As it turns out, celebrated comic Marc Maron has an acerbic ability to shred guitar equal of his biting wit. The WTF podcast host does a little ax-slinging for a good cause on the new charity single by Los Angeles disco destroyers YACHT. A punk-addled dance-ripper, “Party at the NSA” takes aim at the U.S. government’s controversial information gathering techniques. The collective ires of M.I.A. and many, many others were raised when recent investigative reports revealed that the National Security Agency has been screening the private emails and cell-phone calls of citizens for intelligence purposes.
“Party at the NSA” is being sold using the pay-what-you-want model, with all proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whose tagline is “Defending your rights in the digital world.” The track kicks off with some New Wave heat recalling vintage Elvis Costello (though not “Radio, Radio”), as singer Claire L. Evans sneers, “Did you read my mail again? How do you find the time? / I lost my signal yesterday, But it was never mine.” Around the 2:25 mark, the shredfest begins as Maron grinds out an angular guitar solo bookended by chants of the song’s title.
Stream the track and read a statement from YACHT below while you protest (groovily). Purchase the song via the “Party at the NSA” site.
The National Security Agency is snatching the emails and telephone calls of millions of ordinary Americans from the fiber-optic backbones that carry our most private thoughts across the world. They are doing this with the assistance of our nation’s largest phone and Internet companies. Even if you trust these corporations and the NSA–the largest and most obscure of U.S. intelligence organizations–with your private information, the precedent set by this far-reaching and unaccountable domestic spying program is unacceptable. We live much of our lives online; we should be outraged by the extent of the NSA’s domestic spying programs. Instead, we are sinking into a dangerous indifference. Insidious forces are at work. Help us reverse the entropy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a donation-supported nonprofit that fights back against the government to protect our digital rights; 100% of your donation to download “Party at the NSA” will go straight to fund their important work.
