Warning Shots

 Those who know, rock. Those who don't, run for president.

 

   We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technological complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.       

   –-Patti Smith, stating her 1970s rock manifesto in her autobiography Just Kids, p. 245

   [Paul Revere is] he who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s RIDING HIS HORSE THROUGH TOWN to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. 

   --Sarah Palin, June 3, 2010