Musicals/Broadway with varied musical styles and genres (including Rock, Reggae, Blues, Jazz, Latin-Rock, Soul and Fusion) to tell our story - the life of an adult baby boomer and their family, friends, enemies and others. Peace.

16 MP3 Songs
EASY LISTENING: Musicals/Broadway, ROCK: Classic Rock



Details:
March 18-24, 2004
City Paper- Philadelphia
cover story
Middle-Class Act

One-man band Steve P. Klein sings the baby boomers' blues.

by Patrick Rapa

You probably never heard of Steve P. Klein or his CD, the homespun but professionally recorded concept album, Babyboomer-angst.com. After recording the disc in 2002, he sent some copies around to local papers and played a few songs for family and friends, but that was about it. He has never performed these songs for an audience.

"I'm still waiting for somebody like John Hammond to discover me and make me famous like Bessie Smith," he jokes. In the meantime, he's been singing and playing harmonica in blues duo Sister Blue at area clubs and working a day job in a government office.

Babyboomer-angst.com is not a blues album, not exactly. The music is eclectic: soft pop on one track, rollicking rock on another, then Latin, soul, new wave and reggae. But the lyrics -- the curiously phrased, sincerely delivered lyrics -- are precisely the sort of beaten-down-but-carrying-on spirit on which the blues was founded.

The songs come from his experiences as a 50-something worker bee living in the Northeast. "Bossman" is about working for an idiot. "Love Hurts" is about being pussy-whipped. Mixed in are heartfelt odes to his brother, wife and kids. Each track gets a brief, spoken introduction; "Yo, Dad, Whasup" starts with "How do you get your kids to believe you that things were different then? We had the pill with no worry about AIDS." Before you can ponder this, in comes that big harmonica sound to start the song.

Probably the quintessential song is "Middle Class" -- it's the first one he wrote and it leads off the album. The spoken intro is whimsical and ominous, "I don't know about you, but Leave It to Beaver did not exactly prepare me for life as an adult." Cue harmonica.

The brooding chorus, with Kleinâs voice layered over itself via the DigiTech Vocalist Performer, laments diminishing savings and accumulating debt. The way he sees it, the middle class is starting to resemble the poor, and the song reflects that. "Itâs about dashed hopes and dreams," he says. "I was trying to talk about the universal truths, what a lot of middle-class people are going through."

Klein, who was unemployed and living on food stamps for a while, tries to convey the desperate times with a degree of humor, hence the last line, wherein the protagonist contemplates giving up. "It's tongue-in-cheek but it's a realistic song for a lot of people," he says.

Middle Class Steve P. Klein Middle class, middle class, middle class
Life used to be a gas

Middle class, middle class, middle class

I'm in debt to my ass

I owe so much money

Can barely pay the rent

Even with my overtime

Too many bills to make a dent

Middle class, middle class, middle class

Thought my savings last

Middle class, middle class, middle class

I'm in debt to my ass

Ever since I was downsized,

Can't get a new job; I'm too old

Chinese prisoners do it cheaper

My company threw me out in the cold

Never thought I'd be on food stamps

But my kids have got to eat

I sold everything of value

I give up, I'm in retreat

'Cause I'm middle class, middle class, middle class

A normal life is past

Middle class, middle class, middle class

I'm in debt to my ass

When I was young the world was my oyster

Maybe I'd be president one day

Now I live like in a cloister

Every day I pray and pay

Middle class! It's a thing of the past

Middle class, breathe my oven's gas