Bruce on the Daily Show

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Bruce Springsteen - Interview
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

1-HE LOST THE SOUL PATCH!
2-He talked about the difference between hearing "booos" and "bruuuuuces"
3-I luff him.

It's Bruce Day!

Don't forget to buy your copy of Working on a Dream this week, and read this awesome review by my life-partner. I have to say I feel like I did a real good thing by turning him on to the finer points and subtleties of the Boss's back catalog.

A Great Great Day

I will resume my Wuthering Heights and book-blogging tomorrow. But today is a day to celebrate!

Four Novembers ago, my (then new) boyfriend and I were dashing through Harvard Square on our way home to NYC to vote. We picked up a pair of hawked T-shirts that said "Bush is over" on them, but we couldn't wear the shirts the next day. I'll never forget how devastated we were.  But today we're both wearing them. Finally. I will post a picture later.

After weeks, months, years of despair, being convinced that our democracy was irrevocably damaged, I've learned to hope again.

This day is obviously so much more than the end of the Bush nightmare: today symbolizes so many things. It's a new benchmark in American race relations, a new direction for the US's image abroad, and the culmination of the most positive, inclusive, wide-ranging grassroots movement in decades. I was so proud to be a part of that movement, and I'm proud to be a part of this moment.

Here are some links: 

Obama's speech.

Bruce Springsteen and the great Pete Seeger singing "This Land is Your Land."

Bruce and Pete remind me that tomorrow, it's back to work fighting for reproductive justice and education reform and peace. But the road will seem a lot less dark.

Bruce Rumors Substantiated

As predicted, there will now be a Bruce album for every major event in our decade's history: The Rising for 9/11, Devils and Dust for the war, Magic for the Bush Era, and Workin' on a Dream for Obama's first week as president.

Word to that!

The Ghost of Tom Joad-Springsteen-Monday Morning Lyrics

Men walkin' along the railroad tracks
Goin' someplace there's no goin' back
Highway patrol choppers comin' up over the bridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin' 'round the corner
Welcome to the new world order

Families sleepin' in their cars in the Southwest
No home no job no peace no rest
The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin' for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
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

The highway is alive tonight
Where it's headed everybody knows
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me."

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad.



Listen here.

Bruce Rocks for Change, 10.2.08

So almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about a Springsteen concert I attended at MSG, during the kickoff leg of the Magic tour. I saw the Boss again at Giants stadium this July, and the E-Street Band's show had changed a bit in the ensuing months, gotten looser, longer, and more hopeful. This led me to anticipate that once the E-Street band hung up its amps, guitars, and so on, the Boss might hit the trail for Obama.

I was right! Today my man and I went all the way down to Philly to volunteer for Obama and to see the Boss headline an awesome rally for Change. It was truly spectacular, moving and inspirational. when Bruce goes acoustic, the poetry of his words is so apparent, and he picked really hauntingly poetic songs: "The Ghost of Tom Joad," "No Surrender," "Thunder Road," among them. Then he finished off with "This Land Is Your Land," a tribute to Woodie Guthrie, which I found so moving in its simplicity and given the history of the song as a "people's national anthem."

The only downside is that now I am so fatigued that I can barely move, and I still have my long list of assignments to work on before the Day of Atonement hits my Jewy ass. Oy. But it was so worth it.


Enjoy this clip taken today of Bruce's long, long, long, but really great speech followed by "The Rising."

AND REGISTER TO VOTE.

In Memory of Danny Federici, and In Honor of The Warm Weather

... and all the girls flitting around Morningside Heights in long skirts and sundresses.




Thanks for the music, Phantom.

Bruce at Madison Square Garden 10.18.07

BRUUUUUUUUCE.

That was one of the most amazing two and a half hours ever. Thanks to Bruce, Patti, Stevie. Clarence and the gang for making it so.

more tomorrow.

the voiceless, ringing-eardummed fellowette


UPDATE on 10.20

So maybe my regular readers (hi all three of you!) are wondering about why this swaggering, soul-patch having, guitar-strumming dude fits in with Egalitarianbookwormchickism, and why I'm so excited about him. I'll try to explain why the Boss fits in as an EBC while discussing Thursday night's concert at the very same time. To wit:

Bruce Springsteen concerts are not like other concerts---this is my third, and I'm definitely getting into the swing of how they work. They're essentially rock-concerts meet tent revivals, a sort of secular spiritual camp meeting if you will. The crowd of thousands and thousands stands on its feet close to the entire time, and has coordinated rituals, starting with the low-pitched shouting of "Bruuuuce" before the band shows up, singing an "oh oh oh oh oh" chorus at the end of Badlands that doesn't exist in the actual song, punching fists in the air in time to various choruses, and standing in awed admiration/ecstasy with cellphones (what happened to the good old days of lighters?) aloft during "Jungleland."

But there are plenty of bands that invoke that kind of following. What sets Bruce apart from the pack, I've decided, is what makes him an honorary egalitarian bookworm chick. First of all, he;s accessible to everyone, and I mean everyone. His rockin' tunes only exclude uber-snobs. That makes him egalitarian. Secondly. his lyrics are deceptively complex--see previous post below--and allegorical and evocative and beautiful. That makes him a bookworm, and a poet. And thirdly, by going to his concerts, lots of macho beefy dudes get to shout in unison to lines like "I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face" and "take a knife, and cut this pain from my heart" without losing face--a brilliant juxtaposition that I think partly explains the holy popularity of the Bruce concert ritual. So that makes Bruce an honorary chick, in my book anyway.

So I know that despite the transcendent heights that the concert reached. the Boss seemed a little subdued on Thursday. And I think it's because if you listen to his new lyrics and analyze them, Lit-major style, they may in fact be the most political he's ever written. He's very angry and ashamed of our country for falling asleep for the last six years, and disheartened by what our government has been allowed to do. I felt that in particular when he chastised the audience for cheering louder for cheeseburgers than for the Bill of Rights. But therein lies the irony of political art to begin with--people want art to simultaneously awaken them to reality and help them escape that reality. So even if people didn't know how to react to his policy-patter, he did have like ten thousand souls simultaneously singing "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" and he also had us affirming our belief in the promised land, or the land that was promised to us, anyway. And that is a great accomplishment in and of itself. Bruuuce.

A Little Sprinsteen Poesie

In honor of my trip to his Madison Square Garden concert tonight. Here's Gypsy Biker," which is about the homecoming of a killed soldier.

"Gypsy Biker"
by Bruce Springsteen

The speculators made their money on the blood you shed
Your momma's pulled the sheets up off your bed
Profiteers on Jhames Street sold your shoes and clothes
Ain't nobody talkin' because everybody knows
We pulled your cycle up back the garage and polished up the chrome*
Our gypsy biker coming home

Sister Mary sits with your colors, but Johnny's drunk and gone
This old town's been rousted, which side you on?
They would march up over the hill, this old fools parade
Shouting victory for the righteous for you must hear the grace
Ain't nobody talkin', but just waiting on the phone
Gypsy biker coming home

We rode into the foothills, Bobby brought the gasoline
We stood around the circle as she lit up the ravine
The spring hot desert wind rushed down on us all the way back home

To the dead, well it don't matter much 'bout who's wrong or right
You asked me that question, I didn't get it right
You slipped into your darkness, now all that remains
Is my love for you brother, life's still unchanged
To him that threw you away, you ain't nothing but gone
My gypsy biker's coming home

And now I'm out countin' white lines
Countin' white lines and getting stoned
My gypsy biker's coming home

********

BRUUUUUUUUUUCE.