John Davis wanted rock ‘n’ roll, but he didn’t want to deal with the hassle. The Superdrag frontman broke up his band in 2003, got religion and issued a pair of solo albums, putting a seemingly tight lid on the legacy of his Knoxville, Tenn., outfit. Apparently, Davis is willing to be bothered again: Superdrag’s original lineup reconvened to record Industry Giants, a new album due March 17.
This week, MAGNET celebrates the return of Superdrag by handing Davis the reins to our website, where he’ll share his favorite music, films, food, literature and more. Read our Q&A with Davis about the comeback here.
Davis: Charles Ferguson’s 2007 documentary No End In Sight trawls the depths of the incompetence, arrogance and ignorance that characterized the Bush administration’s policy and decision-making in post-invasion Iraq. It consists mainly of interviews conducted with occupation authorities from the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). With troop levels woefully insufficient for the task at hand, the Oil Ministry was well-protected while dozens of other crucial government buildings and Iraq’s national libraries and museums (containing artifacts from some of the earliest forms of human civilization) were looted and destroyed, sending a clear message to Iraqi citizens that U.S. forces had never really intended to preserve law and order in a post-“Shock And Awe,” post-“Mission Accomplished” Iraq.
The “De-Ba’athification” of the existing Iraqi government infrastructure hastened the descent into chaos. The disbanding of the Iraqi military, leaving 500,000 young men unemployed and desperate, threw gasoline on the fires of the insurgency. Some of the ex-soldiers then took possession of massive stockpiles of arms the U.S. hadn’t bothered protecting. Perhaps the Village Voice’s Rob Nelson put it best: “Charles Ferguson’s No End In Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq war into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuck-ups.”
