I was sitting on Facebook last night and I saw some post by a local news page something along the lines of, “…as layoffs pile up.” Now, depending on who you are, reader, you’re going to pull, push, tear and break what you will away from this post. I, for one, am scared. These layoffs, or closings of various manufacturing plants around the Midwest which erstwhile produce things like RV’s and boats, concord theoretically with a decreased buying power on the part of the general populace, correlative then with the housing crisis of recent years and/or rises in housing costs. So even if people can still afford essential goods like groceries and clothing, the GDP is harmed, visible in production’s ebb, by their tenuous hold on luxury goods like boats and whatnot, things that cater to vacations, to leisure and a good time.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong, but I guess you could say I’m kind of counting my eggs, in a way. And, truth be told, I think we’ve all been a little freaked out by this Donald Trump “Grover Cleveland” thing of two separate terms, more egregious of course pertaining to the latter in that he’d had no political experience, before being sworn in, and seemed to take a Sadistic pleasure in erasing the ACA in 2016.
Somehow, “Graffitia” just seems to soundtrack the end of the world so perfectly, proudly and robustly. The whole thing is so Dionysian and apocalyptic in its lyrics, dealing with existential themes, referring to the “last forgotten,” and, of course, culling from an album that was entitled “Father of All Motherfu**ers” [1]. Ironically, too, the simplicity of the song — the broad, major chord changes, the expedited verse/chorus structure and the modest three-minute length — help it play as a sort of swan song for America, or for imperial capitalism, as well. And who knows: maybe the world is ready for such a thing anyway. Just to cop: I think it will be at least 20 years before anything escalates to something like a worldwide skirmish. But a severe economic crisis did precede WWII, let’s remember, and nothing is as good for GDP and for unemployment as war, of course. In the meantime, we’ve got Billie Joe’s battle cry tour de force, and yes, it is pretty much a total ripoff of Neil Young’s “Love is a Rose”; and yes, I am a huge Neil Young fan, with three or four of his vinyl records sitting here in my office, and yes, as I’ve expressed before, I love Billie Joe for loving Neil Young and rewriting “Love is a Rose.” I mean He**: hardly anybody’s heard it anyway. Now that’s what I call a Dolby disaster!
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[1] For what it’s worth, I enjoyed pretty much every song on this album from tracks five through 10, which include “I Was a Teenage Teenager” and “Junkies on a High”; most notably.