed up in the drone and feedback of the former.

 

The vocal mike was turned almost completely off, so, mercifully, you couldn't hear the vocals, just the three grungy guitars over drums and bass. A projector threw up two images behind the performers, first half of the song American flags and the second half aerial shots of a military cemetery. There were no images of war or Bush, nor was there any mention of same. The projector work was as amateurish as the music.

 

Of all the acts, and there must have been 15, only one was worse than Coalition of the Willing. Dylan has been accused of not speaking clearly, but this one made Uncle Bob sound like the Great Enunciator.

 

People came down the aisles and handed out lyrics to "Masters of War" during the performance.

 

So, as the cameras roll, we are sitting in the dark with a sheet of lyrics watching a band we can't understand -- and we are going to be on the local news tonight!

 

Is this a great country or what? Details at ten.

 

Leland Rucker

lerucker@comcast.net

15 November 2004