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Wrong for Pennsylvania

Via Instapundit, Slate’s Springsteen/Obama ad.

You know, I can remember whn I thought Springsteen was a frikkin genius. It was about 1976, when he was.  By 1979, when it started to sound really repetious and anyway I was going to Dead Kennedys shows at the Temple Beautiful in San Francisco, I was all done with Springsteen.

OK, not quite. There was still this:

I remember, I remember when I was just a kid
Growin’ up on them backstreets, in an old stone-age town
I used to come home at night from my job, I had a job flippin’ dino burgers
I see the quarry, it’d be just closing down by then
Little bird up on the pole, he’s screaming out how the working day’s over
And I’d see them dinosaurs, they’d be herding out through the gates
And the workers, they’d be giving them cars a running start with their fat little feet
Now, so, so one night I’m crossing the alley and I see this one worker coming home to his little stone hut
And I seen the lady’s lunch pail by the door, and he calls out to his wife, “hey Wilma! I’m home, honey”

Wiilllmaa!!!

Flintstones, meet the Flintstones
Well they’re the modern stone-age family
From the town of Bedrock
Well, they’re a page right out of history

Well let’s ride with the family down the street.
Through the courtesy of Fred’s two feet

When you’re with the Flintstones
we’ll have a yabba dabba doo time.
A dabba doo time
We’ll have a gay old time, a gay old time
Wilma!

[sax solo]

Huh!
Whoaaaaahhhh!!!

That is actually better than anything Bruce Springsteen produced after, say 1978, and that’s being charitable.  A lot of readers are going to know the dead Kennedys, I guessing. San Francisco punk band, late 1970s. Jello Biafra, lead singer, is still out there, some kind of anarchist-socialist anti-everything at 50-something. He was also briefly great. Here’s his best. Holiday in Cambodia:

So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know youve seen it all
In daddys car
Thinkin youll go far
Back east your type dont crawl

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

Its time to taste what you most fear
Right guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear

Its a holiday in cambodia
Its tough, kid, but its life
Its a holiday in cambodia
Dont forget to pack a wife

Youre a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well youll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son.

Is a holiday in cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in cambodia
Where youll kiss ass or crack

Pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, pol pot, etc.

And its a holiday in cambodia
Where youll do what youre told
A holiday in cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

Topics: pols, song

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:58 pm on Friday, April 18, 2008

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