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Thursday, September 25, 2008
WORKINGMAN'S BLUES #2
Bob Dylan
Modern Times
Sony : 2006
[Buy It]
DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT WORK
Lou Reed
Legendary Hearts
RCA : 1983
[Buy It]
WORK
Maureen Tucker
Life in Exile After Abdication
50 Skadillion Watts : 1989
[Buy It]
YOU GOTTA WORK
Nathaniel Mayer
I Just Want to Be Held
Fat Possum : 2004
[Buy It]
WORK SONG
Dan Reeder
Dan Reeder
Oh Boy : 2004
[Buy It]
I don't understand very much about the economy. I can read, so I can read the papers, and I know what happens when credit falls apart and I can, if pressed, hold up my half of a semi-intelligent discussion about mortgages (I have one!) and dependents (I have three!). But that's where my expertise ends, after two modest sentences. That means that I have approached this week's news with a mix of ignorance and stupidity, interested in endorsing the policies that will improve matters, but without any real idea what they are. I thought about suspending this post to focus on the financial crisis, but I have already made that joke.
And yet, despite the economic crisis, most people have jobs. Not everyone, of course, and fewer people in lean times, and I don't want to underestimate how devastating joblessness is for those people. I'm just remarking upon the remarkable fact that the vast majority of the people in this country have somehow found their way to a set of tasks that they perform in exchange for some amount of money. In the last few weeks, the fact has pressed a little harder upon the aforementioned stupid parts of my brain, because a friend of mine got a good job. After years of working valiantly and not by any stretch vainly, a job that has a mix of prestige and interest and good pay and standing in this person's community popped into view. Job, meet person. Person, take job. I am highly pleased on behalf of this now much more employed person. I hope the job lasts a very long time and brings with it substantial rewards, among them a wave of magnanimity that results in the purchase of alcohol for friends. In short, congratulations.
But it's a strange time, and stories about people getting good jobs--even if they're good people who do good work--might seem a little untoward. I have put away the cake and whiskey and have decided instead to start with something sobering, like Bob Dylan's "Workingman Blues #2." It's numbered not because it's one in a series of Dylan songs, of course, but because Dylan is acknowledging the Merle Haggard song famously covered by the Grateful Dead. (Paul Simon did something similar with "Crazy Love, Pt. 2," which worked in the shadows of Van Morrison.) When Modern Times came out, reviews suggested that Dylan's song occupied Springsteen territory, but it's stranger than that, a depressive (if not Depressive) collision of lazy poetry and almost academic prose:There's an evenin' haze settlin' over town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down
Money's gettin' shallow and weak
Well, the place I love best is a sweet memory
It's a new path that we trod
They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad "Workingman's Blues #2" is exceptional, not in the sense that it's good (though it is good, though it's not as good as "Nettie Moore," from that same record), but because it's very rare that pop songs double as white papers in this fashion. Songs that seem to be about work are more often generic or metaphoric, about romantic effort (Billie Holiday's "Nice Work if You Can Get It," Michael Jackson's "Working Day and Night") or social compromise (Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together," Bob Marley's "Work"). Others address the topic by lamenting the life of the wage slave, often to the benefit of the artist's life (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Got a Job," the Replacements' "God Damned Job"). The Who's "The Dirty Jobs" is about work and the way it both extends and withdraws dignity. Talking Heads' "Found a Job" is about a job, but a highly specific one--the couple in the song collaborate on a TV show that mirrors their own domestic circumstance. And one of the most anthemic work songs, Elvis Costello's "Welcome to the Working Week," is less about the drudgery of redundant work than it is about sexual jealousy.
Lou Reed has framed the issue of work in a few songs, at least. There's "Work," from Songs for Drella, in which he and John Cale illustrate Andy Warhol's keep-busy ethic ("all that matters is work"). But remember: that's work as in artwork. Office work is another matter entirely, as Reed explained a decade earlier:It's a perfect day to get out of bed
Shower, dress, shave, kiss you on the head
Then I hit the office and my head starts to swim
A perfect day to just walk around
See a violent movie, check the sounds
But even on the street
When I hear a phone ring my heart starts to beat
When I get home I don't want you to speak
Don't talk to me about work
Please don't talk to me about work
I'm up to my eyeballs in dirt
With work, with work The greatest achievement in this narrow vein of worksongs from ex-Velvet Underground members comes from Mo Tucker. A little more than a decade after she left the band to start a family, Tucker was living in Georgia, working for Wal-Mart, and though she resurfaced in 1989 with both a studio album and a tour, she never forgot what it was like to be off the road and on the clock. While her album includes contributions from Reed, Jad Fair, Daniel Johnston, and most of Sonic Youth, it is mainly an act of aggressive autobiography, with a number of songs that chronicle Tucker's life in working-class America. "Spam Again" is held up as the standard-bearer from that record, in part because it mentions Spam, but I prefer "Work."I'm trying to make a living working all day long
Me and you and him and her work all day long
Some of us do okay living pretty high
But you and me both know it ain't you or I
When I get my check I know something's wrong
When I get my check I know something's wrong
When I get my check I know oh! something's wrong
Every Friday get my check before I'm home it's gone
Pay the lights, buy the food, I gotta pay the phone
I work hard to pay the rent all day long
I never seem to make a dent all week long
Oh! It's a wonderful "oh!" there at the end, pained and jubilant at the same time: it's Tucker's escape from the drudgery of a day job and her fear of heading back into rock and roll, which has even fewer certainties. One of the certainties is that work matters. This is why I felt good-- why I feel good -- for my friend who just got the job. Some people will tell you that without love, there is nothing. Eh. Maybe. Without love, there is sadness and loneliness. Without work, there is even less. This is true in physics and it's true in economics. Just ask Nathaniel Meyer.You gotta work if you wanna get paid
You gotta work if you wanna get paid
You gotta work if you wanna get paid
You gotta work, baby, if you want to get paid
You gotta work, work, work, work
Work, work, work work, work, work, work, work
You gotta give if you wanna play
You gotta cook if you wanna eat
You gotta work if you wanna get paid
You gotta be real good if you wanna get laid This mantra-like consideration of labor is rendered even more minimally in Dan Reeder's "Work Song." Like many other Reeder songs, it features highly tracked vocals in close harmony and only the slightest of instrumental backing (in this case, just handclaps). Here, Reeder has a very simple message that quickly gets complicated.I got all the fucking work I need
I got all the fucking work I need
I got all the fucking work I need
I got all the fucking work I need
I got all the fucking work I need
I got all the fucking work I need Reeder is either celebrating or lamenting, depending on when you enter the song's orbit and how long you let it spin around you. Is the tone sincere? Sarcastic? Matter-of-fact? That's not clear, but what is clear is how you make something gratifying out of something redundant. You work at it.Labels: ben, rock
posted by Ben
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