It is rare for me to post on consecutive days, but one of the occasions on which I have done this is for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday: they go together as companion pieces, I think.  I have posted several times for Black Friday, but had a bit of a break until I started again last year. This is another US tradition which has made its way to these shores, and being the day after Thanksgiving it is a public holiday in about half of US states: many private employers give their staff the day off too. It marks the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season, and has been part of US tradition for more than 60 years: the name was first given to it by the police in Philadelphia (aka Philly PD) some time around 1960, to describe the pedestrian and traffic chaos that it caused. It used to have the same effect here, with scenes of people fighting over ‘bargains’ in stores like Asda, but thankfully our shopping habits have returned to something more civilised in recent years.

Initially I posted factual pieces for the day, but then began ‘celebrating’ it in music, as you might expect from me. The first time I included a song in these posts was in 2019 – this one:

As I said back then I don’t think Rusty Cage is likely to make it as a world class singer, but he has rather nailed today! I expanded my posts in 2020 with a few more tunes loosely related to the concept of shopping and the art of the deal. I shared them again last year and am playing an edited set today, as many of you have joined me in recent years and won’t have seen them here before.

Despite its adoption as the name for today’s shopping bonanza, I first came across the phrase – as I suspect many others did – as the opening track on Steely Dan’s album Katy Lied:

As you will have seen from that helpful lyric video, the song is nothing to do with shopping. The excellent Songfacts site says this about it:

“Long before the term came to denote the shopping frenzy on the day after Thanksgiving, Steely Dan released this song about the original “Black Friday,” when on Friday, September 24, 1869 a failed ploy left many wealthy investors broke. The investors tried to corner the market on gold, buying as much of it as they could and driving up the price, but when the government found out, it released $4 million worth of gold into the market, driving down the price and clobbering the investors.”

And for good measure they also clear up the Australian reference:

“While the song is about events in the US, it mentions a town in Australia: “Fly down to Muswellbrook.” Muswellbrook is a rural town two hours North of Sydney that is full of kangaroos (thus the line, “Nothing to do but feed all the kangaroos”). It’s possible that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen selected the name of Muswellbrook from an atlas, mainly because it worked well with the next line, “I’m going to strike out all the big red words from my little black book.” They also wanted a place far away from Los Angeles.”

So now you know!

Nowadays we all know the name as being synonymous with sales and the search for bargains, and it seems to begin earlier every year: I’ve been receiving emails announcing Black Friday sales since the start of this month, although they have intruded a little on the annual Christmas promotion (which begins in September, of course). But at least it will all be over by the official start of the Easter shopping season on 26 December, and the return of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and their poor spelling. There are several songs about the dangers of bargain hunting, and today is as good a day as any for them. Here’s one you may know:

I leave it to you to decide what ‘bargains’ Dolly may have been offering, but as the song was banned in some of the more prudish parts of the US it isn’t difficult to work out! It’s a pity that her bargains were all used, though: finding anything amongst all that hair would have been fun…

Some bargains come with unforeseen costs, however, so beware – not all deals can be taken at face value:

Sadly, Charlie Daniels passed away a few years back, but that is still a great song to be remembered by. His fiddle playing is incredible, though I don’t think he’d done a deal…

I’m going to leave you with another cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming addicted to shopping:

I guess many of us will be taking to the interweb to seek out our bargains, as we have been doing particularly since the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and beyond meant that we had the choice between going to stores and dying in the stampede of bargain hunters or from their germs, or staying at home and shopping in comfort. I just hope you don’t do it like Weird Al! Watching that puts me in mind of those antique shows that are often on tv, when people spend silly money on rusty old rubbish – and then someone else pays even sillier money for it at auction. If I were looking for used bargains I know which of these videos I’d want to follow up – I’m pretty sure the return on my investment would be better, and it would be fun.

In case you think Black Friday is inescapable there are some places where there aren’t any bargains to be had, as not everyone takes part…

I hope you have fun hunting your bargains, and don’t then find that you could have bought the same thing for less when the ‘sales’ are over – check the small print as it can happen! I’ve decided that I already have more than enough stuff and don’t plan on making any purchases, so I think I should be safe from the advertisers’ blandishments. As long as I don’t open my emails, that is…