Politics and rock music? Forget Rock the Vote. When Bad Religion and Noam Chomsky combined politically minded rock `n' roll with spoken-word political discourse on a "split" record, "It inspired us," says Jason Perry, guitar player for Resident Genius. "It showed that you can mix education with music, with rock." The band has lived, unsigned, for the past three years in Springfield, absorbing the political culture of the state capital more passively, until Perry's master's thesis put him in contact with author/activist Howard Zinn. "Music is something that Zinn hadn't explored before," explained Perry, "so when I threw the idea out to him, he immediately thought it was cool and jumped on board."

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Source: NewCityChicago.com