Back to work today for me and many other people, not a day of much rejoicing for many of us. January is a horrible month on the whole, the vague feeling of freshness of a new year quickly becoming a month with five Mondays and seemingly six weeks until pay day, a month of unending cold and dark. Once we get to February- a much more civilised month, only four weeks long and with the promise of spring ahead- things start to improve. January must just be endured.*
If you're back at work today, I hope it goes well. Here are a pair of work songs from the mid- 80s to celebrate/ commiserate, one from either side of the Atlantic. In 1984 The Jasmine Minks, freshly signed to Alan McGee's new label Creation, recorded and released a slice of punk influenced indie on 7" single. Work For Nothing was the B-side to Think, the single bearing the Creation catalogue number 004 (only The Legend!, The Revolving Paint Dream and Biff Bang Pow! put out records on Creation before them). They were on tour with The Jesus And Mary Chain as Upside Down came out and as demand for the Reid brothers grew the Minks got a bit side-lined. This is a great piece of mid- 80s Creation indie.
In 1987 R.E.M. opened their final indie album Document with the work song, Finest Worksong, and put it out as the third single from Document in 1988. Finest Worksong is based around Peter Buck hitting a B string on his guitar while Mike Mills follows with a huge bass riff. Stipe always denied that the song was political or a protest but it can't help be seen in some way as a response to Reagan's America- 'The time to rise has been engaged', Stipe sings, qualifying it with 'I'm talking here to me alone'. It doesn't sound that way though, it sounds like it's for everyone, the massive Scott Litt production thrusting the song out of the speakers. The Other Mix came out as a B-side on the 12" in 1988.