Pop music can’t help but reflect the hard times…
Neil Young – singing about the hard times… |
[originally from the Washington Post. For full article click here] For Neil Young’s next release, “Fork in the Road,” the venerated, if occasionally vexing, rocker has created a concept album about electric cars. But Young takes a detour on at least two tracks to work with a suddenly popular songwriting topic: the cratering economy.
On “Cough Up the Bucks,” Young wonders, in his high, nasally whine: “Where did all the money go?”
And on the title track’s chorus, he turns indignant: “There’s a bailout coming, but it’s not for you/It’s for all those creeps hiding what they do.”
Young’s contributions are just two of the more recent entries to the rapidly expanding recession-music playlist. It’s a mix that’s spilling over with tunes by artists who sound dejected, determined, enraged, anxious and, occasionally, sort of amused by the financial meltdown.
Indeed, the global financial crisis is providing fodder to all manner of musicians, from rock legends and country singers to folkies and rappers. Contributions from rappers are especially notable, with more and more hip-hop artists forgoing, or at least decreasing, lyrics about excessive materialism in favor of ones about the common man’s economic grind, as heard on recent songs by Jadakiss (“Hard Times”), Cam’ron (“I Hate My Job”), Joell Ortiz (“Bout My Money”) and Willie Isz, a Georgia duo whose “In the Red” imagines a world without money.
The members of Willie Isz have called the potent song a cross between John Lennon’s “Imagine” and the epochal Great Depression song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” But it sounds more like a Southern-rap update of the Carter Family’s enduring 1930s anthem “No Depression in Heaven,” with Jneiro Jarel rapping: “If everything was free, the world would be a better place/For you and me/Don’t you agree?/No more poverty/. . . There would be no bank robberies/The crime life would stop/America would be at peace.”
There’s also “Circulate” by Young Jeezy, the Southern rap star who last year released a chart-topping album loaded with lyrics about economic struggle. Called “The Recession” (although at the time of its release, in September, economists hadn’t declared that the U.S. economy was in a recession), the album marked a departure for the Atlanta rapper who became famous — and, yes, rich — spinning tales of dope boys living large.
Although Jeezy didn’t actually strip his lyrics of references to his Lamborghini, he was suddenly questioning his free-spending ways, rapping: “Looking at my watch like it’s a bad investment.” In an interview with XXL magazine, he explained that he was something like a hip-hop Suze Orman: “When money was plentiful, I was the first one to tell you to stack it. Live your life with it. Now that money’s slowed up, I’ma be the first one to tell you to save it like they ain’t gon’ make it no more.”
And yes, a wealthy rap star can still relate to the plight of the common man, Jeezy insisted. “I got family members, aunts, uncles and cousins and friends that still live their life,” he said. “It definitely affects me when I get the phone calls and somebody’s about to get put out of their house . . . somebody can’t pay their bills and there ain’t really a lot of opportunity out there for you.”
In January, Nashville star John Rich dashed off “Shuttin’ Detroit Down,” a rant about the government’s hesitation to save the American automotive industry. “In the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down,” Rich seethes. “While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town/And D.C.’s bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground.”
Country singer-songwriter Phil Vassar seemed to have presaged the housing crisis when he was working up the title track of his 2008 album, “Prayer of a Common Man.” It’s a country-gospel ballad on which Vassar sings almost pleadingly: “This house of cards I built is mortgaged to the hilt/And it’s sinking in the sand/Lord, hear the prayer of a common man.”
The old folkie Tom Paxton took a different approach in writing about federal bailouts, turning satirical on “I’m Changing My Name to Fannie Mae,” an update of his topical 1979 song “I’m Changing My Name to Chrysler.” In the new version, Paxton sings: “I am changing my name to Fannie Mae/I am going down to Washington, D.C./I’ll be glad they got my back/Cause what they did for Freddie Mac/Will be perfectly acceptable to me.”
The recent proliferation of songs about the economy is no surprise, given the long and rich history of tunes about hard times. During the Great Depression, musicians summed up the prevailing sentiments of the struggling country, whether it was Woody Guthrie singing his Dust Bowl ballads (“Do Re Mi,” “Tom Joad,” “I Ain’t Got No Home”), Blind Alfred Reed wondering “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” or Yip Harburg writing about the disintegration of the American dream in “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
Now, the good news: Making music is still easy and affordable
Making music is still very affordable. If you love music, you’ll always find a way to make it, either buying cheap new gear, or even used gear.
You can get some good, decent gear for much less money than you’d expect – the cheapest brand new acoustic guitar at Dolphin, the Falcon FG100, costs a meagre £34.25. And you know what? It’s not half bad at all!
A Squier by Fender Start Playing Affinity Special Pack costs just over £150, and for a package that includes a good guitar, practice amp, strap and lead, it’s really good price!
The Yamaha YPT200 keyboard costs only £69 and has a portable grand sound function. It’s pretty good – you can’t compare it with a Nord, of course, but the sound is good enough to get anyone started and playing their music.
The Yamaha Pocketrak 2G is an affordable (portable) recorder for only £149…enough to get you started with some good live recordings of your songs.
Several USB Audio Interfaces are also available for very reasonable prices, and most models also include some sort of music recording software, so it’s just a matter of plugging to your computer and start playing your music. Some interfaces we can mention: the ESI MAYA44 USB (Includes Cubase LE) available for just £69.95, M-Audio Fast Track (only £69.99) and the Line 6 POD Studio GX which costs only £62.
Who knows, maybe the economic recession will make people appreciate simplicity in music again…after all, a Chicago Blues Harmonica costs under £5, and if a harmonica was all that some seminal blues musicians had (such as Sonny Boy Wiliamson) then maybe it could be enough to some of you, too!
And before we forget – the Take It Away scheme is here to help anyone who can’t afford to spend too much money in one go, and is now also available for online items.
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