Saturday, September 14, 2013

What do you mean Millenials don't like Bruce Springsteen?

According to the Internet, which always tells the truth, my peers don't like Bruce Springsteen. Well, maybe not my peers, but "Millenials." Certainly I'm not one of them, because I was called "old" the other day.

Of the two times I saw Bruce this summer, I had to buy my friends' tickets because they didn't consider him worth paying for.

Listen, my too young friends. I know. I listen to some music that's a bit dated. I don't expect you all to be interested in the genius early country yodels of Jimmie Rodgers (although you really should be). And I know I can only get some of you interested in the music of Blind Willie Johnson if I quote line for line the West Wing scene about him, and pretend I'm coming up with it on the spot. Maybe old 1920's x-rated 78s aren't your thing. I get it.

BUT BRUCE ISN'T OLD MUSIC. 


He's still doing 4-hour live shows, crowd surfing, and more importantly, he's still writing kick-ass, angry, tear at your clothes rock and roll. Besides, it's not like you've never listened to music that was written before you were born. Did you ever lie in bed in high school listening to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys wishing you could be lying next to your boyfriend or girlfriend? Yes you did. Don't lie. Well, you should have been listening to "I'm on Fire," because bets are, that song speaks more to what you were feeling than the Beach Boys. 

I'm talking about sex… just in case you Millenials don't even bother to look up the lyrics. You're probably all too busy reading 50 other tabs and starting your own business… or blogging.

I don't need to defend Bruce. I'll let his music do that. 


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Top seven Bruce songs young people need to hear. I say "young" even though someone called me old the other day… did I mention that yet? So let's just say, these are the songs for people who still feel young, confused and angry. 



1. I'm on Fire – Ok. This is pretty much the sexiest song I've ever heard. It throbs and sighs better than anything you've got. It's only four verses, and that's all it needs. Because when you're in the state that Bruce is in, you can't think hard enough to write more.

"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
Im on fire"
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2. Ghost of Tom Joad – Are pissed off that we elected a president who turned out to be politician? Are you angry that people are still sleeping on the streets? Can you believe that banks are still taking people's homes? So was Steinbeck when he wrote Grapes of Wrath. And more sickening is that that book written in 1939 could have been written last year. So Bruce is looking for Tom Joad from that book in all of sadness of modern day. Where is our working man's hero? 


"Got a one-way ticket to the promised land 
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand 
Sleepin' on a pillow of solid rock 
Bathin' in the city aqueduct"

As he says before introducing Tom Morello in the video above, "If Woody Guthrie were alive today he'd have a lot to say about high times on Wall Street and low times on Main Street."

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3. Thunder Road (live) – This has been my favorite Bruce song ever since my old friend Bob Al-Greene put it on a mix for me back in the day. Maybe because it felt like we were living a Bruce song, driving along highways until the sun came up, listing to music. But this song, for me, is the anthem for something new. I've dated a few people in my day, and this is the song where you meet someone new and think, "Maybe this time it'll be like a dream. Maybe this time I'll be the person I want to be." And just like the Bruce song, the battle between fantasy and reality finishes with reality winning, and I am who I've always been and the person I'm looking at is just a person too. But we keep fighting, or in Bruce Springsteen terms, we keep driving.


Roy orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what Im here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we aint that young anymore
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4. Death to Our Hometown – Getting to see Bruce Springsteen on his Wrecking Ball(no, not that Wrecking Ball...) tour this year was wonderful, especially seeing him sing this. People say protest rock is dead. Maybe as a genre it's gone, but if this song isn't a protest, I don't know what is.

So listen up, my Sonny boy 
Be ready for when they come 
For they’ll be returning sure as the rising sun 
Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it ’til you’re done 
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well 
Send the robber baron’s straight to hell 
The greedy thieves that came around 
And ate the flesh of everything they’ve found 
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now 
Walk the streets as free men now
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5. Dancing in the Dark – Sitting in Omaha (or New Jersey, for Bruce) feeling stuck. You don't want to be here anymore – here in town, here in your body, here with your friends, here with your job. Maybe love will solve it. Or lust, at least. 

I get up in the evening, and I ain't got nothing to say 
I come home in the moring, I go to bed feeling the same way 
I ain't nothing but tired, man I'm just tired and bored with myself 
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help

I check my look in the mirror wanna change my clothes my hair my face 
Man I ain't getting nowhere I'm just livin in a dump like this 
There's something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is

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6.  The River – This one can only be listened to live, with the introduction. Tales of Bruce hiding from the cold in a phone booth, talking to his girlfriend for hours, looking for any reason not to go home to his parents' house.

But I remember us riding in my brothers car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse that sends me
Down to the river though I know the river is dry

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7.  Born in the USA – Ok people, clearly this is the most misunderstood Springsteen song of all time. I'd recommend clicking on the title and reading the lyrics. As Bruce puts it himself, it's a song about, "spiritual crisis, in which man is left lost...It's like he has nothing left to tie him into society anymore. He's isolated from the government. Isolated from his family...to the point where nothing makes sense." I think we can all relate to that.

Got in a little hometown jam 
So they put a rifle in my hand 
Sent me off to a foreign land 
To go and kill the yellow man

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So there's the top seven. Let me know if you need another 50. 

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