In 1980, the BusBoys sent shock waves through the music world with their song "KKK," which found members of a mostly African-American band singing that they wanted to "join the Ku Klux Klan and play in a rock & roll band." Of course, no one in the BusBoys really aspired to be a Klansman -- they were actually ridiculing institutional racism and asserting that if African-Americans were good enough to pay taxes and fight in the Vietnam War, they shouldn't be excluded from any part of the American dream, including the white-dominated rock & roll field. Unfortunately, a few simpletons took their lyrics out of context and assumed that the BusBoys were self-hating blacks, but to anyone with half a brain, it was clear where they were coming from. After using shock value and humor to get their anti-racism, pro-working-class message across on their first album,
Minimum Wage Rock & Roll, the BusBoys brought an equally sociopolitical agenda to their sophomore effort,
American Worker. This likable, if uneven, LP ranges from political offerings like "American Workers," "I Get Lost," and the reggae-influenced "Opportunity" to less provocative, more mainstream pop/rock fare such as "Last Forever" and "Heart and Soul." Regrettably, this 1982 release was the BusBoys' last album on Arista (they wouldn't record another album until the late '80s, when they shifted their focus from rock to synth-funk/urban contemporary). The BusBoys had a lot of potential, and it's unfortunate that they didn't fully live up to it. But despite their imperfections,
Minimum Wage Rock & Roll and
American Worker are fun albums that deserve credit for taking some risks and making some sociopolitical statements that needed to be made. ~ Alex Henderson