Songs to Strike By
As everyone seems to have suddenly noticed over the past three weeks, there are all these songs about how George W. Bush is a bad president, invading Iraq was a bad idea, etc. But where, you ask, are the songs about working men and women striking for better wages and working conditions? Well, there's "Parade" on Pretty Girls Make Graves' recent album Élan Vital, that's where. I also hear there's a revival of The Pajama Game -- far and away the best musical comedy about union organizing -- on in New York.
There's also Rancid's "Harry Bridges" though such lyrics as "The media clamed that the commies were taking over / and some believed it was true" tend to overlook the fact that Bridges was, in fact, a Communist at the time.
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Comments (5)
I wish Billy Bragg's last album had been good, because then all those songs would easily make a good strike list.
If you're willing to listen to Rancid then you shouldn't have any problem listening to Against Me! "Baby I'm an Anarchist," and "Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious" could be decent fits, if you don't care much about, you know, the music being good.
If you're gonna strike, you best not be listening to some effete, upper-middle class indie rock band, made of guys who've never worked a real job in their lives--no knock on these people--I used to be one. And these days, the more political the band, the more polemical and less poetical the lyrics.
I'd bet there's some good country music about strikes that we're just not tapped into because it's not, you know, the hip kind of country that it's ok to listen to.
May 16, 2006 4:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Try International Coverup on the same album by Rancid, any of a number of Dropkick Murphys songs (most are covers - Which Side Are You On, Worker's Song, etc.), and Roll On by Living End.
May 16, 2006 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Stick it up your ass Ciff, Against Me rocks. =) I don't think it's particularly unionish music, though.
The GC5 has a few songs that would be good - "In The End" and "No Magic," for example.
May 16, 2006 7:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Also the Waco Brothers:
from the country to the town
police and bosses held us down
back at the start when the ground was laid
plenty tough and union made
plenty tough and union made
one long struggle day by day
that's how we got to live this way
plenty tough and union made
May 16, 2006 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Strike (orig. from Minneapolis, now in Chicago?) had a really catchy pro-labor number 7 or 8 years ago entitled, "Kicking Ass (For the Working Class)." ("She's kicking ass for the working class/all you scabs better get out fast/from the first factory to the last/she's kicking ass for the working class.")
They mine the usual influences, but, at least with this track, they put them together in a memorable fashion.
video (I can only get the audio to work, but it gives you the idea of what the song sounds like anyway, though I don't approve of the author's ambivalence toward other Mpls stalwarts)
Minnesota Daily 3/25/3004
May 17, 2006 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink