The Workmen and Their Tools

0959. THE ENEMY, “You’re Not Alone”
Written by the Enemy ; produced by Owen Morris & Matt Terry
WEA/Warner 2007 Did not make pop charts

Even back in the old record store days of LPs, I was always fascinated by how music was sorted. Then and now, a lot of stores just threw up their hands and dumped 75% of the stock into something they called Rock/Pop. However, as music has been more and more anatomized and balkanized over the last three decades, subdivision increasingly prevails.

Witness the classification of this song. If you don't just find it classified as "Rock," it is often specified as "Punk" or even "Aggro," the latter even the title of another single by the same band. Musically, though, this is not really punk--well, I guess it is if you file your old Sham 69 singles under that categor. I, on the other hand, have always considered them more Power Poppy--check out the power chords--okay, let's compromise it and call it Power Pop with chanting.

If I had to classify this song solely by its lyrics, however, it would be simple: it's a protest song. What's that you say? Protest songs are played on acoustic guitars and underproduced with about half the energy of this so that they remain "real"? Not where I come from. Even back in my twenties, my two favorite protest songs were "Free Nelson Mandela" and "Sun City," and those are both high energy, mightily produced songs. And how about "By the Time I Get to Arizona"? That was a song that lit the fuse to an existing protest movement that actually ended up succeeding.

All these songs are written in what musicologist Benjamin Filene has wonderfully called "the musical vernacular"--simply put, the music people live and breathe in on a daily basis. Since World War II, that has frequently meant some form of pop. And when the factories began closing in Coventry in 2007, the Enemy didn't even think about what kind of music they should set their angry words to. Like any real bards of the people, they used what they had lying around, up to and including the brilliant inverted steal of "Don't let the sun go down on our empire" for the lyric.

"You're Not Alone" is the first and (so far) the most brilliant protest song of the Second Great Depression. I hope it will be performed at least as long as "This Land Is Your Land" is.

The Man Has a Dream--You Got a Problem with That?

991. STEVE EARLE, "Christmas In Washington"
Produced by Twangtrust; written by Steve Earle
1997 Did not make pop charts

I know the dates are screwy, but I'm writing this on 31 December. Last weekend, I went to a huge family Christmas party deep in the bowels of Bergen County, New Jersey. It was hosted by an older cousin, on whom I had a crush when I was a teenager, and her husband of decades now, a kind, pleasant, hard-working man whom I just noticed has a framed picture of himself shaking hands with Rudy Guiliani in his dining room. He also has a copy of one of Rush Limbaugh's books in his living room. Okay, it's a paperback, but the fact is he kept it, and there weren't many books on that shelf that he appears to have wanted to keep.

One of the saddest things for me about politics in my lifetime has been its relentless binarism. I was seven years old in 1968, more focused on the impending moon launch than the war in Vietnam, but sometimes it has felt as if I am going to live for the rest of my life with my older siblings' wars. Individually, locally, there are more than just two political camps, but somehow since the late 1960s, when we raise politics and social action to the national level, it is always Us against Them.

My cousin is a nice guy. He probably shrugs at all the bumper stickers on our car when we park in his driveway, but can he possibly comprehend that the first person that I heard use the abbreviation "p.c." to denote "political correctness" was the vice president of the gay and lesbian society in college, as an inside joke to vent off steam? And could he possibly understand Steve Earle, dedicated acoustic twangboy, declaring that a second term of draftdodging adulterer Bill "Bubba" Clinton wasn't liberal enough for him? When a mohawked urban punk screams for revolution, it fits the established categories, but when a country boy calls for Emma Goldman and Malcolm X to rise up from the dead and take to the barricades, it shortcircuits many people's ideas of The Way Things Are or Ought to Be.

I haven't thought for more than two decades that we need a true Revolution in this country, but we do need (and have recently been promised) Change. First and foremost, we need to burn down the categories: no red America, no blue America, not even some watered-down variety of purple America, even though purple is a lovely color that can, after all, provide us with so many pleasant tints. No Jesse Jackson/Benetton rainbow America either, all 80s pluralism with all the separated shades so nicely defined and demarcated. We just need color, every tint, every shade, wherever it falls. We need to see the national landscape whole, with all its beautiful presences and troubling lacks intact, from both coasts and the heartland at one and the same time. That's all.

Happy Holidays, y'all. Let freedom ring.

Emma Goldman Might Have Been Pleased

284. PUBLIC ENEMY, "Fight The Power"
Produced by Carl Ryder, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Hank Shocklee, and Keith Shocklee; written by Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Hank Shocklee, and Keith Shocklee
1990 Did not make pop charts

Speaking of Spike, here's a song he's triply responsible for: he commissioned it for Do the Right Thing and then set images to it not once but twice: first in the Rosie-Perez-as-boxer opening titles for the film, and then in the Brooklyn booster parade of the song's official video.

This track is more on the nose than most PE cuts, maybe even more univalent than Lee's film eventually turns out to be. It also has far fewer lyrics than most of the group's well-known songs. The only upside of less Chuck D and more Terminator X is that for long stretches of the song you can just dance and not worry about missing any good lyrics (although to make sure you get the Elvis dis, Chuck repeats it).

P.S.: Yes, I know Goldman probably didn't actually say that thing about dance and the revolution, but she sort of did. And besides . . . it's my blog :)

I--Am Tired--of Your--Abuse!

792. BLACK FLAG, "Rise Above"
Produced by Black Flag; written by Greg Ginn
1981 Did not make pop charts

Who said there no protest songs in the 1980s? Okay, it's admittedly a pretty generalized protest song, more a voicing of general discontent than a focused, issue-oriented program for social change. But it's so peppy and energetic! And at this point in Black Flag's history, the band is still keeping frontman Henry Rollins in his pomo Ziggy Stardust place. It makes you want to go out and tell off your boss or parent--politely but firmly.