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if people hate springsteen, then the terrorists truly have won
July 5th, 2005you know, its like once in a blue moon that a caller can incite such fury within me. but i guess, with the rain and haze and all, there might as well have been a blue moon.
so, as some of you know tonight is the springsteen version of “stay loose”, a weekly dj night hosted by joey sweeney. in the last half hour of the show, after reading back my playlist, i thought id plug the event. i had just played sweeneys band in the previous set and well, springsteen symbolizes new jersey to many many people. so it wasnt like i was far off the mark. my gabfest about superchunk earlier in the show, now see, i can understand how someone would take issue. they’re from north carolina! this is a show about new jersey! and pennsylvania!
anyway. as soon as i get off the air, my favorite caller — let’s call him F.I.N.E. for storytelling purposes — chimes in to tell me about how awful springsteen is, and how he hopes WPRB would never ever play that garbage. as there’s 15 minutes left of my show, i decide to throw on “born to run”. you know, a little dj humor. another person calls in — his name is I.S.H. — to tell me he doesnt appreciate being toyed with. his first complaint is that the volume keeps going up and down. my general rule of thumb is that unless i have to touch the board [cueing / mixing / mics], i stay as far away from it as possible. its big, scary and has lots of buttons that i dont know how to work. so clearly, this wasnt my fault. five bucks I.S.H.’s signal is shoddy.
but oh… the icing on the cake was that “i lost him when i played the springsteen”. it is this comment i take issue with. as much as i enjoy the bands i was playing, i began to feel as if i was on indie rock autopilot. so the opportunity arrived to change things up. as much as i hate to admit it, F.I.N.E.’s call was a blessing in disguise.
see, this is what i hate about indie rock. the inability to take its head out of its collective ass, even for just a brief moment. even more baffling is how people draw their line of irony in the grayest of areas. what makes a band like the constantines or oxford collapse acceptable to play on air, if they are nothing but parodies [whether irony is intentional or not] of bands such as springsteen and the embarrassment respectively? for the record, i happen to adore both of these bands and the groups they sonically reference, so please dont take this as shittalking on my behalf. or even more tangentially speaking, last week i played solomon burke. why wasnt i criticized then? what about when i play the roots, or any sort of commercially known band, merely because they fall under the aegis of being “local”?
before my class was over, there was a rather engaged discussion amongst my classmates about springsteen, primarily discussing if “born in the usa” was punk rock or not. ill spare you the longwinded wordy stuff, but we arrived at a criteria for punk rock utilizing nietzsche’s writing in the birth of tragedy. it boiled down to subversion. now you could argue that rock and roll was about subversion too, but its purpose for this antiauthoritarian stance was to seek The Truth. punk rock could care less about The Truth. in fact, it went and took the truth, mangled it up like a pretzel to make new songs. the sex pistols are constantly referred to as sped up chuck berry but its not trying to make the same point as berry, nor is it attempting to make virtuosic claims as that artist. and even though the example is post-punk, delta 5’s “mind your own business” is such because it parodies and subverts the musical tradition of the round [or canon, if you prefer. but since "canon" in rock crit language is used to talk about something else, ill go with the vernacular] by telling us to mind our own business, rather than get caught up in the whole thing.
what we determined is that “born in the usa” is punk rock because its attitude falls on the same side as say, johnny rotten sneering “no future” and its composition is intentionally pompous. then there’s the whole appropriation of it by political groups who have seemingly missed the point. ultimately, its subverting subversion through its muted [yet totally not!] nature. it cant be anything but punk rock.
even though ive just unloaded a ton of evidentiary support as to why i think the boss is punk rock, im sure there are weenies out there who would like to say its wrong to support him because he’s on a major label or something. oh please — has anyone bothered to pay attention to WPRB’s charts in like, always? tons of “indie” bands are on boutique labels funded by majors, so don’t even feed me that bullshit. who’s to say i was doing him a favor?
what ever happened to fun? why cant i, in addition to my responsibility as a dj, have FUN with my set? why did they take issue with springsteen and not say, atom & his package’s “the palestinians are not the same thing as the rebel alliance, jackass”?
since there is no conclusion to this long heavy think, ill just post my playlist. hows that for freedom?
dahlia seed — standing 8 count — please excuse all the blood
the teeth — then he said — send my regards to the sunshine
three 4 tens — little dove — change is on its way
atom & his package — the palestinians are not the same thing as the rebel alliance, jackass — atention blah blah blah
persons — easter vest — the lainmeyers are persons
boys of now — not ready for primetime — 7″
the van pelt — the speeding train — s/t ep
ruin
— dionysian freedom has no bounds — songs of reverie & ruin
the trolleyox — town and country — leap of folly
dr. dog — oh no — easy beat — R
kings ransom — here today gone tomorrow — allentown anglophile
the clocks — for my skunks — the saint the sinner the virgin and the dynamothe capitol years — let them drink — let them drink
the spinto band — late — nice and nicely done
matt pond pa — this is montreal — the green fury
los halos — lo siento — leaving va
creeping weeds — track 1 — demo
caterpillar — winters come — december 7″
gringo motel — pueblo — return of el lobo
greg weeks — day for night — blood is trouble
ashtabula — archipelago — river of many dead fish
b.c. camplight — parapaleejo — hide, run away
scott bedford four — you turned your back on me — absolutely allentown
the chance — 7 years of bad luck — get outta phillythe wayward wind — postcards from the wind — wait for green
american altitude — handsome dead man — s/t
lungs of a giant — from breadbox to manger scene — sleepy fiels
the trouble with sweeney — l.t.w.t.m.s. — fishtown briefcase
billy crosbys — watch all your words if you want to be heard — who cremated the morning? 7″
all natural lemon & lime flavors — repetitive monotonous — straight blue line
trouble everyday — connection — days vs nights
hail social — get out — s/t
dead milkmen — instant club hit — death rides a pale cow
butler — the newest order — a life of servicefuture tips — cold bliss — crook book
leftys deceiver — wm. tell — conversations on favored nations
the vexers — somethng dirty — s/t
bruce springsteen — born to run — born to run
cordalene — isnt the sun — s/t
golden ball — siren — the luxury of pause
bruce springsteen — darkness on the edge of town — darkness on the edge of town
and maybe this was technology’s way of saying “the boss is not allowed” but my laptop only recorded an hour’s worth of my set before real audio pussed out. the day wprb gets streaming mp3 is the day i can finally say im proud to be an american.
by the way, you want to know the most hilarious part about this?
I AM NOT EVEN A HUGE SPRINGSTEEN FAN!
July 6th, 2005 at 12:20 am
Resolution or not, this is the best musical thing I’ve had to think about in a long time.
July 6th, 2005 at 7:58 am
you should have told I.S.H. that you were being ironic, it would have made his day. let’s hear it for joyless indie rockers around the world!
July 6th, 2005 at 8:38 am
“Born In The U.S.A.” is arguably ‘punk rock’ but the Boss ain’t, way too centrist. ‘Punk’ would react to political co-option with a lot more vigor, have a song on the next album about how Reagan’s gotta die, but Bruce doesn’t want offend his marketshare too much. He’s way too feel-good overall (”The Rising”!) to qualify as a Johnny Rotten-esque destructive figure.
That said, these guys are lame. Fun is more than reason enough. Anybody who’d call to announce you lost him is a tool.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:37 am
I’m no Springsteen fan (growing up in lower Middlesex Co. in the ’80s, perilously close to Freehold, knocked it out of me for life), but I think you handled F.I.N.E. in the only logical way. It’s like responding to a request for “Freebird” by ACTUALLY PLAYING THE SONG. Excellent.
July 6th, 2005 at 11:38 am
dude, i hear ya. its like me and bon jovi [sayreville's finest!].
July 6th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Of course, one might also say that both men were frauds, although Bruce proved out, being a durable brand established by a record company, and Nietzsche being both a fabulist and a dissembler nonpareil. Nietzsche gets contorted into many positions, but to give you some idea of what I’m on about, check out Schopenhauer as Educator in the Cambridge edition of Untimely Meditations. It’s brief and if you read it straight it sounds completely believable. However, the notes demonstrate otherwise, making it the standard of brutish academic irony.
Cf. Jim Miller’s comments on Bruce and David Bowie (although I find it less applicable the more I learn about Bowie) in Flowers in the Dustbin. Although it’s a rockist tome (and I don’t know how anyone feels about that these days) and generally lets the air out of seemingly all music (with loving praise of gospel), he more or less nails the manner in which Der Bruce was massaged into existence by savvy A&R men.
And standing against Reagan wasn’t exactly punk, although punks were doing it. I would classify it as protest music (which has been derided in innumerable ways) rather than punk rock, since as you point out punk often had indecipherable politics.