By Joe Maniscalco

In between trying to chase down and quiz cagey MTA spokespeople on potentially deadly working conditions in the subways, and various local elected officials on why they seem all too happy to sell out New York City municipal retirees and steal their healthcare — I lean back, pick up my cheap Squier Mustang, and appreciate a little band from Seattle playing through the laptop speakers.

Mudhoney. Great stuff.

“What other kinds of music,” I wonder, “are the rest of the Work-Bites crew choosing to help them sift through all the crap and propaganda we independent labor journalists must sift through?

Wouldn’t you know it? A track off of Mudhoney’s excellent new album is actually called “Cascades of Crap.” I start making some calls, but the Mudhoney song I’m enjoying right now is called “Human Stock Capital” and the lyrics could not be more appropriate for the work I’m presently engaged trying to chronicle the plight of the working class:

You're nothing special

Yet you're essential

You're nothing special

Yet you're essential

To the bottom line

Now get back in there

Maybe you'll get a raise

Get back in there

Don't you know your place?

There you go. No Poli Sci degree or formal Marxism needed. We now understand the entire American economic system and the state of the working class — all courtesy of a brilliant band of knuckleheads from the Northwest who also penned a song called “Flat Out Fucked.”

I learn that Ryn Gargulinski, Work-Bites’ resident self-help guru and humor columnist extraordinaire, also favor’s similar sounds to shake out the cobwebs and get into the work flow.

“My biggest go-to song for pumping things up for work is “Rusty Cage” by Soundgarden,” she reports. “Anika’s version of “Love Buzz” takes a close second.”

Yep. Ryn and I did work out of a broom closet-sized office down on the end of Sheepshead Bay Road in Brooklyn during a significant chunk of the 1990s. How has she gotten even more badass since then?

Ace Work-Bites contributor Steve Wishnia is a bonafide punk rocker having played bass for an outfit called False Prophets back in the 1980s.

“I generally don't listen to music while working, partly because it can be a distraction, and partly because the 24-year-old boombox in the bedroom where my computer is has gotten very picky about what CDs it will play — and the Wi-Fi isn't very good in the living room where the stereo is,” he tells me.

Steve still likes his CDs, thank you very much. He tells me the last few he picked up included the late Les McCann and Eddie Harris's “Swiss Movement” — their 1969 live album featuring "Compared to What” — and Billy Joe Shaver's '90s country classic, “Tramp on Your Street.”

“Last night,” Steve adds, “I had the iPod in my kitchen segue "When A Man Loves A Woman" by Percy Sledge, Ella Fitzgerald's "When I Get Low, I Get High," and "When It's Over" by the Wipers — a relatively unknown sort of psychedelic-punk group from Portland that's one of my favorite '80s bands. I also listened to "So What?" by the Anti-Nowhere League, an early-’80s English band with a biker look, a drunk-punk sound, and decidedly NSFW lyrics.”

Steve’s still out there gigging, somehow successfully managing to mix his journalism with jamming. You might have even caught him last weekend on the Lower East Side sitting in with a bunch of excellent klezmer guys doing a Yiddish song called “Dire Gelt — Rent Money.”

Wanna know what hardboiled Work-Bites pro and politics maven Bob Hennelly listens to while cranking out his latest City Hall exposé?

“Monte Carlo radio, WBGO. Or streaming classical,” Bob reports — and he’s off again!

Work-Bites contributor Helen Klein, another incomparable colleague from those Sheepshead Bay Road days, also actually prefers not listening to music while she’s working her day job — as a “words and melody person” she finds that too distracting, as well. 

“I’m always listening to the words,” Helen says. “That said, for my personal writing, I have been immersed in music of the '60s and '70s (my favorite eras), mostly when I'm doing other stuff; it gets me in the mood to write.”

For Helen, those special songs also have the unique power to conjure up days spent traveling abroad — “which,” she adds, “really helps since I'm writing about places I visited while traveling, and I associate some of the songs with specific people, which has been helpful as I attempt to dredge up memories and transmute them. I've also been listening to Italian music from the '60s and '70s for inspiration. And because I really love it; my absolute favorite song of that sort is "Lisa dagli Occhi Blu," "Blue-eyed Lisa," which came out in 1969.”

There's a stanza from Lisa dagli Occhi Blu, that Helen finds particularly meaningful: "La primavera e finita, ma forse la vita comincia cosi.” Which translates as "Spring is over, but maybe life begins this way."

Elise Bryant — fellow Wobblie, executive director of the Labor Heritage Foundation, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and founder of the DC Labor Chorus — later reminds me that music is, indeed, a truly profound human activity — partly because it incorporates both the left and right hemispheres of our brains.

“And,” Elise adds, “When we sing together, our hearts literally synchronize as one — it’s a manifestation of solidarity.”

Right on, Elise.

Science also bears this out.

“Whether encountered as a sole listener of a recorded artist or as part of a packed audience before a full orchestra,” Robert Martone’s June, 2020 article for Scientific American observes, “music is a shared experience that integrates our intellect, emotions and physical movements.”

Remarkably, that same article also notes, “even sad music can bring great enjoyment.”

Which brings me back to Mudhoney and another track off their latest called “Move Under.” As a working class journalist in the waning days of the American empire, I find sad and angry music can be jet fuel for an ever increasing difficult job that doesn’t pay — but at least shouldn’t get me killed the way it might if I were a war correspondent covering genocide in Gaza.

You've gotta dig deep

Down to the core of those false beliefs

Undermine the foundation

Of the lies that they repeat

You've gotta move under

Yeah, you've gotta move under

You've gotta move under

'Till it all comes down.

All respect to every courageous journalist out there digging deep — the fascists hate you — but the public needs you more than ever.

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