Am I old fashioned or is this majorly disrespectful.

My taste in music can hardly be classed as main-stream. The latest poppy flavours from the likes of 15 year old boys with bowl cuts or strippers turn music divas are far from my idea of good music. Rather I listen to music I consider to be well "good". Music like all art is subjective, but for me I want to listen to music that I know the artist actually put feeling, emotion and time into. Not something that an army of composers, producers and music technicians tweek, alter, write and "auto tune" the crap out of until it meets all of the "omg! this songs is soo awesome" criteria.

I hardly expect people to enjoy my music as most of it entails heavy guitar rifts, heavy bass, lots of drums to make well heavy metal. There is alot of crap metal out there just like any other genre but I'd like to think the stuff I listen to is good and most importantly expresses one's emotions. Even if their emotions are negative. My reasoning is if I listen to negative hateful and angry music it makes my life feel better by comparison. You should try it it works! You'll probably feel really angry and sad or whatever during the song but after you'll feel better. I dare you all to listen to "Slipknot's" song "Snuff" and tell me it didn't make your heart ache and weep from despair.

Anyway I'm getting off topic. At work my office leaves the latest hit sensation stations on for background noise and although I find myself tapping my foot to a song or two the fact is I feel its the same generic crap that inhabits most radio stations. However if the point of music is to generate an emotional response then a new song has done just that, and I'm NOT at all happy about it.

The song in question is "Oh...Canada" by "Classified". Yes that's right in case you haven't heard the song before pretty much a hip-hop, rap or whatever they are considered, group has "sampled/covered" the national anthem. I can't begin to describe how sick that makes me feel. Make all the jokes you want by when growing up I was in Scouting. I can assure I never has any inappropriate experiences with a scout leader, just many years of making friends, learning useful life skills and values, and having fun camping. One value Scouts taught me is national pride. Pride to the effect of how to properly raise, lower and fold a flag. Knowing that if the flag ever touches the ground it should be burned out of respect, knowing no other flag on home soil should be higher on the pole than the nation's flag, and most importantly that our anthem is a symbol of our nation's reputation and it is to be sung with pride while standing at attention. One thing it should never be is remixed, sampled, or profited from by any private person or entity. Its a song belonging to every Canadian, alive or dead.

I have a strong sensation that "Classified" were asked to do that song (abomination) for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games for some national pride generating. However this is unacceptable and overall its a terrible song (do we need another one? that I believe song they played after anyone won a metal was bad enough). A national anthem shouldn't need to be modernized or amped up to appeal to youth, if the young people of today (look at me sounding so old) can't appreciate their nation enough to learn and love the current national anthem they maybe they should go to a country where they don't have the same rights and freedoms we do like in most of the African nations? Or even move to the United States were they don't even have our health care system? ( I know as of late US did pass the Health care bill but it still isn't even close to what we have here). National anthems are to be timeless, the only reason why ours is so "new" is because we adopted it when we became a nation in our own right and left the British Dominion.

Now I know this "Classified" song is all pro-Canadian and doesn't say anything bad or anti-patriotic but what its doing is making a mockery of the true anthem and there fore should be (like a fallen flag) burned out of respect. If one good thing comes from this PIECE OF CRAP song I would hope it'd be a new found respect for our nation and help usher in a new era of patriotism and national pride that up until the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was highly lacking in our society. Sing it loud and sing it proud or else don't call yourself a Canadian.

Ciao for now.