Twenty-Six Ways to Consider John F. Kennedy

Ready to hang the bunting and celebrate Kennedy's 50th? The media is making a meal of the daylight slaughter of a president, so why shouldn't we? Musically speaking, I'm intrigued that English guitar god Richard Thompson has scored a National Geographic doc called JFK: The Final Hours, although I haven't heard it yet. On Nov. 22, the Cowboy Junkies debut their rock opera The Kennedy Suite in Toronto.

More readily available to you and I -- and definitely less "correct" in its interpretation of JFK's assassination -- is this scrappy, 26-song compilation from Turn Me On Dead Man Records. It's called Conspiracy A-Go-Go, so the overall slant might obvious, if some of the choices aren't. Opener "Tell Me Why" by the Omecs is so buried in reverb that it could be about anything. But if it's incomprehensible, it's also short and stupid, kinda like Jack Ruby, so no complaints there.

Buckwheat Caterpillar discusses the president's missing brain in "Kennedy's Head" (think Angry Samoans, minus the angry), concluding finally, "Why should we believe you? The government lies and it lies and it lies." In "God Damn Texas", Dark Fog opts for roiling, violent psychedelia; more noise than signal if you're looking for insight into the event itself, but thrillingly chaotic all the same.

Martin Denny bird calls and yakety saxophonics are all part of the kitsch-en sink approach taken by Russia's The Karovas Milkshake on "Zombie Wok" -- probably the most fun track here -- while The National Cynical Network samples Oswald, Dallas Morning News reporter Mary Woodward, and researchers Cyril Wecht and Robert Groden for a genuinely moving collage set to Pink Floyd on "Brain Damage." Brilliant stuff, and possibly the highlight of the collection, almost equal to the classic Steinski & Mass Media track, "The Motorcade Sped On", from '87 -- which I've written about before -- and which is thrown into the compilation for good measure.

There is, among the 26 tracks on Conspiracy A-Go-Go, plenty of chatter about the CIA, the KGB, LBJ, JEH and various other players in this 50-year unreality vortex. It's heavier on lore than it is on fact (Marilyn Monroe shows up in The Rockin' Guys' "O.H. Lee"), but nobody was promising Rush to Judgment. After decades of ever more imaginative, officially sanctioned disinformation about the event, this is where we are.

The corporate media has outdone itself this year. Besides one hell of a turkey with the film Parkland, in the last few weeks alone we've been told it was an accidental shot from a Secret Service agent; it was Oswald but the well-meaning Warren Commission botched the job; it was Kennedy's fault for being so damn reckless, it was Johnson, Hoover, the Birchers, Castro, Khrushchev, the Mob, your mom, and in any event, we can never really know.

But the curators of Conspiracy A-Go-Go cut through the fog. Todd Gardner's liner notes are killer -- read them! -- while down at the bottom of a list of acknowledgements, it says, "And thanks to the Military-Industrial Complex for making all this possible." We can never really know, they say? The truth of the assassination is self-evident. Whatever remained of American democracy died that day and war rushed in to fill the vacuum. The tragedy is overwhelming. Crank it up.