Phenix City?

When i was a teenager, impelled by the highwater mark of the third wave ska revival in the mid 1990s to rediscover (a problematic term) the sounds of Jamaica's first pop music, one of my favorite such "first wave" (an anachronism, obvsioulsy) tunes was The Skatalites' "Phenix City." I always thought the song was a reference to Phoenix, Arizona, a city with which i have a slightly troubled past which is obliquely referenced way back here. But if i'd been from Georgia or Alabama instead of Pennsylvania and NYC, or if i'd ever been stationed at Fort Benning. perhaps i would have known that the song, a Roland(o) Alphonso instrumental whose only lyrics are the repetition of the title after each refrain of the main melodic figure, actually references Phenix City, Alabama, a notorious den of iniquity just across the river from the aforementioned fort, which General Patton once threatened to raze with tanks. I'm not familiar enough with Alphonso's life to know if he ever went there - though i did get to see him play four times before he died. But that the Skatalites would name a tune after the Sin City of the southeast rather than a not-yet of of a not yet booming not yet sunbelt makes things way more interesting.

Rewatched season four of the wire. Perhaps the best single season of episodic television ever. Incredibly moving and powerful, and deeply keen. Plus, Donut is the best source of cheap jokes and sight gags since Ziggy's duck.

All the world that's manned by idle drones

This morning, listening to the Almanac Singers (or possibly The Weavers') recording of Ralph Chaplin's 1915 syndicalist anthem Solidarity Forever, i noticed that like most recent versions (since the CIO era) of the song, Seeger et al omit two of Chaplin's original six verses:

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.

and

All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.

I'd noticed this before, but never really thought about why its these two verses that get cut. I don't think they're aesthetically superior to the ones that stay in - the incredible line about standing "outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made ," nor do these verses, intriguingly, speak of the dependence of capital on both "brain and muscle," as does another verse which remains in the Almanac Singers' recording. Still these two redacted passages are certainly no less radical or expressly syndicalist than the song's final verse

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.

So why leave them out?


I'm on a serious Woody Guthrie kick.

Expect a longer, thought piece on academic labor sometime soon. Have good goyishe holidays.

All Your Emails Are Belong To Us

The NLRB strikes again:

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that employers have the right to prohibit workers from using the company’s e-mail system to send out union-related messages, a decision that could hamper communications between labor unions and their membership.

In a 3-to-2 ruling on Friday, the labor board held that it was legal for employers to bar union-related e-mail so long as employers had a policy barring employees from sending e-mail for “non-job-related solicitations” for any outside organization.

Thank god we have democrats in congress now. Oh, wait.

Menahan Street Band, 2006. (Bunch of people from Brooklyn retro soul bands like Dap Kings, El Michels Affair, Budos Band.) "Make The Road By Walking." Named after the community organization? Or the Paolo Freire/ Myles Horton book? Who knows.


Jay Z. 2007. Produced by Sean Puffy Combs.


It's pretty interesting that Puffy's mining the Brooklyn retro-soul folks for beats. And they're both great tracks. El Michels Affair put put a faux-isntrumental version of Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." They've also backed Wu-Tang live.

Also, because i'm still in writing withdrawal after having finished my field exam on thursday, I give you part 2 of adventures in "serious" hair metal:



and finally, because this block is actually supposed to be about, like, labor, and casualization, voila.

I have 8 hours to write 2 sections!

fuck!

bad bob dylan covers

Blackamore's Night: "The Times They Are a Changing".

The guitarist from deep purple or whatever takes a song about revolution and turns it into renaissance fair schlock. Although the guitar is nice, the song loses all its meaning.

Me First and The Gimme gimmes, "Blowin in the wind."

Crappy novelty punk, crappy cover.

u2, "Maggie's Farm."

I appreciate the sentiment, but The Specials did the whole "Thatcher as Maggie" thing long before Bono, and i think the song loses a lot of its harshness here. Plus, i hate u2.

Ok, enough with the bad.

This is much more interesting


While this is totally punk rock. Singing "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll on live network TV..."


If you want to hear some good dylan covers, check out Steven Malkmus's versions of "Ballad of a thin man" and "Maggie's Farm," Cat Power's take on "Stuck Outside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again," and Yo La Tengo's deeply Yo La Tengoish "4th Time Around" from the I'm not there soundtrack.

Also when i was 11 i thought this was brilliant.

Hmm.

Wait... Are we pretending that NYU values labor rights now?