Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #25 Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?

Posted on | December 6, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #25

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone? (2003)

Where Have All The Rude Boys G…

What happens when an stable democratic society is taken over by a right-wing, warmongering government that doesn’t conscript its angry young men? For one, you get apathy and nihilism through the roof, and a sense of prolonged rage that manifests itself in jangled nerves and hopeful skepticism until the next election comes along.

But what happens to the angry young men/punks/rude boys in between? Ted Leo, the de facto successor to Ian MacKaye’s indie conscience, provides something of an answer in “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone.” Musically, the song takes risks—sounding too jammy in a ska-rock song, a genre that became bastardized in the previous decade, would be poison for much lesser musicians.

But Leo injects his Specials homage with a bit of the Cars and a lot of the Clash, and the song ends surpassing genre standard “Rudie Can’t Fail.” Lyrically, Leo starts off with questioning all the alternatives: killing yourself, killing the bad guys, dancing the night away, taking on the bad guys with music. None of those work. The remainder of the song is a desperate attempt to find the remnants of a tool of social protest that seems to have disappeared. The song’s desperate sincerity is pretty much at the heart of the song, and it’s the fault of younger musicians that six years later, we’re still looking. Without a guaranteed source of income, healthcare, or sustainability, perhaps its understandable why few musicians want to put their neck on the line. But the fact remains that 6 years later, Ted Leo’s question remains to be answered.

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