Tom Joad's Top Ten

I've become inundated with so many disturbing media prognostications about the US economy being on life support that I'm convinced this recession is being staged to sell more newspapers and boost ratings. There may be some validity to the suggestion that bad times are enhanced by great press coverage, each dire report relentlessly trumped by the next, until readers/viewers are convinced that the economic end times are here and act accordingly. The "Grapes of Wrath" syndrome has already turned millions of once contented Americans into angry Tom Joads, shut out of the economy for reasons that no one can really explain, the "new" Okies, c. 2009. How long will it take until we see modern day caravans of down on their luck families searching from state to state for the next low wage job?


Since I'm waking up at 4:00 AM most mornings wondering how many more months I can survive, it occurred to me that us latter day Joads might best amuse ourselves by devising our own "hit" lists of tunes that seem to describe the (don't use that word) Depression of 2009. First and foremost and nearly synonymous with Tom Joad is Pete Seeger's 1930s era ditty about: "If you ain't got the dough-ray-me, boys..." , basically a warning that California doesn't want you if you're broke, thus puncturing the "pie in the sky" dream of prosperity that gave hope to the Dust Bowl refugees.


But economic chaos in the new century bears little resemblance to the Thirties; we don't have dramatic collapses, we have more gradual - and predictable - progressions into bankruptcy. My pick for the 2009 theme song is "Going Down Slow" as sung by Howling Wolf, because that's really what it's all about - slowly sinking into the quicksand of poverty and fear. Speaking of the blues, given the music's origin, there are some excellent hymns to the power of money, my favorite being Ray Charles' "I'm Busted", but "A Nickel's Worth of Liver" by Edith North Johnson is a definite dark horse, since it combines poverty and domestic violence. As Albert Collins puts it :" ..If trouble was money / I'd be a millionaire.." on his spine-tingling live version of "If Trouble Was Money", but he also knows how to make fun of over-extending your credit limit in "Master Charge" - the chorus sounds like the first example of "brand placement" in the blues since all Albert says is: "Master Charge / Bank Americard.." Probably the funniest but relatively most obscure odes to the Almighty dollar is "Broke" by Mitch Woods and Rocket 88s", the sad tale of an almost penniless dude who tries to impress a date by buying her a drink - only to find out that she orders everything in the Bartender's Guide as in: "Pina Colada/Vodka with a twist/A shot of whiskey/And an Irish Mist " (These are MY lyrics by the way, but you get the idea!).


Doesn't take much to see how money ends up in most forms of popular music - like the O'Jays' "Money" (Money-Money-Mon-AH!) or Boz Scaggs' version of "Brother Can You Spare A Dime?, or the rap refrains of: " If it ain't about the Benjamins/Then Puffy just don't care" or Fitty Cent' words to live by - "Get rich or die tryin" . Then there's movie titles, from: "Three Coins in the Fountain" to "The Color of Money ", TV, of course, with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", where hapless contestants were routinely savaged by a smug Regis Philbin, to "Deal or No Deal", where hapless contestants are routinely trashed by a smirking Howie Mandell, and the socially acceptable dreams that are expressed in timeworn aphorisms every day."A penny saved is a penny earned " (Advice that certainly was not heeded until last September), "Find a penny/Pick it up/All day long/You'll have good luck", "You look like a million", "What's your two cents?", etc.,etc.,etc.


Remember - the next time you wake up feeling like Tom Joad in the agonizing pre-dawn hours, there are a few tunes that may calm you enough to go back to sleep. Try humming "Pennies From Heaven" and counting sheep.