Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen

[MacCruiskeen]

And I'm sure The Clash never once charged anyone to see a performance. Or buy their records.

Please.

Where did I defend The Clash? Nowhere. The band did do some good things on Sandinista, god bless 'em, but Joe Strummer was the English Springsteen.

Please.

"God Save The Queen" was made its debut as a number-two selling record.

Talk about commidified rebellion.

So you've noticed that every record and every book sold by any commercial company is a commodity. Like wow, eureka, tell the world the news. This doesn't mean that there's no substantial difference between "God Save the Queen" and "Born to Run", nor does it make Noam Chomsky equivalent to Tom Clancy.

[nathan28]

So you've noticed that every record and every book sold by any commercial company is a commodity. Like wow, eureka, tell the world the news. This doesn't mean that there's no substantial difference between "God Save the Queen" and "Born to Run", nor does it make Noam Chomsky equivalent to Tom Clancy.

Whoa, hold it there with that subtlety. Are you sure you are not, and have never been, an Obamabot?

[beeline]

This doesn't mean that there's no substantial difference between "God Save the Queen" and "Born to Run", nor does it make Noam Chomsky equivalent to Tom Clancy.

Well, we can argue interpretations of artistic endeavors until we're both blue in the face. Bottom line is, we'll both be right, and we'll both be wrong.

I'll take Springsteen's actual (however futile) attempts at raising the awarenes of "the management class" over, say, Lydon's nihilistic spitting into drapes any day of the week.

It's one thing to be pissed off at the world. It's quite another to try and do something about it.

[norton ash]

Bruce Springsteen is very talented. If he's a dupe and a tool and a psy-ops project, he's certainly been diverse and ingenious while in thrall. He's a great songwriter and stylist. Little Steven Van Zandt is something else, too... actor, music archivist, DJ, cynical commentator and a great guitarist.

Bruce sings in his chains like the sea, I guess.

Lots of people like football. Springsteen and football fill stadiums. Many of the people are drunk and high and take pictures and hold up cell phones and stuff themselves with junk food. Nazis in the miles of rank-and-file at Nuremberg didn't do this.

Young men who really like football often head toward the military or police anyway.

Jets fly overhead at the Super Bowl and the Army advertises like crazy.

Springsteen turns in a hot, smile-making set and so he's gone Nuremberg?

In the words of Sinead O'Connor "Fight the real enemy." Springsteen's an American populist politically, and I like his music.

[MacCruiskeen]

It's one thing to be pissed off at the world. It's quite another to try and do something about it.

It's one thing to spend decades getting entire stadiumsful of ripped-off Classic Rockers tearily chanting "Born in the USA", and another thing to try and do something about the state of the world.

He's nothing if not user-friendly, though:

Following Springsteen's April 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama,[10] the Obama campaign began replacing U2's "City of Blinding Lights" with "The Rising" as their commencement-of-rally song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_(song)

Here's "The Boss's" considered response to 9/11:

[url=http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/TheRising.html]Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile line..[/url]

Boy oh boy, Al Qaeda must have hit him really hard. You'd think being a multi-millionaire would be some comfort to him, but no. Anyway, "The Rising" goes on and on, and on, like that for about another 83 verses, all about Bruce's feelings, which are gloomy to say the least, with nothing whatsoever about his thoughts, presuming he had any. Unlike Alice Cooper, he can't even think of a word that rhymes. Eventually, the Virgin Mary turns up, which does make this song poetic, but otherwise it's hard to see what Bruce is doing about the state of the world here, not to mention the state of the song, over which he presumably had some control.

(Don't get me started on U2.)

[beeline]

(Don't get me started on U2.)

OK, I won't

I hope you haven't mistaken me as some kind of Boss acolyte. I'm not. I like a couple-few tunes, but the rest of his work isn't my thing.

But, I do admire him for public stands he has taken in the past, for instance his support of Amnesty International, Caesar Chavez, the anti-nuke movement, etc, etc.

Granted, this is lost on most of his audience. Trust me, I live right next door to New Jersey. I know his demographic well. To say it politely: they're working class, they're uninformed, and they vote against their own interests.

But that doesn't mean he's not trying to educate them about the world a little bit. Whether or not they get the message is on them.

And with regards to the original post, I mean, c'mon a Nazi? That's a bit much. You could say the same thing about any successful rock group, or anything that sells enough tickets to fill a stadium. The Who, The Stones, The Police....really, there hasn't been a group that hasn't played a stadium since rock got big enough to sell out stadiums, and I suppose the Beatles started that at Shea in '65.

(Don't get me started on The Beatles!)

[H_C_E]

This was possibly the most shamelessly stupid piece I ever read on counterpunch, and that includes a number of 9/11 conspiracy hysterics.

Yup. Counterpunch can be pretty reactionary at times.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The op article was about something specific-
The Uber Bowl. Contemporary context.

Not 'The Boss's' entire life output or intentions.

[MacCruiskeen]

The op article was about something specific-
The Uber Bowl. Contemporary context.

Not 'The Boss's' entire life output or intentions.

Oh sorry, Hugh, did I go off-topic?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The op article was about something specific-
The Uber Bowl. Contemporary context.

Not 'The Boss's' entire life output or intentions.

Oh sorry, Hugh, did I go off-topic?

That's not what I meant, MC.
You know that 'on-topic' is a much wider field of memes for me than for most others as evidenced by my filling in on what the Warfare State gets out of 'The Boss' since 1975 even when he has anti-war lyics because
the form outweighs the content in social control value.

I meant that it seems people in this thread are blowing off or completely missing
the Uber Bowl's significance in the Warfare State and how valuable a human cred prop like Springsteen is to the show.

[IanEye]

“Workin' in the fields
'Til you get your back burned
Workin' 'neath the wheels
'Til you get your facts learned
Baby, I got my facts
Learned real good right now.” (Bruce Springsteen)

“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.” (Alasdair Gray)

Just curious if the Alasdair Gray quote is meant to be ironic on your part Mac.

It would seem to me that “as if” is the operative part of the quote.

“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”

In other words, even if you live in the waning days of a terrible nation, don’t let that stop you from striving as hard as you can to lay the foundation of a societal structure that will better your own humanity.

Here are some other sig lines of RI members:

"The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me."

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.”


These resonate quite strongly with Mr. Gray’s quote, and the RI members who sign off with them don’t seem nearly as ironic or cynical as you.

Do you honestly think Mr. Gray would be impressed with your approach?

Why don’t you try surfing the internet as if you weren’t an asshole?

“Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
Keep pushin' 'til it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good…”

[waugs]

I thought both Prince and Springsteen were f-ing HORRIBLE during their half-time shows.

[MacCruiskeen]

Never mind 'The Rising' and all hucksterism and cheap pathos and phoney rebellion; here's 'The Refusal':



Though he called for Thatcher to be guillotined (and had his flat searched by the police because of it), you'd never have found him doing cheesily uplifting stadium-rock concerts for Tony bleeding Blair. He'd never have been asked.

Obviously Madonna reinforces everything absurd and offensive... Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else. I mean the music industry is obviously prostitution anyway but there are degrees.

Popular music is slowly being laid to rest in every conceivable way... the ashes are already about us if we could but notice them.

Bush has single-handedly turned the United States into the most neurotic and terror-obsessed country on the planet.

I have forgiven Jesus.

[slimmouse]

Speaking from personal experience as an honours graduate with a post graduate certificate, I have to ask ; How many people actually listen to the lyrics of a song, or understand them ?

I will readily confess as someone generally considered to be "intelligent", to listen but not closely (until recently) to the lyrics of songs.

Its taken me almost 50 years to begin to truly look at the messages of songs.

So, and with respect to those yelling the chorus line, I can fully understand how Bruce Springsteen hollering out "Born In the USA "as the main riff in an otherwise essentially Anti- Empire song will by and large come over as the complete opposite.

A great recruitment ad for the military in spite of the message contained within the song

I have to say Im with Hugh on this one.

Modern day Nurembourg rally absolutely.

Its like "theyre" taking the piss out of "our" ignorance.

[MacCruiskeen]

“Workin' in the fields
'Til you get your back burned
Workin' 'neath the wheels
'Til you get your facts learned
Baby, I got my facts
Learned real good right now.” (Bruce Springsteen)

“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.” (Alasdair Gray)

Just curious if the Alasdair Gray quote is meant to be ironic on your part Mac.

No, certainly not. What made you think it was? And why do you place Gray's brilliant and succinct and useful recommendation under six lines of portentous waffle (about nothing) from 'The Boss'?

It would seem to me that “as if” is the operative part of the quote.

“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”

In other words, even if you live in the waning days of a terrible nation, don’t let that stop you from striving as hard as you can to lay the foundation of a societal structure that will better your own humanity.

So what's Springsteen doing, with his fame and his wealth and his public profile? What, exactly? Where's this alleged "striving"?

Here are some other sig lines of RI members:

"The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me."

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.”

These resonate quite strongly with Mr. Gray’s quote, and the RI members who sign off with them don’t seem nearly as ironic or cynical as you.

There is no victory in a struggle, in and of itself, unless it's the successful struggle to tell the truth for as long as you can. Rosa Luxemburg certainly struggled incomparably more than "The Boss" ever did; but, equally certainly, she wasn't victorious. She was in fact murdered, by the lackeys of a system, precisely because she wasn't safely vague, but an actual threat. It would be merely sentimental to pretend that she won.

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.”

That's a quote from Blake, who actually did create his own system. (His labours were heroic, but his system was of doubtful value, except to him.) So what system has "The Boss" created, as opposed to the one provided for him by the boss of Columbia Records?

Seriously!

Do you honestly think Mr. Gray would be impressed with your approach?

As opposed to yours? Well, he's certainly somebody who never bowed to a reputation, not even to Goethe's, so probably not to Bruce Springsteen's either.

But maybe I should take a tip from you, Ian. Maybe I should communicate almost entirely in other people's song lyrics. Do you honestly think that would impress Alasdair Gray, or indeed Bruce Springsteen? - The question is rhetorical, but frankly, who the hell cares. I don't think in these terms, even if you do.

Why don’t you try surfing the internet as if you weren’t an asshole?

Why don't you quote me a terrible song?

“Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
Keep pushin' 'til it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good…”

Thank you. Was that produced by a Random Word Generator? Does it mean anything at all? If so, what, exactly? He's demanding better treatment from the landscape, or what? Would Martin Luther King be impressed by that safely-vague demand? Would Noam Chomsky? Would John Lennon? Would any politician feel even remotely threatened by it? Is it in any way distinguishable from a used teabag?

Questions, questions.