Name: Plastic
Duration: 3 min 18 s
Channel: Fred Stanton
Description: "Plastic" is a song by Fred Stanton. Purveyors of credit cards seem to pop up like mushrooms after hurricanes and tsunamis. People left homeless in Southeast Asia and New Orleans can't get jobs or housing, but credit . . .

Plastic

Fred Stanton

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Purveyors of credit cards seem to pop up like mushrooms after hurricanes and tsunamis. People left homeless in Southeast Asia and New Orleans can't get jobs or housing, but credit . . .

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Fred Stanton

Political/personal songs since the 1960s -- killer ballads, working-class anthems, political satire. Fred's twelve-string guitar can be anything from a blues ba

Fred Stanton’s songs (along with his lumberjack voice and jumbo 12-string guitar) embody the political folk-singing tradition. Fred has been an industrial worker (a welder of oilfield equipment; an electronic assembler; and a railroad electrician, hostler and brakeperson) as well as a political organizer and union activist. This life is at the heart of his songsmoving, personal ballads, rollicking satires, and working-class anthems. Fred has been singing in concerts, union rallies and political protests since the 1960s. His union songs celebrate the struggles of strikers at Peabody Coal, poultry processing workers in North Carolina, and strawberry pickers in California. And his "Singing Cars," a Bronx salute to car alarms, has been featured on NPR’s "Car Talk" show. Newest songs include “Five-Dollar Coal,” which is the story of miners in Utah fighting for a union.

Song Info

Genre

Acoustic • Acoustic Folk

Charts

Peak #43

Peak in subgenre #7

Author

Fred Stanton

Rights

Uploaded

April 11, 2006

Track Files

MP3

MP3 3.0 MB • 128 kbps • 3:18

Story behind the song

Written for a film about credit cards.

Lyrics

Plastic

When the levees, they are leaking, 
   and the storm has hit you hard,
Help is on the way, my friend, 
   they send you a credit card.
You can live in a posh hotel room 
   with granny and cousin Bud,
’til you reach your credit limit, 
   and you’re back in the rain and mud.

Chorus:	
Give me a little more plastic if you please.
It’s the fix for every failure, 
   disaster, or disease.
From the Rust Belt to the Dust Bowl
   to the hole in my own back yard,
Give me a little more plastic, 
   I can live like a movie star.

In Thailand and Sumatra, 
   on the shores of tsunami land,
The boys from Chase Manhattan 
   have come to lend a hand.
Even if you have no income, 
   that is really quite OK,
Get some plastic, dude, 
   you are pre-approved—that’s the American Way. (Chorus)

I once had a health and pension plan, 
   and a union that was fine.
But all those frills and entitlements 
   are bad for the bottom line.
When they privatize the public schools 
   and Social Security,
This little piece of plastic should be 
   good enough for me. 

Bridge:	
I used to owe my soul to the company store.
Now my soul goes to the banker, 
   for the things I can’t afford.

Now the private profit system 
   has reached its highest stage, 
Where we put our lives on plastic, 
   and work for a Walmart wage.
We vote for the plastic candidates 
   and eat the plastic food,
And there’s even a plastic bullet 
   to correct my attitude. (Chorus)

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