Yes, "Working Class Man" was a true Aussie classic, which had the effect of making a working class 'person' struggling to make ends meet in some back block factory, feel like part of something bigger than the small clump of bosses that ran such places with an iron fist. Another song from working class UK was "You Won't Get Me, I'm Part of the Union." That song inspired thousands of us who marched for shorter hours and better pay. In fact, it was songs like those that fired my passion for music in general, to the point where I bought a guitar and had a brief "go" myself, although I was more the Joan Baez type. In those times of not all that long ago, music stirred the soul as well as the intellect, although our parents would beg to differ. But jump forward 30 years and what have we got. Sadly, modern music doesn't do it for me any more. Yes, I hear you saying I'm too old to appreciate modern music, but I don't believe that's the case at all. I sometimes do hear gems from bands like "Motherwolf" but few and far between these days. Our increasing attachment to American "rap crap" is a sad reflection of just how low our Aussie music culture has slipped. Songs of killing cops, bashing gays and making money from selling drugs. Film clips accompanying such verbal diarrhoea is little less than sleezy porn reflecting the surly attitude of much of modern youth as opposed to spirit lifting and stirring songs of unity and respect. I've all but stopped listening to radio. If I do switch on, it's mainly for the regional ABC news. I travel a long distance to work from my rural setting and often without the radio playing at all. I've learned instead, to love the sound of my engine. God, how I miss good music.

The Author asks “Whatever happened to those popular protest songs about work and corporate greed?”

And makes comment

“The late 80s and early 90s witnessed the wide-spread popularity of songs about work from working class artists such as Jimmy Barnes, Midnight Oil and The Black Sorrows. Even artists whose images were not built around the working class, like John Farnham, took up the cause of the worker.”

Well they all got paid a bucket of cash and those who did not “invest” in nosey candy and ended up living in a caravan park are rich enough that they are among the new entrepreneurs.

Nothing like money and steaks to quench the fire and passion of hunger.

The Gen X or is it Y (as in Why?) do not know what life was like when you had to save for anything, they are just expecting their BB parents to leave them the nest which they have already feathered for them, instead of building for themselves.

They see no relationship between work and justice, maybe because they lack the understanding of what “work” really means.

Ha,ha! Good grief Col, lighten up! Didn't you enjoy your youth while Jimmy Barns and Cold Chisel were belting out "standing On The Outside Looking In?" Were you one of those boring fastidious and entrepreneurial young people whose only interest was the mighty Pound Stirling? Well, sorry you missed it and ended up a perpetual grump. In the heady days of the early 70's, I was living with some rather rough and crude bikers in St. Kilda. We trashed the rented house we lived in, crammed 16 people into and onto a brand new Cortina and drove the poor thing to the local pub. We terrorised old grumps like you in the car park and went on long, magic "runs" through some of the most beautiful country in Australia. I got the best view from the "sissy seat." We got hurt in brawls, survived ill treatment at the hands of our "outlaw" partners while we blew our brain cells on "cheap wine" and any kind of tobacco we could afford. We were just fore-runners of your "generation X & Y" that you complain about, only with a different agenda. We were young, silly, mad with the power of belonging to a group (read gang)....and then we grew up! Give the youngins a go Col. They'll eventually grow up too and hopefully, like me, they'll one day own their own home without a single debt. They too might give up smoking and to a large extent, the booze as I did and equally hopefully, they won't have to go through a radical change of identity like myself, or duck instinctively every time a car backfires. Life's too short to be meloncholy. Hmmm. Who wrote those lines in a song back in the 70's. Despite the hiccups along the way Col, I love life and will make precious time to enjoy what's is left of it every day. Should bad times come by, already been there, done that. I know how to handle it better this time around. I'll have a beer for you tonight Col. Cheers!

Col,

your comments:

"The Gen X or is it Y (as in Why?) do not know what life was like when you had to save for anything, they are just expecting their BB parents to leave them the nest which they have already feathered for them, instead of building for themselves."

Champ, i love the generalisations, but i suggest every single generation has had people in it of diverse backgrounds, albeit the proportion of people who get it easy may be higher since the wealth of the baby boomers.

You might be shocked, but as a gen Y person there are differing pressures, how many parents where divorced when you where running around? How many women were in the workforce? how many advertising messages did your brain recive each day back then?

I am a gen Y'er who has graduated from a working class man to some prosperity. I have done this through hard work and no one has gave me anything, in fact ive supported my family for the last 4 years.

If your gunna gripe and be old an generalise each generation, i could gripe back at yours. The fact is, there is significant social change happening now. i bet the old blokes where griping at your generations actions when you were young too.

As for this:

"They see no relationship between work and justice, maybe because they lack the understanding of what “work” really means."

Alot of them dont understand what work means i agree i see them, but define work? I work in an office and drink coffee in air con all day, there are less manual jobs out in the world now than in your day. Ive done manual stuff for a few years whilst studying and ive seen very few people who have attained real wealth as a direct result of it. thats the truth mate.

We work longer hours than in your day. Fact. We have more stresses in this world than in your simpler life back then too. Fact.

In 2003, the WA Music Industry Awards song of the year was an anti-war song; "Georgie Boy" by Andrew Horabin.

It emerged from the 'Best Political Song' category, where my own band, The Fascist Fair Go Party, secured a nomination for "The Race Card", which we wrote after the 2001 election.

While a political song won the award in '03 but it was a) an independent award, b) the song covered a particularly well-known subject.

Whatever the case, political music is in the decline (in the mainstream). That much is clear. Redgum would have been worth mentioning from the glory days; apart from "I was only nineteen", "It'll be alright in the long run" and other classics are great examples from the tradition of Australian political music.

But it also seems to be declining at an independent and local level.

In terms of class-consciousness; the decline of it manifesting itself in musical expression seems simply a part of a broader decline in the consciousness itself. Some would argue this is because of the decreasing relevance of class. More likely, it is to do with the changing nature of class. Class - as defined something determined by our relationship to the means of production, distribution and exchange - has become less powerful an idea as, for example, manufacturing declines in Australia, as technological advance sees declining numbers in jobs on the docks, as bank tellers and train ticket vendors are partially phased-out by machines etc etc... As work become less stable and people identify less and less with their labour and the fruits thereof, because they know they'll be gone in six months and don't know for sure that they won't be gone in six hours.

Art reflecting life would naturally reflect the changing way people think about our society. And it seems young people these days (I'm 27) are less interested in politics (and indeed civil society) than at anytime since Federation.

There are literally hundreds of these songs and by some quirk of irony I received 3 new ones (to me) today along with a link to "Anthems for the working class man".

when I say hundreds it's because I've been rounding them up for 10 years and putting them on a website Union Songs at http://unionsong.com/

Songs about IR laws in Australia, 36 so far and "daily growing" as the old ballad says.

Songs protesting at the war in Iraq: by the dozen

Songs and poems (not many anthems I'm afraid, there never were that many of them) dealing with all the problems of working women and men, songs from Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, Gremany, Japan, Chile, and the USA; but particularly songs and poems from Australia (over 200 I think)

By some definitions these songs are not "popular" so they tend to become invisible or are "disappeared" from our culture. Still they are the work of hundreds of songwriters and they are tumbling into the Union Songs website at a steady rate (no advertisement intended).

Maybe some will evolve into anthems!