{"id":473,"date":"2007-10-02T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2007\/10\/02\/bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:36:08","slug":"bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce\/","title":{"rendered":"BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in high school, Bruce Springsteen was the bee\u2019s knees.<\/p>\n

I remember seeing him in concert in 1984 at the L.A. Sports Arena during the Born in the USA<\/span> tour, sitting up in the nosebleed seats. It was a quasi-religious experience. The concert lasted well over three hours, and after the last chord had been played, I still wasn\u2019t ready for it to end. I saw him again the next year when he came back to L.A. and played the Coliseum. We were sitting so far back that the music was almost a full second or two behind the video screens, given the fact that light travels faster than sound. It didn\u2019t matter. Bruce delivered. When I had bought the tickets, the show was supposed to be the last one on the tour, but Bruce ended up adding another show a few days later. I didn\u2019t have tickets to that one, but I went down to the Coliseum anyway, and, along with thousands of other fans, I huddled around the walls of the stadium just to listen to what I couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>(Those concerts, incidentally, make up the bulk of the recordings on his huge Bruce Live: 1975-1985 collection. If you listen to the crowd screaming during those bits, you’re listening to me.)<\/p>\n

The next time I saw Bruce in concert was in the early \u201890s on his Human Touch\/Lucky Town<\/span> tour. No E Street Band. No Clarence Clemons. It was OK, but it was less than what I\u2019d remembered. I wasn\u2019t a teenager anymore, and I discovered that Bruce wasn\u2019t a demigod. It was a harsh lesson to learn.<\/p>\n

Even so, I still felt it was my responsibility to dutifully purchase anything that Springsteen churned out. Even after the disappointing concert, I was one of the first guys in line to purchase The Ghost of Tom Joad. <\/span> That album, for those of you who haven\u2019t heard it, is a self-indulgent, whiny piece of crap. It was only then that I realized how much of Springsteen\u2019s music is built around the whole concept of victimhood.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For every \u201cBorn to Run\u201d and \u201cThunder Road,\u201d where scrappy rebels celebrate lives of danger and freedom as they blaze off on motorcycles into the night, Springsteen gives us didactic sludge like \u201cYoungstown\u201d from the Tom Joad album, where a working class guy moans and whines about how tough his life is because of dark Republican forces beyond his control. Or \u201cThe River,\u201dwhere a guy knocks up his girlfriend and then can\u2019t find work \u201con account of the economy.\u201d Or even \u201cBorn in the USA,\u201d which, despite its anthemic presentation, is actually a savage mockery of anyone who dares to believe in the American Dream.<\/p>\n

I soured on Bruce for awhile.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then came 2002\u2019s reunion with the E Street Band and the album The Rising<\/span>. I had heard good things about it, and I decided to give it a chance. It was everything it should have been and more. Written primarily as a response to 9\/11, the album celebrates instead of whines. Bruce\u2019s characters grieve for the losses they\u2019ve incurred, but they\u2019re still able to \u201ccome on up for the Rising.\u201d The album highlights victims, yes, but it doesn\u2019t dwell on self-pity or recrimination. Like the best of what Bruce has done, The Rising<\/span> is an exercise in joy. I\u2019ve played that CD a zillion times, and I still get a kick out of it.<\/p>\n

Alas, for Bruce, the wallowing was to return with Devils and Dust<\/span>, an anti-war screed sans E Street Band. I didn\u2019t even bother to pick up the Seeger Sessions.<\/span> Unless the E Street Band is involved, Bruce tends to wallow in lefty bilge. And there was all the John Kerry campaigning and overt political blech in the intervening years. I’ve never understood why so many entertainers go out of their way to alienate half their audience, and I think he would be disgusted to know that he actually has Republican fans like me. But that’s a story for another day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>All this leads to today. I\u2019ve pre-ordered his new CD Magic <\/span>from iTunes, and I\u2019ve heard his new single \u201cRadio Nowhere.\u201d It\u2019s pretty good. The E Street Band helps a lot. But I\u2019ve also been warned of left-wing bile therein, including a song based on John Kerry\u2019s comment before the Senate about being the last man to die for a mistake. Yikes. I hope there\u2019s enough joy elsewhere on the album that I\u2019ll still be able to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"Back in high school, Bruce Springsteen was the bee\u2019s knees. I remember seeing him in concert in 1984 at the L.A. Sports Arena during the Born in the USA<\/span> tour, sitting up in the nosebleed seats. It was a quasi-religious experience. The concert lasted well over three hours, and after the last chord had been ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4957,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/4957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}