Jordan Olsen, guitarist with The Gorgeous Hussies, discusses his perspective of music and politics. This is the first in a series of interviews with musicians discussing political perspectives.

What role do politics play in your music?

On the whole I don’t think mainstream politics, per se, play a significant role in how I write and perform music. There hasn’t been an issue I’ve been so passionate about that I’d be willing to use my music to preach about it. That’s just not my style. However, I have written a few songs that present a larger comment on society and how we treat each other, which, I guess, is the crux of politics. So in that aspect maybe I have?

On The Gorgeous Hussies’ first CD Oh! Hello I wrote a song called “Dangerously Similar.” It’s based on the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006. I was watching CNN and watched Israeli troops fighting with Hezbollah troops and I couldn’t tell who was who. I couldn’t help but think that beyond the politics and ethnic conflict these people were first and foremost fathers and mothers but how at that moment they were “dangerously similar”. It’s not really an anti-war song, rather a comment on people who at their core are very similar but find themselves trying to kill each other.

The Gorgeous Hussies – “Dangerously Similar”
[audio:http://www.musicgeek.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/track1_dangerously-similar.mp3]

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