From the hicks to the Micks: we depart the rednecks and the coloreds of the South, and we ship our poverty-class social problems up to the Irish descendents in Boston Mass where we find the Celtic-punk band the Dropkick Murphys, in their bar, somewhere between the one owned by Green Day and the one the Pogues used to own (but left solely to the care of Shane McGowan). Amidst all their revelry and fist-pumping anthems celebrating their heritage, their beer, and their knack for violence, we find perhaps the most sexually and culturally insensitive hit songs by a left-of-center music act in the past thirty years.
In "The State of Massachusetts," Boston's favorite sons excoriate a mother for not being able to straighten out her life and take care of her two sons. It doesn't matter to them that she's been victimized by her abusive husband; it only matters that she isn't taking, uh, matters into her own hands for the sake of the children. Whoah, man, that's some heavy baggage and guilt heaped atop this pitiful woman. What about the husband? Why don't they attack him? The reason they don't is perhaps the most tragic part of the song: they've given up on him already. The husband has no hope. Since, of course, these characters are mere representatives of an entire culture of disaffected, inner-city, paycheck-to-paycheck 9-5 blue-collar Southies and Quincies, what does this tell us of the state of the typical sub-Boston man? Ouch.
Ouch again, if you consider that most of the Dropkick Murphys' other songs regale the typical sub-Boston man for his penchant for alcohol and his pride and his ability to fight. All this, from all those drunken Dropkick songs, and then they release a song condemning a woman for not being a good mother? Arrogant much? You betcha. Sexist? Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe the Murphys just see the situation for what it is, that these men simply cannot be relied upon, and if future generations are ever going to succeed by leaving this level of poverty--if, only by a rung on the social ladder--then it's the mothers who are going to have to do it. The men won't. They can't.
I don't know. I could be wrong. Maybe this is sexist. It's troubling. I've been back and forth on this one for months and months now, whether or not I should list it or not. I read interview after interview, and I find no insight. I read review after review, and I find no insight. I'm just not sure. I play it one more time, and I realize that there's one thing I am sure of: the music's smoking hot.
Tim Brennan picks the dickens out of that banjo, Matt Kelly plays almost the entire song rolling and tumbling sixteenths and thirty-seconds on the snare, Marc Orrell and James Lynch find their inner Mick Mars power chording in some metal to the mix, and vocalist Al Barr uses his gargling voice to its most-belligerent effect, and all push the tune past the typical oi! and hurrah! of past Murphys music into righteous anger at the hopelessness of society's ills and the loss of childhood and the sins of their fathers and lay it all at their mother's feet, kicking and screaming that she'll wake up and take charge, for if not, then there won't be anything left worth singing for.
NOTES
*Well, it was a hit on Billboard's Modern Rock charts, and it still gets play on alternative stations, and it's their second-most popular song, so it's as big a hit as any Celtic-punk band is ever likely to get.
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