If you are so inclined, Labor Day weekend is preferably celebrated with equal parts barbecue, beer and the beach. Since I’m an honest-to-goodness Southerner and a recovering jock, I might add football into that delectable mix.
But Labor Day isn’t all about fun in the sun and the symbolic end of the summer. In fact, the holiday’s origins have nothing to do with fun if my old history teachers and wikipedia weren’t just shitting me.
So rather than encouraging people to sit this one out, we here at PostBourgie have offered up some songs about putting in serious work. Because, like it or not, in our newly socialist wasteland, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.
Consider it a labor of love:
1. Margaret vs. Pauline by Neko Case (Shani-o)
2. Labor by Aesop Rock (Jamelle)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAvJbYNZl6I&hl=en&fs=1&]
3. Everybody’s Working for the Weekend by Loverboy (Quadmoniker)
4. Thought at Work by The Legendary Roots Crew (G.D.)
5. Spaceship by Kanye West (Universeexpanding)
6. Takin’ Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive (Quadmoniker)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJprEyXMrIk&hl=en&fs=1&]
7. Workin’ Day and Night by Michael Jackson (Blackink)
8. At Home He’s a Tourist by Gang of Four (Jamelle)
9. Workinonit by J. Dilla (G.D.)
10. Workin’ for the Man by Roy Orbison (Shani-o)
And here’s a bonus song for the long holiday weekend: Work to Do by The Isley Brothers.
Enjoy.
What, no Just Got Paid by Johnny Kemp?
Sheesh.
wow. we’re lunching.
For people who dont like unions, Southerners love them some labor day! (and that officially marks me as a troll; I am going back to Facebook.)
The main reason I love #10 is because it’s about this put upon factory worker who’s ‘workin for the man’ and he plots on sexin’ and then marrying the boss’s daughter so he can take over the factory — presumably she has no brothers. And then the chorus switches to “I’m gonna BE the man.” It rings so true.
I don’t even know what that means but I’m laughing!
it means we’re slipping. (maybe it’s a Philly thing?)
I used to hear it in DC, too. I assumed it was a shorthand version of “out to lunch” (i.e. not present/paying attention).
The Loverboy song triggered it for me. Friday nights at 6pm on the pop station (94.5 or Kiss108, I can’t remember) I used to listen to in Boston, they’d play Just Got Paid.
Good times.
And the video is classic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YhvHOsg_Pk
I just remember thinking, since I was about 10 at the time, “no wonder my Fridays are so lame. I ain’t getting paid.”
lol. Yep. Lots of sitting around, recording songs off the radio onto tapes, and talking on the phone.