Your Mamma’s yappin’ in the back seat
Tell her to push over and move them big feet
Every Monday morning I gotta drive her down to the unemployment agency
Bruce Springsteen, from the album, The River
Sherry Darling lyrics © O/B/O Apra Amcos
*****
I love this reference to working class life. Unemployment has become a permanent way of life for many in the Western world since the mid-1970s, even thought the rich capitalistic aristocracy refuse to acknowledge it.
Seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go,
Looking for the places
Only they would know.
The Boxer, by Paul Simon, 1969, from the last Simon and Garfunkel album Bridge Over Troubled Water.
If mushroom clouds hang overhead
We’ll tuck our children into bed
saying, “this is what we’ve all been waiting for.”
Billowed sails and blood red sun,
Flags are raised and tear apart each one.
While nations battle rise and fall
Love walks lonely by the Berlin wall.
Carelessly we make no sound
And hope that love can still be found
While planet earth is built on common ground.
Shane Howard from Goanna, 1984, from the album ‘Oceania’.
This is from the days of the Cold War, or Cold War II in the days of Ronald Reagan (“Ray-gun”). The post-war, baby-boomer generation was also the Cold War gene
ration, with that constant background fear that one day someone will press the button and our world, and our wonderful era where we are seeking peace, freedom and equality for all, will end. It sets us apart from the modern millennials.
Since the Fall of the Wall and the end of the Soviet Union that fear of nuclear war has passed from society because the big two super powers no longer stare at each other across the ocean. However, the technology remains, so in reality the possibility of a nuclear war is still there …
Is this the MPLA,
Or is this the UDA,
Or is this the IRA,
I thought it was the UK,
Or just another country.
Another council tenancy.
‘Anarchy in the UK’, The Sex Pistols, released 1976, written by G Matlock, P Cook, S Jones, J Rotten.
lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
I can remember myself being shocked by the Sex Pistols in the late 70s, but by the 80s, when I was older – no longer a teen – I got their message. Maybe they were being exploited commercially, I won’t get into that argument, but this line in ANARCHY, tells me what they were all about; anger at the arrogance of Britain and its attempts to still hang on to the last vestiges of glory from its Empire days, and still not recognising the poverty that remained in the country. Maybe Britain had been great, but it was now just another country, and for all its former glory it had still not dealt with the issue of poverty.
Eirene
Rock Lyric Quotes 