> Thank you. What bombastic stuff he produces. It's no wonder Alterman
> loves him so.
Aw, man. I knew somebody on the list was eventually going to use the Alterman thing against Bruce.
Alterman's sycophancy aside, the merit of Springsteen's work is at least arguable, though I can't see much use in thrashing out another artistic merit debate (cf. the Sopranos thread).
Instead, let me mention that despite the hype and hagiography and treatises by middling social historians, and whatever the limitations of his oeuvre, there is beyond the music itself more than a kernel of value in the whole Springsteen trip. From the beginning it involved the experience of the live shows, certainly, but there was also the idea of rock&roll as way-of-life: not in the sense of excess or debauchery, but an historically conscious sensibility and ethos, including an implied moral relationship between artist and audience, stemming from an awareness of the music's original position as the voice of the other viz a viz mainstream America. From which is derived the political strains in his work, increasingly explicit over the years.
You could easily dismiss that ethos as cliched, outdated, or dead; show how it's been hopelessly homogenized or commercialized; claim that it was insufficiently problematized, or done better elsewhere. Etc. Maybe his greatest sin was being self-conscious, but not self-conscious enough. But by referencing - especially - worklife in his songs, Springsteen foregrounded the power of the genre to communicate and educate and, above all, legitimize the listener's own experience, in a way that institutions of education did not - at least, not for most working class kids in the public school system. When education's main effect is to make one feel lesser, this is a revelation. Hence the r&r-as-salvation trope: the music not only re-affirmed one's own de-legitimized experiences, but was a potential means of communicating - and for some people, escaping.
As someone from a working class home whose high school experience was sufficiently shitty to merit dropping out permanently a couple months into junior year, it sure as hell made me class conscious in a way that nothing else did or, possibly, could have. Which might not mean much, except this is a fairly standard story among a sizable minority of Springsteen fans.
Then again, I was born and raised in NJ. And we all know how Doug feels about Jersey...
Note to Jordan: The golden age of Springsteen is actually 14. It's the golden age of science fiction that's 12.
-- Best regards,
DMC mailto:dclark at ptd.net