Soundtrack

[lollardfish]

Listening to Springsteen's album of Seeger songs ... (which means American folk songs, not stuff Seeger wrote, but stuff Seeger recorded and made his own).

15 miles on the Erie Canal...
We've hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal and hay

And I thought, my commodities class needs a soundtrack. Help! Please recommend songs. I'm not bothered if they aren't the exact commodity, but if they address the kind of commodity I'm talking about. Like for Cod, Stan Rogers' "Tiny Fish from Japan." It's not about Cod at all, but that's kind of the point (the overfishing of the Grand Banks). Where I have dual commodities, I'd be happy to have two songs.

And feel free to recommend better songs for things I've already listed. My goal is to find songs that deal with commodity. Not just an item. But humor is good too. These need not be modern songs, but I do need to be able to find recordings of them.

1a. Cod: "Tiny Fish from Japan" - Stan Rogers
1b. Salt:
2a. Silk: "China Girl" - David Bowie (just to be Orientalist).
2b. Horses:
3a. Fur:
3b. Soldiers (Mercenaries): "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" - Warren Zevon
4a. Alcohol: Help. What's the perfect beer/whisky/etc as commodity song. TOO MANY CHOICES
4b. Grain: "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" - Arrogant Worms
5a. Religion: "Missionary Man" - Eurythmics
5b. Sin: "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" - Charlie Daniels Band
6a. Spice:
6b. Power:
7a. Gold and Silver: "Money" - Pink Floyd
7b. Coinage:
8a. Sugar:
8b. Rum:
9a. Tobacco:
9b. Timber: "Erie Canal" - Bruce Springsteen
10a. Wool:
10b. Cotton: "Cotton Fields" - CCR
11a. Slavery
12a. Tea: "Two for Tea" - ??? and/or "Pennyroyal Tea" - Nirvana
12b. Opium

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I've got a great one for horses, "Tribes of the Draft" by Michael Longcor, but I'll have to send you the MP3; will your gmail account accept that?

Slavery is obvious: "Molasses to Rum to Slaves" from the 1776 soundtrack. Be sure you get the original Broadway cast one -- the re-release from a few years ago sucks rocks.

For grain, you might also want to consider Leslie Fish's "Grain Train", if you can get a copy. I might have one, but I think it's on tape, and I haven't gotten to archiving my filk tapes yet.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

My gmail account should accept it. I'm debating whether or not to go country/western for horses. I mean, "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy..." :) I'd love to hear the Longcor song.

1776 - is that a musical? :) I'll look for it.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I just found a mix tape of selected filk songs that you made me when I was 16 or 17. I have a clear memory of making it with you. It was in a box of assorted mementos.

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

For cotton, rum, and tobacco, I'm sure you could find lots of old slave picking songs. E.g.:

Gonna jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton...

There's a song ("Abie Baby") in Hair whose lyrics go:

Yes, I's finished on y'all farm land
with yo' boll weevils and all,
pluckin' y'all's chickens,
fryin' mother's oats in grease.
I's free now, thanks to yo' Massa Lincoln,
emancipator of the slaves.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
emanci-mother-fuckin-pator of the slaves.

(You might have to edit it a bit if you were to use it in class...)

There's a song by Thin Lizzie called "Opium Trail". Or how about "The Needle and the Damage Done"? (I guess that's more heroine than opium, but they're related.)

Timber could also be "Donkey Riding".

For Wool I bet you could find songs about the Highland Clearances.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Those are great ideas.

I want to make it "cool" to the undergraduates, and I don't have to edit out swearing (this is college).

Donkey Riding for Timber is nice ... but I love the erie canal ... hmmm ...

Thin Lizzie sounds promising.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's any reason to limit yourself to just one song; the fact that many songs have been written about a topic is a partial indicator of its cultural importance.

Hey, I just remembered that I've got a good Steeleye Span song about sheep! I'll send that too.

Are you planning to make up a CD for distribution to the class? If so, you could put multiple songs per topic on it, play one during class, and assign listening to the others as homework.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Too many songs will overload the students. I am planning on making a CD.

On the other hand, these songs are just fun. They aren't actually relevant, except for the 19th century context (where we do have some actual songs), but that's a very, very, very marginal part of the course. They are going to have PLENTY of homework already. :)

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

So "sin" is a commodity too, now? Cool!

Tobacco: "Cigarette State" - Robby Fulks
Opium: "Poppies" - Marcy Playground
Slavery: "Buffalo Soldier" - Bob Marley
Alcohol: "John Barleycorn" - Jethro Tull
Coinage: "Money (Dollar Bill)" - Everlast

Songs for subjects already mentioned:
Timber: "Breakfast in Hell" - Slaid Cleaves

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Sin sure is. Indulgences are all about the commodification of sin.

These are excellent suggestions. I haven't heard the Slaid Cleaves song, but I learned "Broke Down" last week (and I think I cover it pretty well).

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

"Breakfast in Hell" is great. I have an mp3 which I can send you in Gmail when I am on my own computer.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Please do!

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

To which email address?

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

Power: Umm, possibly "Electricity" - 311
Fur: I stumbled upon this the other day. Perhaps it will help: http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=362


Also, I can't seem to shake the feeling of appropriateness of "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers, even though it doesn't speak to a specific commodity.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Oh. Power is like ... political power as commodity. It's more about colonization and the use of trade to build empire. I too like the Stan Rogers, but I'm going to use "Tiny Fish from Japan," and try to keep it to one song per artist.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

How about "All the Pretty Little Horses" for, of course, horses?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

If you decide to go cowboy, I have about every cowboy song ever recorded.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Can you think of a cowboy song about the buying and selling of horses specifically?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are some. How soon do you need this?

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Oh. August?

[aelburr.livejournal.com]

The theme from Rawhide perhaps?

Nah, that's more cattle. Check out the Sons of the Pioneers stuff, they were huge on the western theme.

Maybe a bluesy version of The Old Grey Mare. ;)

BTW, what do you mean by 'Power'? Electricity? Arguably not a commodity at all. Coal, on the other hand has a huge library of folk songs relating to it's mining and transport. Many of those have transplanted versions in modern bluegrass very little changed from English, Welsh and Irish versions at least 200 years old.

For salt I'd check Polish folk music. Some of the salt mines near Krakow have been working uninterrupted since Roman times so I'd bet there's a wealth of history plumb.

For sin I would skip the lovable Charlie and go with something like 'Viva Los Vegas' or maybe 'Ladies of Spain' or one of the songs about 'The Black Day' July 31st, 1970. If you want to be hip use something like 'It's Hard out Here for a Pimp'.

For fur you'll have to go French. I've got a book to check but I don't think any of them have good English translations.

Finally, I'd have to ask if by mercenaries you intend modern (for the sake of discussion 1950 or later) or older historical reference. Realistically the variation is very slight but the only really good song I know has references to kings and knights and swords and so may be harder to apply to, say the Gurkhas or the security service companies now providing troops in Iraq and other hot spots, much less guys with guns wandering central Africa today.

Finally, Johnny Bond did song versions of several Robert Service poems about the Yukon, Gold Rushes, timber, booze and sin you might want to check out if you can find them (are you reading this part cakmpls? 10 little bottles 1965. Didn't he do a collection based on Tales from the Yukon around that same time, probably on Gene Autrie's label?) and even if I'm misremembering songs like Three Sheets in the Wind, Sick, Sober and Sorry and the radio style sketches like New Years Day and any version of Ten Little Bottles could be applied on several fronts.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the long response.

All course material, except for the final projects, will be pre-1850, and only the Opium war will be post-1800.

For the songs, though, I don't really care. It's fun, and will give students things to listen to (and maybe add to).

Power - probably needs to leave the list, under further review. What I really want to talk about is the exportation of European power as a result of the spice trade, and to some extent the buying and selling of cannon as a means to gain "power." But I need to tighten it up a bit.

I like "It's hard out here for a Pimp." I do want to be hip.

That's actually the goal here. Be hip. Get the students listening to songs that they like (well, some of which they like), and having fun.