From Soldier (1980), the mordant Iggy Pop album that often cheers me up, and helped get me through the Reagan-Bush years: "I'm a Conservative."
Sample lyric snippets:
Hello my friends
Is everybody happy?
Hey look me over
Lend me an ear
I'm a conservative
And when I run out of bread I laugh
All the way to the bank
Sometimes I pause for a drink
Conservatism ain't no easy job
I smile in the mornings
I live without a care
Nothing is denied me
And nothing ever hurts
And it would mean so much to me
If you would only be like me . . .
Later that same year, Ronald Reagan won the presidential election; the next year, he declared, "It's Morning Again in America." What does that make it now, in 2010?
Today's Rune: Partnership.
8 comments:
Erik, I abhor conservatism and lean to the excessive side. Iggs is a nut. Warm up on the way! HOOOray!
In 1984, I was in grad school and working on Mondale's campaign. My roommate at the time was a Reagan supporter. After rattling off all the reasons that Reagan sucked and the Democrats were better, he told me that "Reagan just makes me feel good." My response was that heroin makes people feel good, but is not necessarily good for you.
MY MOTHER, LIVING ON THE LOW END OF THE SOCIAL SCALE ABHORRED REAGAN. SHE SAW THE POVERTY ALL AROUND HER, PEOPLE OUT OF WORK, PEOPLE SCRAMBLING TO STAY FED AND CLOTHED. SOUNDS LIKE 2010 FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. WHERE IS THE SUNSHINE IN THEIR LIVES?
Reaganomics ruined the country-taught us that we deserved to have it all. It makes me ill to hear him spoken of as a hero.
A quick p.s. -- and many thanks for the comments -- part of Iggy's take derives from British (as well as American) Conservatives, I think, given some of the English spice throughout the album; and the one part echoes Shakespeare, Julius Caesar:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones . . .
Living among the upper-middle class during the Reagan years, everyone was happy, driving their DeLoreans, Porches and Lamborghinis. Money & how many toys you had was everything to them. I'm glad I left that area. I've never been back, either.
One Iggy's all time best - dead on satire, with a few mysterious or even bizarre lyrics to keep you thinking about the song even years later. I still have no idea what "I like the small black marks on my hand" refers to. "Soldier" and "New Values" are two of his greatest albums IMHO.
"JC
"small black marks on my hand", I always took to refer to the stigmata of Jesus - a fetish of the 'religious right'.
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