An apology to Springsteen

 

 While I’m not going to go out and become a Springsteen Tribute band, I’ve decided I’ve been unfair to him in previous posts.

I let my political objections interfere with my honest appraisal of him as an artist, and committed the worst sin possible in condemning him for having an opinion that differs from mine.

While his doing the Philadelphia concert for Hillary Clinton still irks me to no end, our position on how ICE raids are being handled is not too different, although I do not see ICE agents as stormtroopers. I do not believe Trump is a tyrant.

But Springsteen has every right to express his opinions in what is still a free country.

I was most disingenuous in regard to his music, falsely accusing him of stealing his ideas from other well-established performers such as Van Morrison and the Beatles.

We all steal our ideas from those we admire most.

I’m a piss poor musician, but the reason I try to perform his music as well as that of other artists is because I admire them and want to learn how to do what they do from the inside out.

Much of my own music is influenced by Dylan, the Beatles and Springsteen, and as John Lennon once pointed out about the silliness surrounding the end of the Beatles, the real thing is about the music.

I come to all this after having gone through Springsteen’s albums recently. While I still love most his first two albums with the E-Sting Band (because they tell a tale of life at the time when they began), his other albums still intrigue me, and I’ve come to admire the structure of his songs –  Point Blank being curious in that he started out with a typical verse and chorus, then did three straight verses to conclude with the chorus.

I’m never going to be a great musician (which he is). The most I can ever hope for is to learn enough from musicians like him to perform a respectable cover.

But I was wrong in judging him for his moral stand. We all have to do what we need to do, and I might not like it, I have to respect his right to do what he thinks is right.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Woke grammies again

 I normally don't watch the Grammys because they are boring

the people who are putting out music are pathetic in general with a few exceptions 

But last night we knew that this was going to be an anti ice rally and so it's important to pay attention to what these spoiled little twits are doing

None of them actually help anybody but they all had their little out ice pins which said they were on the right side of History 
Of course they are rather useless people who pontificate a lot but don't help anybody and you have to wonder how they can sleep at night knowing that all they did was put a pin on their outfits and really made no difference in any respect

Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen Cher bad Bunny are people who really are so selfish and self-centered that they think being on the right side of History, putting a little pin on their lapel is going to make them somehow morally superior to the rest of the planet 

Of course that's why watching Grammys or the academy awards or the Golden globe is an entertainment because you get to see brain dead people doing brain dead things and they feel good about it when they are actually not helping anybody 

The entire event yesterday was a fashion statement not a protest 

Unless you have that little pin on your lapel you are not important you're not significant. you're like the idiots on the line outside club 54 who are too ugly or badly dressed to make the in crowd 

so these other idiots like jelly roll rant and rave about how bad ice is while sitting in the luxury of a auditorium full of cheering brain dead people 

That's the entertainment, knowing that these celebrity types mean nothing. do nothing, have no real opinions. they just need to know that they are fashionably dressed and have the right pin on the lapel.
 I think Melanie wrote a song about them wearing the same button back in the 60s it was just as pointless then but now it's even more ludicrous 

You have to love how these people celebrate themselves while out on the street there's a real conflict going on, none of which any of these celebrities know anything about except filtered through really questionable media 
 in the end we all have our little pin and we all can feel very self congratulatory for having worn out pin during this amazing event, while on the street people are freezing and shooting and dying and being assaulted 
And none of these celebrities are doing anything to help anybody but themselves.

Springsteen goes for woke

 Springsteen silliness is not the biggest disappointment of my life but when a one-time hero goes off the rails the way Springsteen did, I feel a little betrayed.

 you have to wonder who he's been talking to and how he can come up with the Ludacris notions as claiming ice agents are Trump Stormtroopers when his hero, the president that gave Bruce a freedom medal, deported more and put kids into cages with not one peep from the boss of Jersey shore 
This disappointment goes back before Bruce recorded his woke anthem this week. his performance in Philadelphia for Hillary Clinton in the closing days of the 2016 election turned me off on a man I once admired, much as I got turned off when people like Abby Hoffman -- a friend of mine at the time -- twisted John Lennon into a woke idiot
 it's not the same.
 Lennon was vulnerable to that whole collection of users, starting with Yoko, and so his demise was no surprise.
 I assumed Springsteen was stronger than that but apparently he is so desperate for attention he leaped onto the woke bandwagon, spouting all the usual crap that we hear coming from the mouths of woke influencers.
 of course my favorite radio station in Jersey City is playing the crap out of Bruce's crappy song. It is like putting rock salt on a belly wound, testifying to Springsteen's possible success in becoming yet one more celebrity full of stupid notions.
 he will win over a lot of woke people, who in the past looked down on his blue color persona, seeing him perhaps the way the British did Benedict Arnold after giving over West point to them.
But none of the woke people will love him the way working people did and now we don't