Artist: The Business
Search Term: "House of Business"
While driving past a local convenience store recently, my wife misread the sign "BOB'S HOURS OF BUSINESS" as "BOB'S HOUSE OF BUSINESS" and we spent a little time mocking the name before realizing her mistake on the return trip. I thought "House of Business" sounded like a hilariously flimsy Mafia front company or the venture of an entrepreneur with an unusually nonspecific corporate mission, so it stuck with me.
Which is more than I can say for this song. The Business are a British Oi! punk band, though the amiably bopping rhythm and tastefully distorted guitar tone of this song sound more like Bob Seger than members of any sort of rebellious youth movement. Further dimming the menacing quotient, singer Mickey Fitz goes off on a protracted whinge about how he's constantly persecuted by the forces of anti-intellectualism both real and speculative. (In the second verse, the narrator assumes his dad will eventually kick him out of the house because of his smarts and general scruffiness, rather than the fact that he's a self-righteous little prat. Later he goes so far as to claim that God Himself will vindicate him, which definitely isn't the sort of hot air any reasonable parent would tolerate from some condescending moocher of a son.) Split Enz covered this terrain more pessimistically and successfully with "Nobody Takes Me Seriously," so there's no need to waste your time listening to Fitz kibbitz atop forgettable, phoned-in pseudo-punk.
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