11.09.16
Ironwork Blues comes home
The heavy metal dates from 1987, Allentown/Bethlehem, smack in the middle of the time of the collapse of “the steel.” The guitar solo was composed as an extended scream.
Metaphorically, a scream of rage, echoing down the years, always gaining strength, howled into the heart of the establishment and blew it to perdition yesterday.
From the album “Brutality,” when I’d given up on science. I couldn’t do 12 years of postdoc for virtually nothing and an only theoretical opportunity at the end of the tunnel. The game was being rigged for everyone.
“So sing happy songs on the radio and watch as the world crumbles down…”
Not part of Old White Coot.
anon said,
November 9, 2016 at 10:27 pm
Remember how Billy Joel wrote the song, “Allentown” right around that time? A good chunk of the Lehigh Valley got a petition together to the record company, insisting that a radio station in the Lehigh Valley got to give the world premiere of the song.
The day came for the first playing, and WZZO-FM (hard! rock!) got the honors, and the song was depressing, real, and accurate with a hissing and clanking background. I don’t remember too many requests for that song after the first playing.
George Smith said,
November 10, 2016 at 9:47 am
You have a bit better memory than me. I recall people always trivially complaining that he should have said Bethlehem, which didn;t rhyme. But what did happen was Allentown, the city center anyway, turned into a slum around Hamilton Street. The Morning Call building was right in the middle of it and I worked there. They were department stores and shops along Hamilton and we’d eat lunch there. Slowly, most of them closed.
I remember going to the Westgate Mall a lot. It had a nice bookshop and musical instrument store Someone took photos of it for Facebook a couple years ago. It’s a shell of its former self.
The Lehigh Valley did make something of a recovery, particularly Bethlehem, I am told. There’s even a hockey rink and pro team in Allentown. But it took decades. Most places haven’t had that work out for them.
I think what we’re experiencing is the fall of the US from the world stage back to a country where it’s a good place for rich tyrants to hide in wealthy enclaves once they’ve shot their bolt in their own places. Grpes of Wrath-type wasteland elsewhere with the locals just having to suffer through fire, flooding and storm without aid or electricity, which then stays off where the infrastructure is damaged.
The huge military will hang on, perhaps becoming even more of a bomber and assassination force for rent. There’s a minor chance of a thermonuclear war. Much higher chance of a lasting global recession.
Normalization of riots
anon said,
November 10, 2016 at 5:20 pm
Hamilton Street was really nice, anchored by the Hess Brothers’ store. One of my aunts worked there as a clerk and retired after over 20 years. The Patio restaurant in the basement was nice as well. It was a fun event for me as a kid to go to Hess Brothers’ before Christmas and see all of the decorating they did.
I don’t remember Bethlehem suffering as much as Allentown. Bethlehem, especially in the Main Street district with the Moravian Book Store, was more touristy and upscale. By contrast, a lot of the row housing neighborhoods in A-town have declined pretty badly.
George Smith said,
November 11, 2016 at 10:21 am
A little crew of us at the newspaper used to eat lunch in that restaurant. It also was a place the pensioners liked a lot.
I am told the hockey barn has made a difference. I would’ve never predicted a reverse Slap Shot.