Once again, it's time for my favorite holiday of the year, in which we celebrate labor unions and all they have given us as well as honoring working people...and all they have given us.
And for the fifth straight year, I celebrate this day as a proud (and very thankful) member of UCFW #876. They continue to help my family (and every other family in our corner of the business world) in ways immeasurable, through both our wages and our benefits, as well as providing us with job security. Added bonus: We had an incident earlier this year where the department I work in was asked to sign a new set of rules that would apply only to us. It seemed a little bullshit, so I refused to sign it and passed it on to our union steward who promptly called our union rep who promptly called our store management and told them, "It's not in our contract, so stuff it." Righteous!
As I have done for the past few years, I'm going to feature a song that celebrates labor unions, and this year has the extra perk of being a clarion call for the November midterms. This year's is a little new to me, but it's "Better World A-Comin'" by Woody Guthrie (lyrics are here).
As regular readers know (all three of you), Labor Day is one of emaycee's favorite days of the year, and as such, I usually celebrate with a nice labor union inspired tune.
This year we have one that I was unfamiliar with before this weekend but have thoroughly enjoyed since first hearing it. Written by one of my--and the entire union movement's--heroes, Woody Guthrie, "You Gotta Go Down and Join the Union" (alternate title "I'm Gonna Join That One Big Union") is a rousing call to arms and a fine addition to our Pantheon of Labor Union Songs. And especially appropriate this year as Guthrie's message posted on his guitar, "This machine kills fascists," coincides nicely with our goal to eradicate Trump and his MAGA minions' assault on our democracy.
Well, at least I'm not more than a week late for this post....
My introduction to this week's tune was farting around one night looking for different music and coming across a version (note the joy in the performers as they sing it) of it by Johnny Cash and the Carter Family, which led me to finding out that this week's artist was among the first to popularize it (though the Carter Family were the first to record it). It's become such a standard of folk that if Jesus and the Twelve Apostles came back to earth and decided to be a folk band, it'd be one of the first songs they'd record....
I wrote about Woody Guthrie in Jukebox XLVIII (the first year I wrote posts for FNJ), but in my enthusiasm for writing his short bio, I neglected to mention that Guthrie has been elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and was the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. I also failed to note his rather lengthy discography. And because of the times we live in, I'd like to remind everyone that Guthrie had a sticked affixed to his guitar that said, "This Machine Kills Fascists." Amen.
"Worried Man Blues" is a folk song that has been passed down through the generations, with the lyrics often changing by recording, though the chorus generally remains the same. As noted above, the Carter Family is the first mention I found of recording it (in 1930). Guthrie recorded his version in 1940. It appears on the Asch Recordings, a noted series of Guthrie albums featuring his most well known songs.
Fun Fact: Not that anyone but me gives a shit, but I can play this week's tune on the guitar from beginning to end, all by my lonesome. Woot, woot!
One of the beauties, for me, of American folk music is its simplicity. Not that I don't love a song full of extravaganza, but there's something about an acoustic guitar or a banjo or a fiddle and the accompanying harmonies that I've always loved. "Worried Man Blues" follows this tradition (at least in Guthrie's version)--it's just Guthrie and his guitar and as a performer it is his job to sell the story (convicted man regretting his "awful crime"), and he nails it. There's a down home touch to the vocals and the twang of the guitar fits perfectly for a simple man reflecting on the error of his ways. It's an American classic, and among the best of what the roots of American folk has to offer.
Lyric Sheet: "That train pulled out/Twenty-one coaches long/And the woman I love/Is on that train and gone..."
Not only that, but at this point in our history unions are winning historic victories (Starbucks, Amazon), union membership is rising, and we have a President and a Democratic Congress that are firmly on our side.
We have many, many reasons to celebrate this Labor Day. The fight is far from over, but we are landing more punches and helping more workers each and every day.
Somehow in my yearly Labor Day post I have never used (though I did quote from it one year) "I Guess I Planted" (lyrics by Woody Guthrie, music by Billy Bragg, performed by Bragg and Wilco from their classic album, Mermaid Avenue) as my Labor Day celebration song, especially considering it's one of my favorite union songs. So, we have two special firsts today.
Lyric Sheet: "Union song. Union battled/All added up. Won us what we got now..."
Amid the dystopia in which we are now living thanks to Donald Trump and his republican minions, it's easy to forget that those of us on the left have been fighting the evil on the right for a long time...and probably will be for as long as most of us may live.
Today is Woody Guthrie Day, a tribute to the man who fought the good fight for social justice and a fair economic system for all of us long before most of us were born. It's also a hopeful reminder of how far we have come, and though we still have far to go, that the promised land will be more than just a promise.
"This Land Is Your Land" is the greatest song ever written about America and an ode to both the beauty and the ugliness that resides herein. As I've already featured Guthrie's version, I'd like to feature his heir apparent, Bruce Springsteen, and his powerful version (which I had the good fortune of seeing live, though not on the night of the one featured below).
Enjoy while you, too, keep fighting the good fight:
Three weeks after the election of Hitler, thousands of low wage workers across America struck yet again for the right to unionize, better benefits, and $15 an hour. Hundreds were arrested. And it just goes to show that like the U.S. Postal Service, neither rain nor snow nor heat nor the election of a greedy, worker hating fuckwad can stop good folks from working together for the economic betterment of millions of other good folks.
So fuck their right to work for less laws, fuck their Wall Street Cabinet members, and fuck their fealty to Corporate America: in the words of Woody Guthrie, "...Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union/I'm sticking to the union, till the day I die...."
As it's a holiday weekend and folks are most concerned with a) eating, b) spending time with family, c) shopping, or d) just chillin' the fuck out, and especially considering that this week's featured tune will set an FNJ record (that will probably never be beat) for longest song ever (clocking in at a little over eighteen minutes), I'm going to keep this week's feature mercifully short.
Though not a hit single in the traditional sense (most top 40 songs don't last five or six minutes let alone eighteen), Arlo Guthrie (son of folk legend Woody Guthrie) has nonetheless pretty much built a career out of "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (though he did have one top 40 hit in his career with "City of New Orleans"). Since its release in 1967, Guthrie has released another 29 albums (with nary another hit in the bunch) and toured consistently, though he chooses to perform "Alice's Restaurant" now at only ten year intervals.
The first song on his aptly titled Alice's RestaurantLP (and it takes up the entire first side), "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" is one part satire, one part stand-up routine, and one part war protest song (though Guthrie claims it's more of an anti-stupidity song than an anti-war song, I disagree and since it's my blog, he loses). Loosely based on actual events in Guthrie's life, it's a humorous monologue with some spiffy acoustic guitar that tells the story of how Guthrie got arrested for littering and how the draft board later deemed him unfit to serve in the military for being a litterbug. Though Guthrie himself has taken a rightward turn politically and become a libertarian (and I'm sure his father is vomiting in his grave at his embrace of unfettered capitalism), the song is a potent reminder of a time when the left fought back and won, and in oh so many ways changed our country for the better.
Lyric sheet: "And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement..."
In 1977, Rolling Stone had a tenth anniversary issue (which means next year should mark fifty years of publication--and exactly where does the time go?) featuring their critics ten best musical moments of their first ten years, and for an eighteen-year-old lad just beginning to explore the depths of rock and roll, it was quite a revelation. From the assorted lists I sought out "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground, Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart, and various works by The Band, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Boz Scaggs, all of whom I still listen to to this day.
And I also sought out a song by some guy named Bob Dylan--a song whose title even to my inexperienced teenage ears sounded as cool as a title could be: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." And it started a lifelong love affair with the music of quite possibly America's greatest rock and roll artist. And a long abiding respect and awe for arguably the greatest rock and roll song ever written.
There really isn't much I can say about Bob Dylan that hasn't been said or written by someone whose knowledge goes much deeper than my fanboy adoration--though I have to admit that most of it is gone as the heir to Woody Guthrie gave up a long time ago and ceded that mantle to Bruce Springsteen. Dylan these days is busy making commercials for Victoria Secrets and IBM and recording Sinatra covers (gulp--two albums worth) and is about as culturally, socially, and politically relevant as your average blade of grass. It wasn't always so--Dylan at one time was the voice of a generation and fans and critics alike hung on each word of every lyric of every song for a deeper understanding of the world we lived in. It may have been overwrought--hell, it was overwrought--but rock and roll was art and art can answer anything, can't it?
Released in 1965 on his Bringing It All Back HomeLP, "It's Alright, Ma" is a sparse, apocalyptic look at what America had become and was hardening into (amazingly enough, much of it is still relevant today, maybe even moreso). Backed only by his own ominous acoustic guitar, Dylan deftly weaves his way through fifteen verses, each spotlighting a rhyming scheme accentuating a single sound (noon, spoon, soon, balloon, etc,) in what could be called a rap (Dylan: the original rapper), which leads into the more or less chorus: "It's alright, Ma...." (surprisingly enough, "I'm only bleeding" is never uttered in the song). It's a narrative of American consumerism, social disharmony, and our war machine, all of which Dylan wails against in a nasally (what else?) and wearied tirade. "It's Alright, Ma" has been called a "grim masterpiece" and and has been said to be, unlike some of Dylan's previous politically inclined songs, without hope. I beg to differ--while it certainly isn't a "shiny happy people: peace love dope!" message, I think the "It's alright, Ma" chorus is the hope--as you listen it's obvious that not only the music, but Dylan's vocals as well take a less somber turn . It's a somewhat pyrrhic victory, but sometimes just surviving is more than half the battle in all things disappointing in life.
All in all, it's a masterwork by a master of American songwriting.
Fun fact: Dylan has performed the song over 770 times in concert. Woo-hoo!
Liner notes: "It's alright, Ma, it's life and life only."
Springsteen this week cancelled a concert in North Carolina in response to the passage of HB2, which is a law that basically allows hateful rednecks to discriminate against anyone based on their sexual orientation or sexual identity. It was a nice big middle finger to North Carolina republicans and their hate mongering Governor, Pat McCrory, and could just be the opening that leads to a Democratic victory in North Carolina in this fall's Presidential election.
Is there any question that the rightful heir to the legacy of Woody Guthrie is Bruce Springsteen? For all the once upon a time talk about Bob Dylan (who's keeping busy these days doing Frank Sinatra covers--can you say culturally irrelevant, boys and girls?), it's Springsteen who, even though he's in his late sixties and has had an avalanche of commercial success, continues to fight the good fight for the least among us and uses his talent and fame for the betterment of all, just like Guthrie did right up until his death.
Though he's a much richer man than most of us, if there's anyone of his stature who could still be called a working class hero, it's Bruce Springsteen.
Pete Seeger. The Weavers. Johnny Cash. Bob Dylan. Bernie Sanders (!--truly awful--listen here). Neil Young. Bruce Springsteen. The Kingston Trio. Peter Paul and Mary. The Seekers. Steve Earle. Judy Collins. Arlo Guthrie. Glen Campbell. Billy Bragg. Tom Morello. My Morning Jacket.
Not to mention there is no one in America over the age of five who can't at least sing the first verse.
It's hard to imagine that a song first recorded 71 years ago could inspire such a varied group of artists as those above to record their own versions through the years, but "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie has. Guthrie originally penned the song in 1940 as a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" (which he considered unrealistic), forgot about the song until 1944 (when it was recorded for the first time), and the rest, as they say, is history. The original lyrics had a decidedly more political bent to them, but Guthrie eventually pared them down to the celebration of America's beauty that we all know today.
Guthrie himself was quite the political animal, travelling across America throughout the Great Depression fighting poverty and injustice. He flirted with the Communist Party, was a strong labor union supporter, and railed against forces of inequality not so different than those we face today. Sadly, Guthrie's suffered from the effects of Huntington's disease for the last twenty years of his life and spent the final eleven years in hospitals before his death in 1967. He left behind a legacy of political activism via music and a catalog of songs that define the American experience of the twentieth century. A true American hero.
As for the song itself--what can I really say? It's a buoyant trip across this land we call home, celebrating its beauty and its promise. And with nothing more than a voice and an acoustic guitar.
Fun factoid: Guthrie had a sticker affixed to his guitar which read, "This machine kills fascists." Truer words, my friends, truer words.
Not only do we get great job benefits from the work of Labor Unions, but we also get some pretty catchy songs. Here's union icon Pete Seeger singing union icon Woody Guthrie's "Union Maid" (and note all the folks singing along):
I've been trying to find a spot to put this video for months--the Fourth of July seemed like an appropriate time because nothing says America quite like two old hippies (Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir) from the Grateful Dead joining forces with a Latino rock band--the incomparable Los Lobos--to sing and play Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." Replete with a sax solo and some mean accordion playing to boot....
From July of 1989, when I was still a very young man--Happy Fourth, and enjoy:
The fun and games couldn't last forever--you knew eventually I had to feature at least one overtly political song....
Billy Bragg is a long time musician and political activist of the left wing variety--he had a modicum of success here in the states (including a Grammy nomination) for his work with Wilco wherein they put the unused lyrics of Woody Guthrie to music which became the Mermaid Avenuealbums. The bulk of his success has occurred in his native U.K.
Released in 1988, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards" (on his album Workers Playtime) takes as its inspiration China's disastrous economic and social initiative entitled The Great Leap Forward which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese from famine and political retribution--i.e., all too often our better selves are diminished by the reality of human nature. Still, while the song starts as a lament for the disappointments and disillusions of political activism, it ends on a rousing call to arms and an exhortation to keep fighting.
The song also follows one of my favorite patterns in a--a slow musical entrance that grows into a crescendo by song's end. It's basically an old folkie's dream--a little piano, a little guitar, and a political theme. Bragg's vocals are also a treat--from the weariness as he lists the broken ideals of the Kennedys, Fidel Castro, Robert Oppenheimer, and himself to the fuck this, we're gonna keep on keepin' on brashness of its conclusion, Bragg never falters.
Labor Day in the United States is a holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It is a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country.
Paid holidays. Paid vacations. Pensions. Healthcare. Dental care. Life insurance. Safety protections. The fucking entire middle class. Won us all what we got now, indeed--though, thanks to income inequality (or as I prefer, greedy rich assholes), it's about $18,000 per year short of what it could be for the middle class.
Over the past week we've seen that the fight for a decent standard of living for all workers marches forward--President Obama used his weekend address to again beat the drums for an increase in the minimum wage. In a related note, a study showed that 40%--40%, for fuck's sake--of restaurant workers live in near poverty (think about that the next time you're scarfing down an Encharito). Fed-Ex workers challenged and won against Fed-Ex's war on workers--it's claim that it wasn't responsible for wage-theft because it's drivers were independent (much like the fast food industry passing the buck to franchise owners for worker abuses) was soundly rejected by the courts. Two things I hate about Labor Day: (1) That somehow it's a celebration of all workers--no, it's not. It doesn't celebrate scabs and the leeches who want the the gains of unions but don't want to pay the dues. It doesn't celebrate CEOs and anti-union organizations. It's for those workers who make our lives better economically and socially, not the shitfarts. (2) The fact that I can channel surf the hundred some odd channels we have and only Al Jazeera--and it's not even a fucking American company!--has anything on that celebrates labor unions, which is why the vast majority of their fat ass viewers have the day off. It's not as if there aren't quite a few good union flicks for the movie channels, and I thought--even if it is half-assed--that MSNBC was supposed to be the anti-Fox. Two things I love about Labor Day: (1) That every liberal blog has at the very least one piece celebrating the day...which is also why I spend a lot more time reading liberal blogs than I do watching TV. (2) It's a time to remember some of the great songs and artists celebrating unions--ain't no way any self-respecting artist is going to sing a song singing the praises of CEOs or big business. Unions, my friends, are cool. One of my favorites of the past few years, The Nightwatchman's (aka Tom Morello) "Union Town"--enjoy!
A recent study shows that the U.S. is now employing more private security guards than at any time in our history (note that the murder rate in America was on a projected pace for what would be a 40 year low), and that states with the highest rates of income inequality also employ the most private security guards.
Apparently rich folks in America are at least vaguely familiar with the French Revolution.
One supposes, too, that the old biblical saying about reaping what you sow has just a hint of truth to it.
"Yes, as through this world I've wandered,
I've seen lots of funny men.
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen."
Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd"
It'd been years since I heard this song, but when I heard it today (Bob Dylan on the Folkways: A Vision Shared tribute) for some odd reason this factoid from Think Progess that I'd read a short while ago popped into my head--since 2008, coroporate profits have risen 20% faster than workers' incomes.
I've heard tell there was a time when average workers shared in the prosperity of their companies, but those days disappeared after the Reagan Devolution. Record corporate profits don't happen without dedicated workers, and you have to wonder how long that dedication will last without some financial reciprocity.
It only takes the removal of one card for the house of cards to come tumbling down.
The average American gets paid just enough so he doesn't quit his job, and works just hard enough so he doesn't get fired.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." Source unknown
Uncle emaycee Wants You For the Coming Class War! Enlist today....
Capitalism: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you can exploit his labor, become filthy rich, and keep the poor bastard living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of his life.
