RICK SPRINGFIELD - Working Class Dog (RCA, 1981)

By Class Warrior

When I was a wee lad, my mom stayed at home with my two siblings and me. I don't know how my mom and dad supported themselves and three kids on my dad's modest income, but somehow they did. I guess living in a single-wide trailer and eating lots of goulash (shudder) and tuna casserole (double shudder) cuts down on expenses. I can still taste that awful casserole if I close my eyes. Lots of hand-me-down clothing and shopping at second-hand stores and yard sales kept us dressed and furnished. And there was plenty of government cheese. God bless you, Reagan, for the yellow-dyed bounty.

I'm getting sidetracked. Mom started working outside the house as a motel housekeeper in about 1985 or so, but until then, she was a big fan of soap operas. All My Children and The Young and the Restless were two that she watched daily, but her favorite was General Hospital. Because she watched them, I watched them too. Most of the time, anyway. I recall that a new character came on to the show in 1981. He played a doctor or something. Mom thought he was great, then she informed me that he was a singer as well, and that he had an album out called Working Class Dog. Mom didn't buy the album, so I didn't think about it too much. As you can probably guess, this actor was none other than RICK SPRINGFIELD! I always liked "Jessie's Girl" and anything else I heard by him when I was young, but I didn't buy any of his albums. I missed his 1984 movie Hard to Hold. By the time I started to buy records, my tastes had changed radically away from top 40 stuff to hardcore punk. Fast forward.

Now it's 1999 and I'm living in St. Louis, Missouri. I spent my time trying to organize low-income tenants receiving federal housing subsidies (i.e., Section 8 assistance) into tenant unions. At the time, there was a big public-private relationship between Housing and Urban Development and apartment building owners - HUD subsidized tenants' rent if the owner reserved the apartments for qualified people. The contracts between the government and owners were starting to lapse, and activists saw what was going to happen - big real estate corporations were going to buy the buildings (if they didn't own them already), evict the low-income tenants, and turn the units into condos or upscale apartments. I was part of the effort to get people organized to fight against this. I was a terrible organizer, by the way. I was so shy at that point in my life that I just hid in the bathroom (a recurring theme in my life - I'm sure I'll end up there again) or read a book in the park because I couldn't face the tenants and talk to them. If management had found me in there, they would have escorted me from the premises. Too much risk of confrontation for good old Class Warrior.

During this period, I noticed that RICK SPRINGFIELD was going to play in St. Louis at a venue very close to where I lived. The ticket price was reasonable - RICK didn't command top dollar in 1999. I forgot to mention that I was an Americorps volunteer at the time, so I had almost no money. It's an interesting position, if you think about it. I was being paid by the federal government to organize beneficiaries of a federal government program, but I could have gotten arrested for trespassing at a federally subsidized housing complex! Funny. Anyway, I thought about going to see RICK. I weighed the costs of going to the benefits of how much I would rock out. I decided that it wasn't worth it. I was too punk at the time to pay money to see a mere pop performer. There are a few decisions I regret more in my life, but not many. This ranks up there with not seeing the Ramones when they were alive or missing a free fucking Eddie Money concert last year. (Fuck, I'm still pissed about that one. Eddie Fucking Money for free! Fuck! But I digress.) It was only a couple of months later that I realized the magnitude of my error. I turned on the radio and heard "I've Done Everything for You" for the first time in over a decade and was totally blown away. What a great song! Punk rock's influence on power pop and pop rock is crystal clear in this song - big guitars, no-frills drumming, and a great melody. If you substituted lyrics about alienation or fucking shit up for the standard love poem contained in the song, you would have punk rock. The song had such an effect on me that I remember exactly where I was when it was playing. After the song finished, I kicked myself (figuratively, not literally, as I was sitting in a car seat) and promised myself never again would I fail to rock out when I got the chance. I have violated that promise a few times, but generally I've held to its spirit. If it weren't for RICK SPRINGFIELD, I would be a real estate agent or something.

Working Class Dog is a tour de force of teenage-level love and despair over lack of love and/or loving the wrong person. RICK was over thirty when he released this album, but it's clear that he remembered how love-obsessed teens are, and he rode it to great success at the time. Each song (with a couple of exceptions) has energy, which comes from building tension or just plain guitar-driven rocking. Everyone knows "Jessie's Girl" and "I've Done Everything for You", so let's put those aside. The first track "Love Is Alright Tonite" rocks hard and features some scandalous lyrics (see below). "Hole in my Heart", a slow song, has some of RICK's best singing on the entire album. "Everybody's Girl" and "Daddy's Pearl" are very strong rockin' numbers that could have been hit singles. "Carry Me Away" and "The Light of Love" aren't as listenable as the others, but still bounce along at a good clip. You could do worse.

When listening to this album, note the subversive nature of the lyrics. RICK is out to not only have a good time, but also to turn your children into love-making, heart breaking, id-driven beasts from Hell. Check out this line from the otherwise tame ballad "Hole in My Heart": "You're keeping an eye on the horizon, looking over your shoulder / Must be some demon driving you". Woah, a demon! How'd that get in there? He's no Morbid Angel or GG Allin, but keep in mind that millions of teens bought this album and heard this line. It got more than a few kids thinking about Satanism, I'd wager! Here's one from the opening song "Love Is Alright Tonite": "With the night comes the feeling that I've got this incredible power." Warlocks, werewolves, and vampires have increased power at night - so do demons! That may be how they do things in Australia, RICK, but not in the US of A! Or how about this line from "I Get Excited", which is on his subsequent album Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet: "The fire's ignited down below, it's burnin' bright!" Is he talking about his nether regions or the Nether Regions? Either way, it's a guaranteed youth corrupter. These double entendres have a way of changing people's behavior in un-American ways.

The last two songs, "Red Hot and Blue Love" and "Inside Silvia", are horrible. Inexcusably bad. If you listen to these songs, you'll want to kill RICK. I just pretend they don't exist. If I had this album on vinyl I'd scratch them out with a rusty nail or something. They keep the album from reaching Get the Knack, Bad Religion-Suffer, or Ramones s/t levels.

Working Class Dog earns nine out of ten skinny ties. If you count the dog on the album cover and the small picture of RICK in the dog's shirt pocket, I suppose the album has eleven skinny ties. The last two songs are bad, but they're the last two. All you have to do is stop listening after "Daddy's Pearl" and you'll be fine.