A musical interlude.

One of the best albums of the Seventies, and one of the greatest albums (and album-as-document) of all time is Suicide's Second Album.

We could spend a long time here reflecting on Suicide's greatness and any documentary on CBGBs, the legendary Bowery bar where most of New York's New Wave bands made their name will immediately reveal them for what they are, true originals. If almost everyone else is a guitar toting smack-thin pallid Keith Richard's wannabe Rev And Vega are obviously a different category of antagonistic fuck up all together and their music an offence to the conventional scandalous wisdoms.

The second album contains two tracks that  highlight the differences in wealth in the city they call home, New York. The first is the surprisingly titled, (in the context of Suicides’ first album) “Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne" a track referencing the new hedonism and conspicuous consumption of the disco and art scenes (into which Suicide, like Schwarzenegger had no doubt been recently inducted). “Diamonds, fur coat, champagne. Woman, Cadillac, Cocaine”. The other track is the epic lament "Harlem" which stands in musical and lyrical counterpoint, a repeated growl of rage turning into a scream in the background, a stark remorseless drum pattern, the refrain, ‘the kids ain't singing no more”.

Equally of course, one may be tempted to point to the other great Coke song of the Late Seventies Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's White Lines and consider their other classic track The Message in conjunction with the aforementioned Harlem.

Again if you want to see a Fordist-post-Fordist shift in action, check out the start of Schrader's Blue Collar and his American Gigolo, the solidarity of the men versus that icon of bland eighties self-regard Richard Gere, blues rock and the production line versus top down in the sports car and disco pumping on the stereo, in this case Blondie's hymn to the ecstasy of communication "Call me."

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