Thinking About a Protest Song (Songwriting Week 12--Plight of the Pontiac)

I've never felt qualified to write a protest song. What does a guy like me have to protest? Caucasion male, raised in the suburbs by a loving family, seemingly well educated, gainfully employed and basically never gone hungry a day in my life. I do, occasionally, feel qualified to write blues numbers, and I have. More on that in a future post.

But not a protest song. Unless. You see ... they got this thing called empathy and I've been feeling a lot of it lately. Especially for family and friends struggling in this economy, and especially so for folks up in Detroit where my Dad's people are from. That's where decades of bad management by auto industry execs and city government, coupled with a policy of off-shoring labor to get around unions has created a wasteland of a once proud town.

Which leaves bittersweet memories for my immigrant grandfather who worked the Chrysler factories for over 40 years. And worse, it leaves a joke of a devastated economy for younger generations like my cousins to limp along beside while trying to support their families. One such cousin has been out of work in the housing industry for almost a year now even though he was previously an award winning high achiever. Why don't they leave you ask? Family, basically. For all the things Detroit doesn't have anymore, one thing it's always had is a strong tradition and respect for family, especially amongst those descended from European immigrants.

So they trudge along, doing the best that they can, while companies like GM continue to make baffling decisions, like the one they made when they decided to discontinue the Pontiac line of cars. To my way of thinking, that was a short-sighted, bone-headed move. Pontiac has given us some great, inspiring cars like the Trans Am, the Firebird, the Bonneville and, my personal favorite, the GTO. These were cars that for prior generations symbolized cool and speed and excitement. We even made movies that centered around them:

The point is, Pontiac was the one part of GM that seemed to employ people with some imagination and fire. They made their share of crappy decisions along the way just like rest of the industry, but at least they did it with style. They gave us something to get fired up about while the rest of the industry, especially GM, was putting out cars like the Buick (fill in the blank ... they all sucked) and the Ford Tempo.

So when GM blew out the star in the Pontiac dart I threw up my hands in disgust, so to speak ... What's that? Don't know what the star in the Pontiac dart is/was? You actually do, you just didn't realize it. Take a look:

Looks like an arrowhead, yes (harkening back to the American Indian Chief Pontiac), but was referred to by many as the Pontiac dart. And from what I remember, the little cross inside the dart is supposed to depict a star, maybe even the North Star, but I'm not sure. What matters for my sordid purposes is that when GM discontinued Pontiac they blew out the star in the dart and made the world a little less bright for all of us.

So yes, I protest. I protest for all the guys who dreamed of driving a muscle car with the girl of their dreams cozied up next to them. And I protest for my cousins and the devastated landscape they struggle to keep calling home.

PLIGHT OF THE PONTIAC

21,000 hourly jobs

Still protecting the management slobs

With the cash they took from me

Unemployment at 15 percent

Union bennies don’t make a dent

In the stuff us blue folks need

Take me back to the Fabulous Fifties

Bonnie hardtop fit my need for speed, luscious speed

When GM blew out the star

In the fine red Pontiac dart

The people were next in the line of fire

Now they’re closing my old high school

Board of Ed looked like a bunch of fools

Last night on my TV

Say we got to be the windmill state

How they’re gonna drop the jobless rate

In a land of oil beats me

When our pride died? I don’t really know

But I had plenty driving my GTO, she could go

There’s rebellion in the air

Politicians better damn well care

‘Bout the land between the lakes

UAW is on the attack

Gonna bring back Chief Pontiac

If we don’t get our fair shake

Still remember the wind cutting through my hair

Grandpa driving his Chieftain without a care, not a care

Coming to you from the land of Honda, Nissan and Toyota, the country that used cheap labor, quality control and our own big managment arrogance to beat us at our own game, I remain faithfully yours and thank you for sharing in my rant and reading my blog.

To listen to "Plight of the Pontiac" please click here and use Steve's MySpace Music Player.

The Image In Your Heart (Songwriting Week 11--Picture This)

I'm traveling in northern Europe this week with my wife. She's asleep next to me right now on a train from Amsterdam to Brussels. We were visiting my daughter who's studying abroad this semester. She comes home next month. In the meantime, I had the surreal experience of kissing her good-bye for another month plus in the red light district of Amsterdam. Yep. It's just too weird on too many levels so I'll leave it alone.

Back to my other lady love--the sleepy one. I wrote the song featured this week during another weird experience. I was smack in the middle of falling in love not long after swearing on a stack of beer coasters that I never would again. And she was falling for me, an older and rebounding, soon to be divorced guy, after promising herself never to go there. But we did. We both did. Thank God.

Now we're traveling through Europe together, taking pictures as we go, with visions of what lies in store at the next new place along the way, and I'm reminded of the mental imagery that inspired this song. The images that convinced us we could see things that others couldn't, and that sometimes vision is worth the risk. With that as a premise, it won't surprise you that the first serious gift I ever bought my wife was a camera, which was right about the same time I wrote this:

PICTURE THIS

Picture this, two tattered snapshots folded into one
Don't you turn and run, it'll be alright
Picture this, a silent movie classic etched in rough
If we stay tough, it'll be alright

Bet they didn't think we'd get this far
I saw from the start how strong you are
So I hitched my broke down wagon to the star
Of this film noir
It's only black and white, but that's alright

Picture this, the judges and the preachers are all wrong
If we stay strong, it'll be alright
Picture this, the image in your heart is our best shot
Ready or not, it'll be alright

Bet they didn't think we'd get this far
I saw from the start how strong you are
So I hitched my broke down wagon to the star
Of this film noir
It's only black and white, but that's alright

(c) Steve Celestini, 2007

It was tempting to dismiss our chance at a successful relationship because of all the obvious obstacles. The temporal and demographic stuff on the surface was tilted against us, no doubt. We even tried "breaking up" a couple times, self-imposed moratoriums on time together, but that only made sense to others, not to us. So we took some risk, even though we seemed destined for a melodramatic B-movie ending, because all the things we could see, all the things we pictured for ourselves, were trending upwards.

There's a thing about going up, though. It's harder than going down. Falling down tends to happen quickly and be done. Going up is hard work. There's all kinds of physical, emotional and relational gravity pulling against you. You've got to have a picture in your heart, I think, an image that you turn your face towards, like a light at the end of a tunnel, something that helps you overcome gravity.

And it really helps to have someone holding your hand and climbing with you.

Thanks for reading. Next week I'll be coming to you from a plane to Japan. That should be interesting.

To listen to "Picture This" please click here and use Steve's Myspace Music Player.