The Blasters - “Go, Go, Go”
1982
Anybody remember the original Gaviidae Common? A high-end fancy pancy shopping complex on Nicollet Mall? Bound to be as successful as The Conservatory? I worked as an accountant for a general contractor when Gaviidae was constructed, the division I was in built out some of the tenant spaces there. One shop our company built was owned by a British couple and its concept must have been born from the hubris of the United Kingdom defeating mighty Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982: It was a freakin’ tea room. You could go there and sip your tea and eat your crumpets. On little round wooden tables with doilies. A jolly good time. Oh boy.
Then the utterly predictable happened. The place had loyal customers numbering in the single digits and hence didn’t do great business. The Brits didn’t pay the bills owed to my company and our subcontractors didn’t get paid. Inquiring phone calls went up and down the owner-contractor-subcontractor chain over when funds would be made available to the companies that built out the space and things went to hell.
There was a process directed by people above me involving sending notice that our company would file a lien on the space. One day my bosses were conveniently all in the same meeting so I took a call from one of the clients, a lady with a shrill British accent who railed at me, saying my company was acting inappropriately and offered up the usual deadbeat client excuses for why they weren’t paying their bills. After a few minutes of taking this bat’s haranguing, I calmly told her it was out of my hands and that I would ask one of my bosses to call her later. She yelled some more at me in that annoying voice before hanging up. I placed my receiver down and yelled: “THIS ISN’T THE GODDAMNED LEND-LEASE ACT!”
So on the Fourth of July, I will raise a toast to Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, et. al. Imagine if all the gals in the Upper Midwest had an annoying accent and sounded like some version of that lady. I’ll be also be queuing up The Blasters’ Over There EP, a live recording from 1982 where they absolutely smoke in London. Its back cover notes by Claude Kickman Bessy state “forgive me … for once doubting the American supremacy in the bopping field” and its label has an approved use of the Gadsden Flag.