1960
SECURITY * TARHILL SLIM AND LITTLE ANN * FIRE 1030 * USA
Released in the opening year of the 19 60s, but definitely a 'Rocker' from
the previous decade, Security is an energetic call and response
number that manages to be both light hearted and serious at the same time.
Security as a concept is often found in Soul music but as the meanings of
words shift along with the of culture so it is that anyone looking up the word
security today on Wikipedia would find a totally different explanation to the
one that Little Ann is calling for.
Wikipedia has for its entry: "Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime" and goes on to quote that security "a form of protection where a separation is created between the assets and the threat". The emphasis in Wikipedia is clearly drifting towards property and crime and by extension the need for 'security services', as part of the social infrastructure of society under the agency of the service industries.
Whereas the OED emphasises the emotional aspect relating to the individual
and his/her wellbeing, with: "Freedom from doubt. Now chiefly, well-founded
confidence, certainty. “And "Freedom from care, anxiety or apprehension ;
a feeling of safety."
And while both definitions carry the elements of each other it is the second,
OED, definition I would say that Tarhill Slim and Little Ann are thinking
of when this record was cut.
This slight shift in emphasis gives a clear insight into how much our mental
and environmental conditions have changed since the 1960s.
Around the end of the 20th century left wing academics and activists in Britain and Europe began using the word precarity to describe and encapsulate how they saw the capitalist system engineering an unstable and precarious state of employment.
Unfortunately little or nothing was said about the
state’s role in this transition from the certainty of a job for life to one of
temporary or fluid employment contracts (unless you worked for the state), and
while the unions stood by and allowed this to happen (partly because it was also
in their interest as a precarious situation ensured the need for their existence
and partly because the Labour party was channelling millions of pounds into the
Unions coffers under the
Union Modernisation Fund) the state was busily deconstructing the culture
and methodology’s of Great Britain’s industrial economy, and attempting to
replace it with an informationalised one, based largely on immaterial goods and
services.
This fundamental change in the structure of Britain’s
economy and its culture by the Labour party also saw our everyday lives being
defined as precarious with the carefully constructed threat of terrorism and the
myth of Global Warming. If the terrorist bomb didn’t get you the weather
would!
This creation of a common feeling of insecurity led to a new kind of consumption, the consumption of protection. Protection (security), for the self, which you would pay for, and your country, which you would also pay for, and for your planet, you pay again.
This is borne out with the British Labour party taking
Britain into a prolonged and expensive war in Afghanistan on the pretext of security for Britain.
See also:
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| Can't Stay Away | Much Too late | Lock Me Into your Heart | Number 9 Train |