Complacency is complicity in this our crime of the century.
Democracy is reality. We vote with our dollars each and every day. This means we are the New Kings, you and I. We can buy anything from anywhere at anytime. We fill our skies with jet fuel so we can sip our rum in the palm tree shade. We drive our cars to the shopping malls so we can look like the stars on our TV screens. Every purchase we make is a stamp of royal approval. Every credit transaction is a wave of our royal scepter.
We are the New Kings and our Kingdom is in a shambles. The peasants are losing their right to breathable air, potable water and arable land; and all we can offer is “Sex, Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll” ...Does that come with cake?
It‘s time to Wake Up! It's time to shake up the castle and make a change. Evolution is a choice and it's ours to make. We can adapt and survive or we can drive ourselves to extinction.
Now is the time for liberation from consumer addiction. So activate the self and agitate for change. Rearrange the values and life will sustain. There’s always something we can do to create a twist of fate.
The New Kings are a band of music veterans brought together by a fearless passion for social activism and a spirit for Rock‘n’Roll. The live show is highly energetic, engaging and extremely provocative, most often drawing comparisons to the Clash, the Stooges and Tom Waits. On stage, Michael Louis Johnson is a preacher with the timing of a stand-up comic and the power of a punk-rocker from the old school, backed by a band with the chops to take a song anywhere at anytime.
"...Clash-like melding of roots, punk and reggae, the New Kings' Take Back the Streets makes scathing indictments against everything from corporations to bad "police-state propaganda" TV shows. Nothing light 'n' frothy here, to say the least." Chris Rolfe - Eye Weekly
"My first face-to-face encounter with New Kings mastermind Michael Johnson happened when he was dancing atop an über-gross Hummer obnoxiously parked outside the El Mo.... a goofy political performance that took big cojones and makes the title of the Kings' new disc seem particularly apt." Sarah Liss - Now Magazine
"...has funneled his earnest commitment to humanist, anti-capitalist rabblerousing into a charged, confrontational mix of Strummer-ish outrage and galvanizing, jazz-warped rhythms perfectly suited to the street actions the band now prefers to play...." Ben Rayner - Toronto Star
Read more...