Tag: Bruce Springsteen

APR 17, 2012 - Bruce Springsteen, along with Tom Morello aka “The Nightwatchman”, and a 2012 version of the E Street Band considerably larger than before, has come out with a raucous Irish ballad-sounding “fighting anthem” for the working class. (Watch video below!) The song speaks out against towns that have had their factories closed down and their jobs shipped overseas by “robber barons” in the name of profit; which brings death to towns all across America. Families are devastated, homes are lost, and the American dream is kept out of reach. One of the most moving parts of the song is at the break in the middle of the song as Bruce sings out:

“Get yourself a song to sing, sing it till you’re done.
Sing it hard, sing it well. Send the robber barons straight to hell.
The greedy thieves, who came around, ate the flesh of everything they found.
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now, who walk the streets as free men now.
They brought death to my hometown.”

MAR 26, 2012 - Last Friday on March 23, 2012 in Tampa, Florida Bruce Springsteen performed his controversial song "American Skin (41 Bullets)", a song he had only performed twice before. The song was written back in 2000 and was about the horrible shooting death of Amadou Diallo, who was shot by police 41 times when he was taking out his wallet. When Bruce performed the song in Atlanta back in 2000, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association called for the boycott of Bruce Springsteen when he came to Madison Square Garden in NYC, where he sang the song again. The call for a boycott had no effect, Springsteen did an amazing 10-show run at MSG.

Many people are saying it is obvious the recent shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month inspired Springsteen to perform the song again. Millions of people and us here at JTMP have been shocked and horrified by the hunting down and murdering of a young man, and that the murderer is free. There is a petition over at Change.org with over 2 million signatures calling for the prosecution of the killer. The lines from the song unfortunately show in America you still can get shot for the color of your skin:

Well, is it a gun, is it a knife 
Is it a wallet, this is your life 
It ain't no secret (it ain't no secret) 
No secret my friend 
You can get killed just for living in your American skin

Listen to audio of the performance of "American Skin (41 Shots)" below.

MAR 22, 2012 - There is more praise for Bruce Springsteen's new album "Wrecking Ball", this time by Leonard Pitts Jr. on NationalMemo.com, saying that Bruce "captures the state of America". He goes on to say that Bruce is "one of the elder statesmen of American popular music," and with the songs on the new album "delivers what might fairly be called a State of the Union Address. And if that sounds grandiose for a rock album, so be it. But know that, for all the manicured eloquence of the constitutionally mandated report President Obama delivered in January, the new Bruce Springsteen album, "Wrecking Ball," captures more raw emotional truth about the state of the American Dream than any politician ever could."

Read more on NationalMemo.com here.

MAR 5, 2012 - Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos has a great review and article about Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Wrecking Ball", and how he has cranked up his musical activism recently, and has really captured the Occupy movement in song and prose.

Laura wrote, "[Wrecking Ball] contains some of the most political music he's written. It is also, in places, deeply gospel-inflected, with the political and spiritual knitting into a moral argument. We may be lost, individually or as a society, we may be oppressed and barely clinging to hope. But we can't believe either that it's good enough for things to be better in the next world (there's no "you'll get pie in the sky when you die" on Wrecking Ball) or that the fight for something better in the here and now is anything but a fight for our souls and the soul of the nation." Bruce's 17th album "Wrecking Ball" will be out tomrrow, March 6. Check out the article over at Daily Kos here, and listen to the track "Death To My Hometown" from the upcoming album  below.   (Photo credit Lord_Henry/Flickr)

FEB 13, 2012 - Bruce Springsteen, long known for his activism, opened up with a song at the Grammy Awards Show last night called, "We Take Care of Our Own", a new song from his upcoming album, "Wrecking Ball". He was met with a standing ovation and cheers, and chants of "Bruuuce!". The song has lines such as, "From the shotgun shack to the Superdome, We yelled help but the cavalry stayed home", and "Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea, We take care of our own". Many are taking this song to be a statement on the government's response to Katrina, jobs being outsourced, and the American dream being threatened by recent actions such as attacks on unions and teachers and government entitlement programs. There is another version of the video Bruce released, which contains images of working people, a group Bruce has long supported and fought for over the years. Watch Bruce singing "We Take Care of Our Own" when he opened up the Grammys last night, and then a black & white "studio version" below.
(Photo credit: Thomas Uhlemann/Wiki)