That Bruce Springsteen guy
disco_che
1,115 Posts
Explain why I should care about him (not being born in the U.S.A.).
My only contact with his music besides the MOR/AOR-Radioplay he gets was a CD my mother brought me as a gift from their holidays in spain. I skipped through, was bored, never listened again and sold it at the flea some years later.
My only contact with his music besides the MOR/AOR-Radioplay he gets was a CD my mother brought me as a gift from their holidays in spain. I skipped through, was bored, never listened again and sold it at the flea some years later.
Comments
Ok ill bite.
Firstly, Springsteen emerged as a sort of representative of blue collar East Coast living for a lot of people, who weren't feeling the self-indulgence of most rock acts. Springsteen was a great, animated performer - no frills, pure energy. His songwriting was very straight forward and simple but was also real poetic - people could relate well. He had a great band and a bunch of great records.
Nebraska is my favorite - its just him and a guitar. And Born In the USA as a record really entrenched itself as a classic American record, and not in a superficial sense. Everything about it - the chords, melodies, lyrics, themes is as American as one could get. That's not easy to pull off in a intelligent, interesting way. I do think dude fell off bigtime in the last 2 decades in many ways - his songs are less subtle to me and less poignant. Just seems like a dude yelling at me.
His two best contributions were tellingly delivered with an external magic provided by Patti and Manfred.
'Born To Run' is up there no doubt in the high reaches of 45 pop operas, without threatening Mr Blue Sky, Heroes And Villains, Music and them (no Bo Rhap).
The naked appeal to patriotism displayed during the Born/USA wifebeater/denims period was nauseating. It was or seemed to be an opportunistic pursual of zeitgeist dollars at the time. I am no historian of music, just my gut recollection of a woeful period, a harbinger of focus-group entertainment, of the shift towards music led by market demographic, of rock becoming overtly corporate.
Dudes with supposed integrity hard-won during more idealistic times selling dey soul for that Miami Vice beachfront mansion.
I understand fully that dude had/has huge appeal across the globe.
I have no understanding of the nature of that appeal, or why it exists.
The but-but of the three hour shows and pure energy are just proof that folks value width over quality IMHO.
I'm with Prefab Sprout on this.
I often wonder how frustrating it must be for him to know that, in the minds of many people who don't know his stuff, he's become a cipher for a particular brand of brash, chest-beating patriotism when he's really not, nor ever was, at all about that. Likewise your remark about MOR/AOR radioplay, Che - sure, there are plenty of Springsteen songs that are perennial rock radio staples, with all the sometimes tedious familiarity that can accompany such things. But for someone of his stature within his particular idiom, Springsteen's range puts that of his peers in the shade. Most performers who are four decades deep into their career as recording artists have found their niche and settled into it by now. Springsteen has arguably avoided that. He hasn't been wildly experimental, obviously - there'll never be a Springsteen equivalent of Radiohead's Kid A, for example - but he's continued to refine what he does whilst at the same time trying to figure out what purpose rock music still has in a culture like this one. He's pretty unique amongst his immediate contemporaries inasmuch as he still seems to believe there should be a point to rock music, besides being entertainment. Which is fair enough, since he can still put on a hell of a show, even in his 60s. I hear what people are saying about his later-period output being less vital than the earlier stuff, but when I saw him a couple of years ago, Workin' On A Dream was one of the highpoints of the show. He's still got a little bit left in the tank.
If someone were to ask me to distill Springsteen's entire catalogue down to one record that summed up what he was about, I'd say the Born To Run 45. The album's great as well, although you could perhaps make a case for there being better Springsteen albums. But for me the essence of what he does was always right here in this one 45 - dude was pretty much singing his life, and you can hear it. The 15-year-old me thought this was the greatest record I'd ever heard from the moment I heard it, and years of familiarity have barely diminished it.
I am not the target audience I suspect. I also suspect deep down it's a cultural thing, US and A can get fired up about about stuff in a way that would worry a Brit. No diss to 'Meriman, but Brits cannot ride for Making The Corporation #1 Because You Give Us Pool Tables At Work, chest bumping, Being The Best, In Your Face, Jetpacks, peacetime flag-waving and things of that nature. That kind of enthusiasm works for America but frankly is not present in me.
Have been subjected to The Boss' entire catalogue whilst a teen and yeah, musically dude has solid songs and yeah, "Nebraska" is a great album, if you have the buttons for it to press. Cosine "I'm On Fire", it's his best work. I could picture myself drunk-driving a pickup to that all night long, from one New Mexico bar-with-a-busted-neon-Bud-sign to another, dodging the tumbleweed until I crash, head-on, into someone doing the same. Probably my cousin.
Don't tell me New Mexico is all Starbucks, wi-fi and fixies these days?
I think I'm about to hear this
Dude did a Superbowl halftime recently didn't he? Looked coked-up and too old to be acting the kid, but I think the latter is what endears him to his fans. He's written some good songs, but co-sign that some of the American sentiments are alien...
I do ride for some In-Your-Face when playing the PS2/game of pool with friends, but then I'm half yank :cheese:
Pretty sure it's just like a plain, crew-neck T-shirt but whatever. I have filed the classics -- Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska and, yes, Born in the U.S.A. -- I think his using of the periods in "USA" denotes an even greater appreciation of our land than, perhaps, can be recognized by you dudes across the pond. Coincidentally enough, last week I posted the video for "I'm On Fire" on my Facebook page with the comment "John Sayles on some proto Lost Highway," which was true but unsurprisingly went uncommented upon by all of my friends.
You just mad 'cause of the whole downfall of the British empire thing. %-P
What's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking
b/w
You ever tried feeding a peacock whilst wearing a "WE'RE #1" foam hand?
Yes.
I am not even a fan of his music and as a Canadian, the patriotism is just something I can't really relate to. But this 2009 60 Minutes interview excerpt captures why I like him and don't write him off.
"I guess I would say that what I do is I try to chart the distance between American ideals and American reality. That's how my music is laid out. It's like we've reached a point where it seems that we're so intent on protecting ourselves that we're willing to destroy the best parts of ourselves to do so," Springsteen says.
Asked what he means, Springsteen tells Pelley, "Well, I think that we've seen things happen over the past six years that I don't think anybody ever thought they'd ever see in the United States. When people think of the American identity, they don't think of torture. They don't think of illegal wiretapping. They don't think of voter suppression. They don't think of no habeas corpus. No right to a lawyer ??? you know. Those are things that are anti-American."
"You know, I think this record is going to be seen as anti-war. And you know there are people watching this interview who are going to say to themselves, 'Bruce Springsteen is no patriot,'" Pelley remarks.
"Well, that's just the language of the day, you know? The modus operandi for anybody who doesn't like somebody, you know, criticizing where we've been or where we're goin'," Springsteen says. "It's unpatriotic at any given moment to sit back and let things pass that are damaging to some place that you love so dearly. And that has given me so much. And that I believe in, I still feel and see us as a beacon of hope and possibility."
Springsteen sees himself following a long American tradition reaching back through Vietnam and on to the Great Depression.
"There's a part of the singer going way back in American history that is of course the canary in the coalmine. When it gets dark, you're supposed to be singing. It's dark right now," Springsteen says. "And so I went back to Woody Guthrie and Dylan and the people who said, say take Pete Seeger, who wants to know, doesn't want to know how this song sounds, he wants to know what's it for."
"What needs to be said, in this country at this moment, in your opinion, what needs to be said?" Pelley asks.
"I think we live in a time when what is true can be made to seem a lie," Springsteen says. "And what is lie can be made to seem true. And I think that the successful manipulation of those things have characterized several of our past elections. That level of hubris and arrogance has got us in the mess that we're in right now. And we're in a mess. But if we subvert, the best things that we're about in the name of protecting our freedoms, if we remove them, then who are we becoming, you know? Who are we, you know? The American idea is a beautiful idea. It needs to be preserved, served, protected and sung out. Sung out on a nightly basis. That's what I'm going to try to do."
I RIDE FOR JETPACKS
This seems like the sort of rhetorical question best contemplated over tea and crumpets. Which is to say, 'Merica is too busy exporting awesomeness to address such matters.
I'm a 'Merican, bro. We don't try things. We do them, and they stay done*.
*With the minor exceptions of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the first Gulf War.
I dealt with a lot of SERIOUS Springsteen fans, and almost to a person the important thing to them had nothing to do with being "American". It is much more about Bruce being a hard-working, honest, family-man kind of guy they think they can relate to. It's the way a lot of people out there see themselves (or wish they could be). To them he is out there doing his job as hard as he can for 3+ hours every show, never slacking or taking it easy, telling stories that they can relate to and helping them forget their troubles. And they love him to death for it. He worked really hard for years and years to earn that respect from his fans, and to his credit up until "Born In The USA" caught fire he really was just a guy who was a fan of music above all, and who thought that it was possible to raise people up thru the power of a good song performed with passion. Then it all got football stadium sized and out of scale and politicians attached messages and ideas to his songs and image that weren't there or at worst were contradictory to his own feelings.
All that said, I don't like 95% of the music, and I think he's done a good job of getting those same fans to conveniently overlook that behind the honest working-class image is a multi-bajillionare who hasn't actually worked a day job since he was a teenager, who cheated on his wife and ended up dumping her for his co-worker, and who is in the end a pretty ruthless guy when it comes to business. Which I suppose is pretty damn American of him.
I got to see him before he died in a small club in NYC and was converted by his amazing stage presence.
90% of his output is shite.
man do i look foolish. ill stop now.
I usually like his music. hes got a great voice and good energy. go bruce
No, not at all. This song is a testament to the fact that irony, no matter how blatant and clearly spelled out, cannot be transmitted or understood in mass culture.
Not really a fan, but I see why people like him and I got nothing against him.