I am pausing the "Bugaloo" theme today because it is a Major Holiday. Labor Day, On this Monday Music. I am going with "Allentown" from Billy Joel, I remember a line from the song, "The jobs went away and the union people crawled away" this happened when in the video it showed a worker getting his pink slip while in the shower. I thought about this when my job went away at Ford Motor Company. it still gives me bad feelings to see that, living through your job being cut sucks.
This is what my old Ford Toolbox looked like at my employer's before I started working on it.
This is what it looked like after "Modified it" it and repaired the toolbox and built a Sidebox
SuperDownsized
I got lucky, I got hired by a local airline and am a chemtrail technician now and doing very well, unlike many of my Ford peeps who didn't transfer to another Ford plant, they didn't do so well. It was difficult making the adjustments. Even now I am sensitive to the subject of "Outsourcing".
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"Allentown" is a song by American singer Billy Joel, which first appeared on Joel's The Nylon Curtain (1982) album, accompanied by a conceptual music video. It later appeared on Joel's Greatest Hits: Volume II (1985), 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert (2000), The Essential Billy Joel (2001), and 12 Gardens Live (2006) albums. Also, it was featured in Hangover II (2011) "Allentown" is the lead track on The Nylon Curtain, which was the seventh best-selling album of the year in 1982. The song reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending six consecutive weeks at that position and certified gold. Despite the song placing no higher than #17 on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart, it was popular enough to place at #43 on the Billboard year-end Hot 100 chart for 1982.
Upon its release, and especially in subsequent years, "Allentown" has emerged as an anthem of blue collar America, representing both the aspirations and frustrations of America's working class in the late 20th century.
The song's theme is of the resolve of those coping with the demise of the American manufacturing industry in the latter part of the 20th century. More specifically, it depicts the depressed, blue-collar livelihood of residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the wake of Bethlehem Steel's decline and eventual closure. Joel witnessed this first-hand while performing at the Lehigh Valley's numerous music venues and colleges at the start of his career in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The introductory rhythm of the song is reminiscent of the sound of a rolling mill converting steel ingots into I-beams or other shapes. Such a sound was commonly heard throughout South Bethlehem when the Bethlehem Steel plant was in operation from 1857 through 1995.
When Joel first started writing the song, it was originally named "Levittown", after the Long Island town right next to Hicksville, the town in which Joel had grown up. He had originally written a chord progression and lyrics for the song, but struggled for a topic for the song. Joel remembered reading about the decline of the steel industry in the Lehigh Valley, which included the small cities of both Bethlehem and Allentown. While the steel industry was based in Bethlehem with none of it in Allentown, Joel named the song "Allentown" because it sounded better and it was easier to find other words to rhyme with "Allentown." Although Joel started writing the song in the late 1970s, it wasn't finished until 1982.
A year after the song was released, the mayor of Allentown sent a letter to Joel about giving some of his royalties to the town. Mayor Joseph Daddona, who sent the letter, said it would help for scholarships for future musicians. On January 20, 1983, the letter was mailed to Joel, and a local paper published an article on the subject the next day, quoting Daddona as saying: "Not only would this fund be a great way to share a tiny part of your good fortune to others in Allentown, it would also help keep alive the 'Allentown' song and the Billy Joel legend (which you've already become here)."
When Joel performed the song in Leningrad during the concert recorded and later released as Концерт, he introduced the song by analogizing the situation to that faced by Soviet youths: "This song is about young people living in the Northeast of America. Their lives are miserable because the steel factories are closing down. They desperately want to leave... but they stay because they were brought up to believe that things were going to get better. Maybe that sounds familiar."
The video, directed by Russell Mulcahy and featuring choreography by Kenny Ortega, was in heavy rotation on MTV during 1982 and 1983. The original version of the video features partial male nudity when male coal workers are taking a shower at the beginning, but that part was edited when it aired on MTV. (Although it has aired uncut on both VH1 Classic and MTV Classic in recent years.)
ABE ( Allentown, Bethlehem & Easton) was a rough area when I went there in the early 70's. Our school was in a US Steel town there was a natural rivalry with the Bethlehem Steel schools. I recall going to a wrestling meet in Bethlehem and thinking it was the dirtiest place ever saw. My dad said it was worse than Pittsburgh when he grew up. All the mills closed, our area moved on and prospered, quite yuppie while ABE never really recovered. A friend teaches in Allentown and it's an inner city environment, piss poor graduation rates and high teen pregnancies. Population is declining as young folks with any drive look for employment elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteYay, I do remember that one, because one of my shipmates was from Allentown. He joined the Navy because there were NO jobs at home!
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