Folk Music

Folk music. The music of the folk. Storytellers. Tellin' stories.

If I could choose a new career, right now, money no object, I'd be a folk singer. And I'd move on this right away, if not for my distinct lack of talent on the guitar and ability to carry a tune further than I could throw one. Oh, and the fact that I write songs almost daily in the car on the way to work...with lyrics that are forgotten almost as soon as they are composed.

Be that as it may, I've come to realize that there is a whole population out there of middle class folk who lack folk music telling ther story of said folk. Woody Guthrie covered the Depression-era dust bowl, and a host of unwashed, pale, wide-eyed, patched-jeans wearing folkies covered the Baby Boom in all of its Magical Youth.

But where, oh where, is the musical chronicler of the modern office worker. The dull-eyed, fresh-air deprived worker who once counted on lifetime employment in loco parentis from his company now at the mercy of efficiency experts, automation and the rising tide of highly competent foreigners happy to do his job at a more reasonable rate for the shareholders.

I've only heard one song about an office layoff -- Ben Folds' "Fred Jones, Pt 2", a song as emotionally fraught as any for those of us who aren't sure what 'added value' they bring to make themselves irreplacable:

There was no party, there were no songs

'Cause today's just a day like the day that he started

Noone has left here that knows his first name

And life barrels on like a runaway train

Where the passengers change

They don't change anything

You get off; someone else can get on

And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones

It's time.

It's hard when you're so close to it. I'd squirm if I heard a singer wailing,

"Outsourced...what a terrible way to be...

Outsourced! Why'd it happen to me?

I gave all I had for the company,

now they've shifted my job off to New Delhi..."

Ouch.

Or maybe, if the lyrics were a lot better (and I meat A LOT better), like those Depression-era grape pickers in California gathered around the tractor trailer, you'd find people gathering around on the sidewalks downtown, munching on their Vienna Beef hotdogs and nodding their heads and smiling...knowing that someone out there knows what they're thinking could happen any day... and maybe a few more people will try a little harder to be irreplaceable.

Or decide it's time to see what that old dream was all about...

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