The Wrongologist

Labor Day 2014:

 

(Sunday Cartoon Blogging will return in earnest next Sunday)

We pause once a year on the first Monday in September to commemorate Labor Day, a celebration of (and by) the American worker. Sadly, we live to work and we work to live, and we complain about it all week.Our real national pastime is bitching about our salaries and our jerk bosses. Here are a few Labor Day songs that are not part of the typical songs you associate with Labor Day.

And before you ask, “Where’s ‘Take This Job and Shove It’”? That’s an ANTI-work song. Despite the Wrongologist’s support for the sentiment, it doesn’t qualify. Remember, wealth does not create labor, labor creates wealth.

So, play ‘em loud, even if you’re in your cubicle.

First, here is “Salt of the Earth” by the Rolling Stones, written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. It was on Beggar’s Banquet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZGPcRyyvc0

The first stanza is the one you remember, but the 4th and 5th are the Wrongologist’s favorites:
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

Next, “Bright Future in Sales” by Fountains of Wayne, recorded in Chicago in 2009:

Best line:

I got a new computer
And a bright future in sales

Next, “Working for the weekend” by the Canadian band Loverboy. This performance is from 1986:

Technically, now that it’s 2014, the difference is that Everybody is Working ON the weekend.

Here is “Factory” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on 10/2/09 at Giants Stadium.

Factory is a simple 3 stanza song. The meditation on labor isn’t simple though:

Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain,
I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain,
Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life,
The working, the working, just the working life.

We close with “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon. This was on his first post-Beatles album in 1970, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Since the song contains the F-word, many radio stations banned it. The Georgetown University student station, WGTB was investigated by the FCC for playing the song after a Congressman filed a complaint. The station manager, under threat of a $10,000 fine and a year in prison, replied:

The people of Washington are sophisticated enough to accept the occasional four-letter word in context and not become sexually aroused, offended, or upset.

The history of WGTB, a radical-liberal student station inside a conservative, Jesuit university was a great example of the 1970’s counterculture wars. You can read about it here. Now, the video:

The lyric tells the story of growing up to be middle class, back when middle class wasn’t working class:

There’s room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill