[Richard]
This past week (after my last computer crashed), I finally got around to reading an old book by Greil Marcus called Mystery Train. This book is a great piece of rock criticism that had been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, maybe because I was afraid that Marcus’ pre-punk work would simply pale in my mind next to the book of his that I read about a decade ago, Lipstick Traces. Probably most everybody who's read rock criticism or even cultural criticism knows about Lipstick Traces, that famous book which made wildly leaping theoretical connections between the first wave of punk rock (1975-77), Situationism, dadaism, and surrealism. Some people don’t at all like what Marcus did in that particular book, but I loved it, and I still think everybody who was ever involved in punk rock should read it. Nonetheless, when I finally read Mystery Train, I found it to be almost as rewarding. It reminded me of why I also love rockabilly (though sometimes I think Marcus made a bit much of Elvis, while I could absolutely see, in the other book, why he made so much of Johnny Rotten). In addition, it told me things I never knew about The Band, Robert Johnson, and Randy Newman, illuminated me with a few facts I didn’t know about Sun Records’ first artist, Harmonica Frank (I have his great, rare recording "Rockin' Chair Daddy" on a compilation album somewhere), and told me a lot about Sly and the Family Stone.
The Sly chapter, I thought, was particularly good, as it drew very convincing parallels between the changes in Sly’s music and the changes in the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and various other manifestations of that '60s almost-revolution heading into the more downbeat '70s. This chapter contains some fascinating history of the Black Panthers. It also is the first piece of rock criticism I’ve read that actually sort of confirmed my own long-held feelings that the early ‘70s Sly and the Family Stone album called There’s a riot goin’ on was far more interesting and moving than the prior, more optimistic albums that contained Sly’s most famous hits. And finally (though somewhat tangentially), this chapter provides a very interesting, detailed review of Across 110th Street, a movie that has morbidly fascinated me.
Probably, Mystery Train is best known for the writing that Marcus did about Elvis and the 1950s (which must have been intended, given the title, etc.). But it seems to me that Marcus' real brilliance came through in both the above-mentioned books when he talked about the '70s. In Lipstick Traces, he beautifully captured one part of that decade, reveling in the punk explosion, while in Mystery Train -- especially that chapter on Sly -- he just as beautifully captured the other part. And sometimes his descriptions of the '70s have startling relevance to the present -- which is why I'd like to close with the following passages...
Throughout the years of Nixon’s ascendancy, the New Yorker opened most issues with a page of unsigned commentary that tried to see through each week’s dose of lies -- the obvious lies told by those in power, and the more subtle, pathetic lies told by those who twisted to escape the first....
These are the politics of freeze-out. They turn into a culture of seamless melancholy with the willful avoidance of anything -- a book, some photographs, a record, a movie, even a newspaper -- that one suspects might produce really deep feeling. Raw emotions must be avoided when one knows they will take no shape but that of chaos.
Within such a culture there are many choices: cynicism, which is a smug, fraudulent kind of pessimism; the sort of camp sensibility that puts all feeling at a distance; or culture that reassures, counterfeits excitement and adventure, and is safe. A music as broad as rock ’n’ roll will always come up with some of each, and probably that’s just as it should be.
Sometimes, though, you want something more: work so intense and compelling you will risk chaos to get close to it, music that smashes through a world that for all of its desolation may be taking on too many of the comforts of familiarity. Sly created a moment of lucidity in the midst of all the obvious negatives and the false, faked hopes; he made his despair mean something in the midst of a despair it is all too easy to think may mean nothing at all. He was clearing away the cultural and political debris that seemed piled up in mounds on the streets, in the papers, in the record stores; for all of the darkness of what he had to say and how he said it, his music had the kind of strength and naked honesty that could make you want to start over.
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^^^
June 8, 2004
   Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!
[Richard]
Ding Dong!
The Witch is dead.
Which old Witch?
The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong!
The Wicked Witch is dead!
Wake up -- sleepy head,
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up,
The Wicked Witch is dead.
She's gone where the goblins go,
Below -- below -- below.
Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong, the merry-oh,
Sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!
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^^^
June 2, 2004 Working is Hell
[asfo_del]
It's been thirty years since the publication of Studs Terkel's book Working, an oral history describing people's experiences in the workplace. En editorial in The New York Times, published May 31, 2004, notes how much worse working conditions have become in the last 30 years, and how much less satisfied or tolerant of their jobs the majority have become since the publication of Working. I myself don't remember the stories in that book as being particularly rosy, though it's been many years since I've read it, but I have no doubt that working has become an even greater hell. Output is measured in increasingly less human terms, and management styles have become ever more "scientific," creating strange timetables of goals and productivity which are usually outside of the workers' control but for which they are held accountable.
According to the Times editorial, about 4% of all workers are stuck in soul-sucking call centers, supervised with a method known as "management by stress." A study conducted last fall found that only 49% of workers in the U.S. were satisfied with their jobs, down from 59% in 1995. Partly because of the enormous pressure placed on workers to increase productivity, in a recent two and a half year period corporate profits went up 85% -- but wages only rose 4.5% in the same period.
According to the author of Work Abuse: How to Recognize and Survive It, workers are so often abused by sadistic and power-drunk supervisors and employers that its aftermath can cause symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder. [Richard has made reference to this before.] "Work abuse is so prevalent, it's always a shock for someone coming out of school to go into the workplace." Working at a demeaning and stultifying job is so nearly necessary for survival in our society that not enough thought is given to the fact that not all people are able, by temperament, upbringing, constitution, or whatever, to tolerate the submission to authority and adherence to an extremely rigid schedule that working at the overwhelming majority of jobs requires.
I picked up a book from the library yesterday that is a recent version of Working. It's called Gig: Americans Talk About their Jobs at the Turn of the Millenium. I've only read a few entries so far, but I was struck by the seemingly docile acceptance of lousy conditions. Perhaps that should be no surprise, however, since docility and mild acceptance are required to be able to continue to go back to a job that is humiliating and dehumanizing. The alternative would be to storm off, screaming, but then how would one survive, with no paycheck?
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