Sixteen

Bagging Area is sixteen years old today. On the cusp of adulthood, at the age of majority, able to leave school, join the army, get married (with parental consent) and buy an aerosol in a shop. 

The world I started typing this stuff into- 1st January 2010- seems a very long way away in all kinds of ways. Back then I thought I'd do this for a year and see what happened. What happened was I just kept going and here we are, still going, 6, 296 posts later. 

Some sixteens from my record/ CD/ downloads collections...

In 1955 Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded Sixteen Tons, a song about the coal mining industry in the USA, being owned by the company, having to haul sixteen tons every day and every day ending up deeper in debt. A series of strikes and the growth of trade unions put an end to the practices of the truck system and debt bondage that Merle Travis describes in the song and that Ernie sings about. 

Sixteen Tons

In 1980 The Clash gave their European tour the name Sixteen Tons, the band comparing their situation with CBS to coal mining in the 1930s and 1940s, trapped by debt. The band kept gig and record prices as low as possible, the record company took it out of their royalties. 

Clash associate Don Letts released an album on the Late Night Tales series, Version Excursion, that included Sixteen Tons Of Dub, a dub version of Ernie's tune by OBF...

Sixteen Tons Of Dub

In 1983 Jazzateers released a 7" on Rough Trade, Show Me The Door and Sixteen Reasons. Glaswegian post- punk/ New Wave, with Ian Burgoyne and Keith Band as the core members and on this single with Paul Quinn on vocals. The band split and became Bourgie Bourgie and then reformed as Jazzateers

Sixteen Reasons

Let It Be is The Replacements masterpiece, a 1984 album where it all came together for the band. On Sixteen Blue Paul Westerberg writes yet another anthem for teenage outsiders, one about empathy and sexual blurriness. His vocal on Sixteen Blue is maybe the best on the entire album, not least when he croaks and then goes full throttle with the line, 'Your age is the hardest age/ Everything drags and drags/ One day baby, maybe help you through/ Sixteen blue'.  There are entire teen/ rites of passage films that don't manage to nail what The Replacements do in three minutes here... 

Sixteen Blue

Oh look out, here's Iggy...

Sixteen

'Sweet sixteen in leather boots/ Body and soul I go crazy'. From Lust For Life, Iggy's second solo album and his second in 1977, the band sound totally on it, fully focussed and as one, straight ahead drug/ proto- punk rock with Bowie at the producer's desk. In 1982 a gaffer taped Iggy turned up on The Tube and did Sixteen for the early evening teatime crowd. I'm going to end this post here because I'm not sure it's going to get any better than this today.