Granmaster Flash and the Furious Five. 1982. The Message. 12-inch single (Sugar Hill SH-584).
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs,
You know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkie’s in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far
Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car
Chorus:
Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to loose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder
How I keep from going under
Standing on the front stoop, hangin’ out the window
Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes blow
Crazy lady, livin’ in a bag
Eating out of garbage piles, used to be a fag-hag
Search and test a tango, skips the life and then go
To search a prince to see the last of senses
Down at the peepshow, watching all the creeps
So she can tell the stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got so so seditty
She had to get a pimp, she couldn’t make it on her own
It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from goin’ under
My brother’s doing fast on my mother’s t.v.
Says she watches to much, is just not healthy
All my children in the daytime, Dallas at night
Can’t even see the game or the sugar ray fight
Bill collectors they ring my phone
And scare my wife when I’m not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station
Me on King Kong standin’ on my back
Can’t stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac
Midrange, migraine, cancered membrane
Sometimes I think I’m going insane,
I swear I might hijack a plane!
My son said daddy I don’t wanna go to school
Cause the teacher’s a jerk, he must think I’m a Fool
And all the kids smoke reefer,
I think it’d be cheaper
If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper
I dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
Cause it’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey
They push that girl in front of a train
Took her to a doctor, sowed the arm on again
Stabbed that man, right in his heart
Gave him a transplant before a brand new start
I can’t walk through the park,
‘Cause it’s crazy after the dark
Keep my hand on the gun,
‘Cause they got me on the run
I feel like an outlaw, broke my last glass jaw
Hear them say you want some more, livin’ on a seesaw
A child was born, with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too
Cause only God knows what you go through
You grow in the ghetto, living second rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alley way
You’ll admire all the number book takers
Thugs, pimps, pushers and the big money makers
Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens
And you wanna grow up to be just like them
Smugglers, scrambles, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers and even pan-handlers
You say I’m cool, I’m no fool
But then you wind up dropping out of high school
Now you’re unemployed, all null ’n’ void
Walking around like you’re pretty boy floyd
Turned stickup kid, look what you done did
Got send up for a eight year bid
Now your manhood’s took and you’re a may tag
Spend the next two years as an undercover fag
Being used and abused, and served like hell
Till one day you was find hung dead in a cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young
Well here I am grading a stack of papers that don’t seem to match each other in terms of style, content, skill level or even assignment (though that might be because they put them on the wrong piles on my desk). While the ideas are great, and most of the writing is passable, I am disheartened by the wide variety that my “open assignment” has garnered. When I assigned only critical papers instead of creative papers I knew just how to respond, but here, now I am “perflummoxed.”
I am giving suggestions (writing margin and end comments) that go in many different directions. For some they are grammatical and others structural (language and paragraph corrections) while for others my comments are stylistic and imaginative (“write a thesis that describes the rat’s attitude in the poem”).
The freedom of this assignment is making the paper a lot more fun for most of the students, but going through these low stakes first drafts is a lot of work. When I decided to retreat from my impulse to have the papers all critical analyses of the poem “The Message” I naively thought that everyone would suddenly “get it” and have higher skillsets. Sigh. It is especially hard since there was supposed to be an interim draft due on Blackboard where I could just comment on the content.
ENC101
I gave the class back their first ACT exams yesterday and I have to say that I really like the rigidity of the ACT exam in light of the first three paragraphs that I wrote here. While I was disappointed when I turned over the covers and discovered who I passed and who I failed, I have to say that I am optimistic. By reviewing the ACT criteria with other professors and reviewing the materials in the “book room,” I think I know what each of the “lost sheep” will need to do to succeed (pass).
The research plans that I’ looked at and returned yesterday also show a lot of promise. Of course about half were late, so I might just have the best of the bunch.
ENG225
This class is sharp. Of course I wish that I had more writing to confirm my opinion of their verbal skills. I am impressed by their responses to Phyllis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano. They are very mature in terms of their responses to these, honestly, fairly dry texts. I was particularly impressed by the close reading that they did of Wheatley’s poems. NICE.
When we got to Frederick Douglass’ 1845 yesterday there was a “clicking into place” of the class understanding. Wheatley and Equiano, neither of whom stylistically fit the “common understanding”of African American literature, suddenly made sense when the students read Douglass’ sentimental slave narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This is, in my opinion, the beginning of modern or contemporary Black Lit. The ability to make the connection between pre-abolitionist literature and the late-enlightenment works that preceded it is, I think, a break-through for the students.
I took Mason to his first concert last night. It is an awful thing for a father to infect his child’s future concert going with a show with his hopelessly out-of-touch-father. I did it anyway, and I will now, forever, haunt every show he goes to as a young person, man and consumer of culture.
Early in the evening, seeing me bob my head to the tasty beats, he suggested that I not do “that.”
“What?”
“That rocking your head back and forth thing, Dad.” He thought a minute as I stifled my appreciation of the Asian Three Stooges of Rap. “And if you move your shoulders or stand up,” looking over at me seriously, “I’m going to leave.”
By the end of the night Mason Scott Gregoire (MSG), The Notorious MSG and I had all reached accommodation, as you can see above. These Brothers are funny. The songs were funny and off color. When they had all of the audience shouting “Pimp-It,” I couldn’t help but smile. In spite of the sound system distorting their “Chinatown accents,” a great time, and many thoughtful laughs were enjoyed. Their range was wide, including Down-Lo Mein’s singing of “Dim-Sum Girl” his touching ballad about the woman behind the cart in her sweet white uniform. He did, as promised “get Lionel Rich_ on our asses.”
Mason pointed out that “Hong Kong Fever” (The Ring Leader) does not have a bowl-cut, as I called it, but that the kids at PS150Q call it a “Mushroom-cut.” It is like some sort of fungus sprouting out of bad parenting, clippers and home-cut-hair. Speaking hair styles I thought that Down-Lo Mein, the “Yellow Gigolo’s” permed Gerry-Curl mullet channeled Easy E and Chris Rock in CB4 nicely. The Hunan Bomb, “The killing Machine,” is not the stoner-type that his coif would suggest. He was active, witty and tall when we met him after the concert.
I had a great time with the “Chinatown Hustlers” and my son.
