yustyoking

Storming the Capitol da capo

It’s a rainy Wednesday in November and it occurs to me that I am remiss in serving fans of the Swedish rap duo realPfft. You want more songs. I’ve asked the boys, Mutte and Clive, “What’s cookin’?” They have two biscuits in the oven, but Mutte wants to add musical breaks and bridges before they release these monsters onto an unsuspecting world.

As their music publisher and band manager, I have access to their entire catalog. Why not showcase their best work while they labor on new material in their virtual studio?

“Storming the Capitol” is a great rainy day hit. A terrific riff, lots of bass, their usual fascination with sound effects.

On January 6, 2021, a crowd of rowdy, armed Trump supporters met on the mall in Washington, DC to hear a speech by their leader. After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump called on them to take back their country. By interrupting the Congressional counting of electoral ballots in the U.S. Capitol, the insurrectionists hoped in some vague way to swing the election to Trump. Overrunning police barricades and beating up the police, they broke into the Capitol, where they did a lot of damage and threatened lawmakers who ran for their lives or took shelter behind locked doors. It was a wild, upsetting afternoon with colored smoke wafting through the air and the future of American democracy very much in question. Returning to the White House, President Trump watched the pageant unfold on television. He waited hours to call the whole thing off.

Two weeks later, on January 20th, Joseph Biden was sworn in as America’s 46th president.

The insurrectionists were charged with unlawful entry, destruction of property, violence against the police and other assorted charges. No one, however, was accused of treason. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys militia, was convicted instead of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest prison term given to a January 6th insurrectionist.

From June to December 2022, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held a series of hearings into the violence at the Capitol. Although never charged, the video record made it pretty obvious that President Trump incited the mob to attack the Capitol. For her courage in pinpointing this truth, Ms. Cheney was drummed out of the Republican Party!

Once elected to a second term, President Trump immediately pardoned all the January 6th defendants.

Rap band realPfft released the instrumental “Storming the Capitol” on January 8th, 2021, exactly two days after the actual event. How in the world did they do that?!

They had already spent two weeks working on the instrumental. A Russian-influenced emotional rollercoaster with roots in classical music, it has a soaring, pining melody and a male choir. Adding diverse crowd sounds and the occasional explosive percussion, the boys fine-tuned the finished product.

The only thing missing was the cover artwork. They turned to their Old World collaborator Kuny who listened to the music, watched footage of the rioters on TV and sketched the 1920’s style German Expressionist agitprop cover art in a single inspired all-nighter. They then delivered the product to TuneCore for almost instantaneous release.   

In a January 2021 blog post, I provided a link to the track on YouTube. Five years later, we revisit this musical gem, one of the best things that realPfft has ever done.