The Washington Post reports on a FOIA request by the National Security Archive seeking a list of the music played to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. A group of musicians have signed a letter on behalf of the request.
This of course prompts me to ask, what music would cause you to feel tortured? I'll go first -- If you played anything by Journey, I would give up every secret I have within five seconds.
Wasn't a partial list released a while ago? Either released as such, or testified to before Congress, or something? I don't remember the context, but I swear there was "official confirmation" that Barney the Dinosaur had been used against detainees, which is just... wrong.
My personal torture playlist would include all the novelty and narrative songs of the last forty or fifty years, set on repeat. Things like Blues Traveler's "Hook" become significantly less entertaining the third or fourth time you hear them. "Earache My Eye", "Alice's Restaurant", "Bobby Brown Goes Down", "The Masochism Tango", "Life is a Rock", "The End of the World as We Know It", "American Pie", the live recording of Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel", "We Are the World", "Dani California", "Whip It", and... oh, let's say a song each from Weird Al and the Barenaked Ladies, all set on repeat, would make me spill all my secrets by the middle of the third go-round.
Uh, Chinese counterintelligence agents *are* blocked from reading your blog, right? :)
Posted by: Nemo de Monet | October 22, 2009 at 01:41 PM