Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham

"Panic" by the Smiths

Boy, if this isn't the theme song of the last few days I don't know what is. I just can't stop listening to it, even though some wags say another Smiths classic, "Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Over" might be a more appropriate anthem.

Stand and deliver, the old highwayman's code.

The Clash's "White Riot" and "London's Burning" have their place. These riots are as much about a cathartic violence and a momentary feeling of power for the powerless and disenfranchised as they are about opportunistic looting. So violent thrashing songs like these two from the Clash might seem more appropriate. Although the Clash often sang songs of solidarity and collective action with a clear political agenda, which a riot for kit doesn't have.

I bet the rioters were listening to something a little more contemporary though, given their age.

Dig Franz Fanon for the first and last word on the cathartic violence of decolonization. Make no mistake. We are decolonizing ourselves. From banker occupation. And it is far from over. Far from over. Far from over indeed. In fact, it is just beginning.

I don't think their gated communities and their dog armies and their special forces will help them in the end.

Since the late 1970s, TPTB thought they could just fuck us as long and hard as they wanted and nothing would happen, even as they dissolved the most marginal and hypocritical of social contracts into the most brazen, systematic, relentless and remorseless corporatocracy possible.

They were wrong. The people are waking up all across the world, even if in ways sometimes inchoate and random.

The masses know instinctively now that their governments no longer represent them and the thought of working for redress though the political system is a farce, and not even a funny one at that.

Sorry, plutocratic assholes. You brought that on yourselves. Payback's a bitch. So is karma.

The wheels of justice grind slow but they grind exceedingly fine.

In spite of rage as a partial fuel for the England riots, there is something about the feyness and perfect poppiness of this song that makes it the soundtrack of the riots in my mind's ear. And this is from a die-hard, life-long Clash fan. There is also something intensely harrowing in its very feyness and perfect poppiness

From all accounts, the vast majority of the rioters are teens and pre-teens. Guess cutting the summer programs to feed the insatiable maw of international finance capital wasn't such a good idea after all, was it Mr. Cameron?

Doubtless, almost all of the rioters weren't even born when this song came out. Nevertheless, it reverberates with me. And with many another aging hipster, to go by the Youtube comment boards.

I thought the Smiths were a little too swishy and soft for me as a teen when I first heard them. But then my sainted uncle, more of an older brother really, said they were one of his favorite bands and he was hardcore punk. So I reassessed. Indeed, the Smiths were genius. Timeless they remain. Highwater marks. Your first impression is not always correct. As one of my favorite early modernists, Picabia, said "our heads are round so our thoughts may change directions."

Best commentary on the riots here.

BBC live feed on the riots here.