Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Look At That Stupid Girl

Great song written by the Rolling Stones.
"The way she powders her nose, her vanity shows and it shows, she's the worst thing in this world, well look at that stupid girl."
"The way she talks about someone else, that she doesn't even know herself, she's the sickest thing in this world, well, look at that stupid girl."
1966. The Stones had balls. They still have balls. Under My Thumb is another one. At first I thought the feminists would go crazy over Stupid Girl at the time, but then I thought maybe this is exactly the kind of woman they are rebelling against. I get the Stones point of view and it must have been amped up by being Rock Gods - I can just imagine the brainless women who groupied around them.
Women love money, women love power, women love fame, women love bad boys. It is a tried and true formula.
The song popped up randomly on my blessed iPod machine and I wondered if a song like that could even be written today. Female activists would probably be all over it, burning Stones records in the streets and frantically lazer removing their "I Love Keith" tattoos from unmentionable areas of their bodies.
Then I thought about Rehab. Amy Winehouse.
I love that song, it is so un-politically correct in a time when rehab is a goddamn movement. If you have consumed only one drink a day for your entire life and, randomly, one day you reach for a second, BOOM the Rehab police are there with tasers and a straight jacket dragging you off to The Sunny Acres Holistic Cleansing facility to dry you out.
Once you get there you find it's not so bad because they have an awesome bar with unbelievably cheap top shelf prices because the admission cost for the rehab program is $1,500/day.
AND the irony is that Charlie Sheen is perched on the limb of a tree right outside the facility with four bottles of Patron Anejo and three joints welcoming you to your new temporary home.
"They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no."
I love that lyric. Love it. It exposes the hypocrisy of rehab for the rich. And the futility of rehab for the common man. Jesus, life requires painkilliers and escape. How the hell else do you survive?
Take This Job and Shove It. Written by David Allen Coe, immortalized by Johnnie Paycheck ( you know that ain't his real name). If you don't know who David Allen Coe is, Google the man and you will undertsand why he was the perfect guy to write this song.
"Well I been working in this factory for now on fifteen years, all this time I watched my woman drowning in a pool of tears, and I've seen a lot of good folks die who had a lot of bills to pay, I'd give the shirt right off of my back if I had the guts to say........"
"The foreman, he's a regular dog, the line boss he's a fool, got a brand new flat top haircut Lord, he thinks he's cool, one of these days I'm gonna blow my top and that sucker, he's gonna pay, I can't wait to see their faces when I get the nerve to say.......
Take this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more, my woman done left and took all the reason I was working for, ya better not try and stand in my way, 'cause I'm walking out the door, take this job and shove it I ain't working here no more."
Magnificent. I have longed to say this my entire life and so have you. I have been working for 40 years and many of you have worked longer than that. In forty years I have had only one job that I liked - tending bar - and that lasted five years. I still long to say those words and I will. I will orchestrate my escape from the mundane and when I do, a lifetme of anger will bubble up and drown whoever I am working for at the time.
Thank god for music. Thank god for The Stones and Amy Winehouse and David Allen Coe and hundreds of other rebels.
They have the guts to say what we cannot because we are forced to protect whatever little patch of ground we have staked our lives on.
Music is  meaningful on so many different levels and in so many different ways.
Consume it like you would an expensive wine or a designer steak.
It fuels your body in a much more satisfying way.

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