The Godfathers - "Birth, School, Work, Death"
1988
During 2006-08 upon the invite of a couple of friends who deejayed at a club near downtown, I joined them in spinning records a handful of times. It was a blast. To this day I’m still amazed I got a small share of the tip money (usually enough to swing cabfare home), free drinks, and a cozy, dark clubhouse in which to toss around inside jokes for a few hours.
We played vinyl — LPs, EPs, and singles — which was old-school fun, more hands-on than pushing buttons, which led me into shopping for and buying more vinyl — a rather enjoyable pastime.
In January of 2009 with a Cheapo gift certificate given as a Christmas gift in my hand, I bought the Godfathers’ Birth, School, Work, Death, the Pretenders’ debut album, and a couple of other picks in expectations that I would deejay them. What I didn’t know was that my tenure had come to an end. My deejay friends soon moved to NYC and I never asked the bar manager about perhaps continuing to spin records. It wouldn’t have been the same without my friends anyway, so I was content to play vinyl alone in my living room in the dark under headphones.
Birth, School, Work, Death had been the first CD I had bought in 1988, along with Metallica’s … And Justice For All. Due to the title, I soon cut out the cover of the CD longbox (remember those?) and put it on the wall of my accounting cubicle. I dug out the LP recently. With a decades later re-listen, it has been a revelation. My favorite track lately is “If I Only Had Time.” Building upon the earlier single “This Damn Nation”, there’s more gripes about the State of Things: “We’re living under a false economy” shoots a dart straight and Thatcherism and Reaganism. The only relief is to live honestly outside the law: “If I only had time, I’d think of the perfect crime.” Unlike other British alternative acts of the era, the Godfathers weren’t fey dorks. This is tough hard rock, smartly produced, with vocals spit out so you get the sense the singer knows everything’s pretty much bullshit.
And I can’t remember where I read it, but I swear these guys had earlier released “Love Is Dead” as a single on February 14, 1987. Absolute heroes.