Uncle Sexy and the Nephews Go to Work

On working for the man, and not doing that

I’m having a sale this week (40% off; $30/yr). That means I should be writing something that everyone wants to read, thereby promoting the sale. That’s what work is; you try to do things that people will pay you for, so you can pay the rent and the grocery bill and keep yourself trudging along so you can do more things that people will pay you for.

Instead, though, I’m going to once again demonstrate that I am not great at capitalism by writing about a thing I care about but probably not many of my readers do—namely, hyper-local Chicago alt country band Uncle Sexy (aka TJ Kennedy) and the Nephews. In particular, I’m going to write about my favorite song of theirs, “Mailman.” It’s available on most streaming services in a full band electric version…or in this delightful acoustic version on YouTube

As you’ll quickly figure out if you give it a listen, the song is not really about the mailman. It’s about work and how work sucks for everyone, because everyone’s job is making sure everybody else is miserable.

The mailman got a job
Working for the man.
Well he used to bring me letters and cards
From my friends

Now every time he drops me a note
It’s to say how much money I owe.
Yeah that mailman’s got a job
Working for the man

The tow truck driver got a job
Working for the man.
Well you used to call him up
To help you in a jam

Now if he sees you out on the streets
You better pay all your stickers and fees
Because that tow truck driver got a job
Working for the man.

The construction worker got a job
Working for the man
Tearing down all the trees
And fucking up the land

Yeah he tore em all down with his hands
And now the heat’s more than we can stand
Yeah that construction worker got a job
Working for the man

We all went out and got jobs
Working for the man
Screwing over one another
Just as fast as we can

And now the dealer’s hand has been played
And we gave away what we have saved
And we all went out and got jobs
Working for the man

Working for the man
Working for the man
Working for the man
We’re all working for the man.

The lyrics frame working for the man as a fate that comes for you in time; the mailman originally delivered nice notes and messages from friends, but then he started working for the man and bringing around bills. The tow truck driver would once—in a prelapsarian past—help you in a jam, but now he’s just dragging your car away for nonpayment of fees.

The hint of a naïve vision of unalienated work—of work as mutual aid rather than of work as exploitation—is what separates “Mailman” from other country work-sucks anthems like Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job And Shove It” or Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five.” Those (great) songs are about grown-ups acknowledging and trying to negotiate the way work exhausts you, robs you of dignity, and leaves you miserable. “It’s all takin’ and no givin’” as Dolly says. “They watch you dream just to watch ‘em shatter.”

Paycheck and Parton know from the start of their songs that work sucks because they’ve been working all their lives. When Uncle Sexy presents working for the man as a fall from grace, the contrast there is part of the joke; the mailman and the tow truck driver and the construction worker were always working for the man—though once, perhaps, when Uncle Sexy was but a young nephew himself, he saw the world of work as one in which everybody helps everybody, rather than everybody screwing over one another just as fast as they can.

The joke isn’t just a joke, though. It’s a socialist utopian vision. Communism and socialism are sometimes caricatured as anti-work, as if Marx imagined a perfect future in which we all just vegged out in front of the television. Uncle Sexy isn’t necessarily opposed to the millennium of inertia, as he makes clear on the the great track “Too High To Cross the Street (and Too Drunk to Care.)” But the vision of happy and altruistic mailmen and tow truck drivers in “Mailman” is less a plea for laziness, and more in line with Marx’s vision of unalienated labor.

“Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature,” Marx writes. “He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants.”

Capitalism robs the worker of surplus value by alienating him from his work, so he is “at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless”. The goal of Communism is to end exploitation, so that people (not just men, despite Marx’s use of male pronouns) feel at home in work, and are working for themselves, not the Man.

“Mailman” is about the disappointment of recognizing that work does not belong to you. Which means the song is also about seeing the possibility of work that binds us together in opposition to the reality of a work which is about screwing each other over.

The best part about “Mailman”, though, is that even as it talks about the alienation of work, it in many way performs the unalienated labor it pines for. Live, Uncle Sexy—squat, fat, sporting a shapeless cowboy hat, more than a little drunk— leads his gloriously sloppy band through the tune in an anthemic stagger. The chorus on “Working for the man!” is belted out at a thundering shout.

The volume is partially anger and righteous disgust. But it’s also goofy fun. The Nephews are talented and on key, but they’re also a local bar band without much in the way of pretension. They’re happy to be there, and they’re not trying too hard to do anything except have a good time with their bandmates and the lucky folks who came to see someone else (Aaron Lee Tasjan in my case) and stumbled on a awesome opening act.

The Nephews are working for the man in some sense, as we all are. But they’re also working for themselves. If you want to know what it would look like to live in a world where the tow truck driver’s whole job is to get you out of a jam—well, watching these hairy guys barrel through a forty-five minute set while trying to stay upright is a pretty good facsimile.

This is why people love music, and art in general. Artists aren’t free of capitalism or exploitation, as Uncle Sexy wryly pointed out when he encouraged listeners to stream his songs on Spotify so he can make .00007 cents a pop. But when you make a work of art like “Mailman” that’s meaningful to you and meaningful to your audience, you’re modeling what unalienated labor might look like. “Mailman,” the song, is about how workers are screwing each other over. But “Mailman”, the performance, is a message from a friend meant to get you out of the mess you’re in.

I know that if I want to make money, I should write about Trump and politics and fascism, and I’ll get back to that soon, I’m sure. But sometimes it’s worth writing about something you love in the hope that other people maybe love it too. Part of getting to a better world is creating that work for yourselves, in a small way. Uncle Sexy and the Nephews do that when they get on stage and transform working for the man into a song.