Shot in the Dark

Tag: Springsteen

  • When The Breakdown Hit At Midnight There Was Nothing Left To Say

    Backstreets magazine, which has been covering all things Springsteen and setting the standard for high-music fanzines since 1980, is going out for a ride and not coming back. Like so much in modern music, it’s Ticketmaster’s fault: If you read the editorial Backstreets published last summer in the aftermath of the U.S. ticket sales, you…

  • Last Chance Power Drive

    Bruce Springsteen turns 71 today. I’ve written about Bruce a bit over the years, including my thesis that Springsteen, notwithstanding his lefty-populist politics, has written some of the best conservative music there is over the course of his fifty-odd year career. After Western Stars – his album and concert film from last year – I…

  • Blinded By The Date

    Bruce Springsteen turns 70 today. Once upon a time, a then-local “progressive” activist asked via Twitter “To all you conservative Springsteen fans; have you actually listened to the records?” My response was “yes – much more than you“. I went on to write one of my favorite series – the one showing that Bruce Springsteen…

  • One Place That Ain’t Looking Through Me

    About a decade back, I heard an interview on All Things Considered with Sarfraz Manzoor, who’d just come out with his book Greetings from Bury Park – his memoir about growing up as a British-Pakistani in Luton, in the Midlands, and getting immersed in Bruce Springsteen’s music. And I think I sat in the garage…

  • Fakes Like Us

    Springsteen on Broadway – the Broadway hit just released on Netflix – is, as Kyle Smith describes it in National Review, …a luminous performance, an unexpected new late-career peak. His persona may be fake but his artistry is sublime. Let’s back up a moment and talk about that “fake persona” bit. It stems from the show’s big opening admission…

  • They Say The Neon Lights Are Bright…

    The Strib’s Jon Bream interviews Bruce Springsteen on his ongoing Broadway performance. During which nobody ruled out the thought of taking the whole thing out on the road. Time to start warming up the credit card…

  • Retrospective

    Variety does a two-part cover story on Bruce Springsteen.  And it’s worth a read, if you’re an uberfan. And I guess I am. Others are not – and among this blog’s audience, that’s in large part due to Springsteen’s limo-left politics.  I’ve always figured I care as much about musicians’ politics as I do about politicians’…

  • A Heart-Acheing Work Of Staggering Genius

    Writing at Vulture.com, Caryn Rose ranks all 314 Bruce Springsteen songs 1 from worst to first. First things first:  Rose found a break on one of the primary laws of Springsteen-fandom; there actually is a song worse than “Mary, Queen Of Arkansas” (from 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park).  I won’t ruin the surprise. But otherwise, it was a herculean…

  • On My Wish List

    Springsteen’s autobiography is due in stores shortly. And at least one reviewer raves. I do love this particular pull-quote: “One of the points I’m making in the book is that, whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he said, expanding upon this thought with the most Springsteen-esque metaphor possible: “I always…

  • Open Letter To Bruce Springsteen

    To:  Bruce Springsteen From:  Mitch Berg, Longtime Fan Re:  Beliefs Bruuuuuce, As everyone knows, I’m a longtime fan – at least in part because you are, or at least were during your heyday, the writer of some of the most evocative music there is for conservatives. Now comes news that you’ve cancelled your concerts in North…

  • That Birthday Spirit In The Night

    Bruce Springsteen turns 66 today. Here’s a vid from 40 years ago, in case you don’t feel older enough already.

  • The Street’s Alive, Secret Debts Are Paid

    Born to Run  – for my money, one of the ten greatest albums in the history of American rock and roll, and of that list, one of my 2-3 favorites – turns thirty years old today. No, wait – 1975?  That’s forty years go. Ouch. I’m going to re-run a post I first did on…

  • Børn Til Løpen

    Springsteen apparently cameo-ing in Miami Steve’s Netflix series Lillyhammer: Nellie Andreeva reports Lilyhammer Season 3 buzz on Deadline.com: “I hear Van Zandt’s The Sopranos co-star Tony Sirico has joined the upcoming third season in a recurring role, and Van Zandt’s longtime E Street Band mate Bruce Springsteen will be making a guest appearance.” According to…

  • Today’s Musical Palate-Cleanser

    If you’ve got sixteen minutes to spare, here’s an answer to the question “so was the E Street Band ever any more than three chords and a big finish?” That’s “Kitty’s Back” – a deep deep cut from 1974’s The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle,from 1975’s legendary Hammersmith Odeon gig.   It’s frustrating, sometimes, to…

  • When Scooter And The Big Man Busted This City In Half

    It was July 1, 1984.  I took off from Jamestown at around 5AM in – what else? – my ’73 Monte Carlo with a 396, Fuellie heads and a Hurst on the floor, and drove through a long, hot July day.   Poring over my Amoco map of the Twin Cities – where I’d never driven before –…

  • I Will Confess…

    …I’ve pondered the idea of this band covering this song: …although it was more one of those “what if Napoleon had a B-52 at Waterloo” sorts of things. Oh, yeah – it’s the E Street Band playing “Highway to Hell” in Perth Australia, as a tribute to native Perthian Bon Scott. (Closed circuit to Tom…

  • For The Tourists

    Last year was the fortieth anniversary of Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey – Bruce Springsteen’s first major-label record. In those forty years, he’s released seventeen studio albums (#18 due in mere days), been bootlegged more than almost any other artist, written a staggering amount of material, developed a repuation as the best life performer…

  • And All Is Right With The World

    Our government is doing its best to show you who serves who, here. In a few years, the Chinese are going to be able to yank our nation’s chain and say “bark for your meal, bitch”. Our state is run by bobbleheads, and the only pro sports team we have that isn’t a perennial embarassment…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part X: The Local Cops Rip This Holy Night

    I’m gonna give you a two-fer here.  We’ll cover two of Andrew Sullivan’s definitions of what makes  a conservative in one article, since they’re both just a tad thin. The first of the two – “Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism“?  Gotta confess, that one’s pretty thin throughout the history of…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part IX: I Built The Challenger By Myself

    One of the fundamental tenets of the “classical liberalism” that is the basis of modern conservatism is the idea first recorded by John Locke – that men form governments to protect life, liberty and private property; that private property was in fact a cornerstone of real liberty, and that protecting it against the depredations of…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part VIII: Just A Meanness In This World

    SIDE NOTE:  It’s amazing how life can derail a guy’s plans.  While – as is my wont with these long series – much of the rough material was put together in October and November, I held off on actually putting it into a written form, thinking it’d give me something to do during the two-month…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part VII

    In “The Promised Land” – a song that constantly flits about the top of most hard-core Springsteen fans’ lists of favorite songs – paints a bleak picture for the everyday schlub: I done my best to live the right way I get up every morning and go to work each day. But your eyes go…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part VI: The Hearts That’ve Been Broken Stand As The Price You Pay

    In the world of Rock and Roll, in the words of Neil Young, “it’s better to burn out than fade away”. In the world of Bruce Springsteen’s music, when characters screw up, they flame out big-time – and usually take other people down with ’em. In “Johnny 99”, from Nebraska, the protagonist – “Ralph” –…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part V: The Cross Of My Calling

    Rock and roll has always been, ostensibly, about upsetting the existing order.  In the beginning, its very existence upended what passed for “order” in popular culture, at least to the extent of helping create a “youth culture” – something that’d never existed before, and really started in America.  As culture and the genre evolved through…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part IV: Learn To Live With What You Can’t Rise Above

    It’s a little-noticed verse of a song buried in Bruce Springsteen’s biggest studio album: Now, honey, I don’t wanna clip your wings But a time comes when two people should think of these things Having a home and a family, facing up to their responsibilities They say in the end true love prevails But in the…