PRUSSIAN BLUE - When I'm With You/Stand Up

My friend told me a funny story at work yesterday. He told me about his trip to Germany he took a few years back. He was with a tour group and they were at Octoberfest. I should have asked if it really was October or if the German's keep that bitch going all year round, you know, for the tourists and as an excuse to get pissed all year through. They were at a beer tasting event and one of the girls on the tour was apparently not happy with the size of her taste so she complained. The server had refused to top her off and she yelled, 'What, are you some kind of beer Nazi!?'. A few minutes later she realized what she had actually said. Ha ha. She shouldn't worry too much, I bet Germans watch a lot of Seinfeld too.

How does that tie in with today's entry? Very poorly. Today we will look at a controversial group known as Prussian Blue formed in early 2003 by then 11-year-old fraternal twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede. Here's a recap if you are the only person on earth who hasn't heard about these girls yet. Prussian Blue are popularly referred to as the Olsen Twins of White Nationalism. The girls were home schooled by their mother, April Gaede, an activist and writer for the white nationalist organization National Vanguard. The twins' grandfather wears a swastika belt buckle, uses the Nazi symbol on his truck, and registered it as a cattle brand. Prussian Blue is named after the residue that was left over by the use of Zyklon B, the poison the Nazis employed to kill millions of Jews concentration camps during World War II.

Many news articles and television reports understandably have attacked their politics but what I find interesting is that they never hit them where it hurts - their music. Many people have heard of Prussian Blue but very few have actually heard them. Now 14, it's strange to think of these teens as a recruitment tool for intolerance but audiences are fickle and if they can't hold a note their effect will be limited. The bottom line for me is and will forever be is their music any good. Do these Neo-Nazis have any talent?

There are a few videos floating around YouTube but they are from their first and most amateurish album called 'Fragment of the Future'. It's crap. It really sucks, you can practically hear their Nazi mother prodding them in the background. I won't ever feature something that bad on my site - ever. That's why their latest 2005 album, 'The Path We Choose' is a bit surprising. It's actually not that bad - and THAT is kinda scary. Most of the songs on the second album lack the racial and nationalist overtones of Fragment of the Future and are about more mainstream subject matter like boys, crushes, and dating. That's what I find interesting about these brainwashed twins, material that has to do with white pride = crap while songs about bubblegum = better (if not quite good). One can't help but wonder if they're trying to tell their mother something through these mixed signals.

So while there are no videos for their latest effort, April Gaede has been kind enough to put up a few of PB's new tracks online. The first is off The Path We Choose called 'When I'm with You'. It's not that bad, the girls' husky tween voices work it as well as can be expected. I have visions of less successful Hanson b-sides when listening to the song. The other is 'Stand Up', which is their contribution to the 'Free Matt Hale' (of the Creativity Movement) CD being produced by Condemned Records.

UPDATE!! While I have purposely left the above entry as neutral as possible considering its obvious offensiveness (and how sorry I feel for the girls), I have found an excellent documentary that really helps fill in the blanks. BBS's Louis and the Nazis is available via Google Video for what I imagine to be a limited time only. It is really worth watching and shows just how sad the world of the White Nationalist movement is. Really, take the hour and a half to see it.