Rat Race

A moment this morning that perfectly captured the rat race. I was sitting in my customary seat on the light-rail train. I was facing an eastern window that looked out on the freeway. The train was traveling from Rainier Beach Station to Tukwila International Boulevard Station, and on that leg of the trip it parallels Interstate 5 for a stretch. The train was moving at the same speed as traffic on the freeway. One car would race ahead soon to be overtaken by another. Then the car that was passed would surge forward followed by a truck. It struck me, sitting there on a fast-moving commuter train at 8 AM on a Monday morning, that this is what makes the Western world go around -- the race to get to work. The rat race.

It reminded me of an article I read by Bret Schulte in the New York Times last July. The story, "For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas," talks about the large population of Marshall Islanders who live in Springdale, Arkansas and work in the Tyson poultry processing plants. The Marshallese, as Schulte explains, "puzzle over the American obsession with time." The kids can't make it to school on time and are absent a lot. So the principal of the local elementary school started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents.

The [Marshall] Islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. The United States has detonated at least 67 nuclear bombs in its 750,000-square-mile territory. The radioactive fallout rendered some islands uninhabitable. And United States military operations there are powered by American processed food, beloved by locals but blamed for the explosion in diabetes.

We nuke them. We poison them with our processed Western diet. Then as a gift we allow them to come to the North America without visas and work for minimum wage. What a bargain.

This past weekend I immersed myself in Rastaman Vibration (1976). I think it's a flawless album. The 2002 Deluxe Edition includes a second live disk, which is, I believe, the best live recording of Bob Marley & Wailers. Recorded on May 26, 1976, it was released separately in 2003 as Live at the Roxy, the Roxy being the famous Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Live at the Roxy is itself two disks, the second includes a 24-minute version of Get Up, Stand Up / No More Trouble / War:

Hippies vs. Punks: "Rasta Don't Work for No CIA"

Ska and reggae bled the Hippies, whereas the relationship of Punks to ska and reggae was symbiotic and collaborative.

What I mean when I say that roots reggae bled the Hippies is that the people who had progressive, tolerant, egalitarian tendencies in the counter culture gravitated toward the Rastaman Vibration (1976) at same time that the Southern Man -- the rural redneck who had no problem bombing colored folk -- grew his hair long, started smoking dope and rocking hard in football stadiums.

An analogy from this week's news comes to mind. If a Bob Marley-type politician appeared today on the scene, the Democratic Party, just having been pushed in the direction of the Southern Man by Obama's proposal to limit Social Security -- a program that is the bedrock of the modern Democratic Party -- would quickly start to splinter. This is what happened to the Hippies during the critical period 1975 to 1979 that we have been exploring each Friday evening.

My father is case in point. A Beatles and Van Morrison man who also favored The Who and Led Zeppelin, he went roots reggae in the late 1970s. He turned the album covers for Exodus (1977) and Survival (1979) into his own personal works of art -- embellishing them, cutting them, etc. When he became drunk and/or stoned he would often assume a Jamaican Patois.

When I got out on my own I too listened to Bob Marley & the Wailers. One of my favorite records as a lower-division undergraduate was Babylon by Bus, the 1978 live double album that includes "Punky Reggae Party" (a song that establishes the connection between Punk and Rastafari):

Today the recordings of Bob Marley & the Wailers (Peter Tosh's solo work as well) remain a strong filial bond with my father; any newly released live recording that I come across I promptly burn a copy and mail it off to him.

We must not underestimate the Rasta role in the demise of the Hippies as a cultural vanguard.

Next week, the weapon that gave the Punks full-spectrum dominance -- 2 Tone ska.