It took me a while to decide what to write about and a while longer to take time to write it which is why I no longer have a blog of my own. Many thanks in advance for letting me scrawl across yours, Flux. Hope you don’t reget it too much.

The Boss

Bruce Springsteen was my first rock and roll hero. The library down the street from the house I grew up in had all of his albums on cassette and I think I got more use out of them than the rest of the community combined. The early hype comparing Springsteen to Dylan was responsible for some sort of bizarre reverse engineering that exposed my nine year old self to The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Woody Guthrie. Not that I liked any of that stuff at the time. Oh no, Bob Dylan was boring. He didn’t have wizz bang gangs from uptown and he sure as hell wasn’t racing in the streets.

But they’re both protest singers. Springsteen probably more so at this stage in their careers. Born in the USA wasn’t the fucking national anthem Regan and his idiot staff seemed to think it was. I understood that at 10, listening to this guy sing about veterans getting the shaft during a fucked up economy. And while I’m not really a huge fan of Springsteen anymore I still respect the hell out of him. It bothers me that people think The Ghost of Tom Joad is a Rage Against the Machine track. He just gets no respect. And then American Skin (41 Shots).

“…You’ve got to understand the rules

If an officer stops you

Promise me you’ll always be polite,

that you’ll never ever run away

Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight”

And the protests. From police groups (of course) but also from firefighters garbage collectors and seemingly every other public service group with an air of authority around them. When NWA said “Fuck the police” and PE said “Fight the power” they were giving a voice to people that weren’t being heard but they were also (sadly) preaching to the choir. But the police, firefighters, trash collectors and that guy with the greasy mullet and the Chevy Super 8 are Springsteen’s bread and butter. Its not like he was trying to be edgy or make a grab at street cred. He had something to lose and he played the song anyway. And thats worth something. Lets face it, most white middle class adults over 40 aren’t going to buy an antiauthoritarian punk or hip hop record but some of them might buy Springsteen: Live in NYC. And maybe some of them got the message.

It ain’t no secret

No secret my friend

You can get killed just for living

In your American Skin

America’s most important protest singer? Maybe.