I like Bruce Springsteen

"All I'm Thinkin' About"


Pulp, His 'N' Hers
Roedelius/Campanni/Bigazzi, Friendly Game
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Devils & Dust
The Chameleons UK, Strange Times
Momus, Ocky Milk
Klaus Nomi, Za Bakdaz: The Unfinished Opera
Virgin Prunes, ...If I Die, I Die

Clarification: I like Bruce Springsteen and am glad he's playing JazzFest.

I made a quip on twitter/facebook

(insert indignant comment about New Orleans jazz/heritage music in response to the Springsteen JazzFest announcement)
— Alex V. Cook (@cookalexv) January 24, 2012

making light of the spate of "no Jazz at JazzFest" quips that come up whenever the big non-New Orleans-music headliners are announced. The oblique joke fell largely flat with acquaintances spilling out on all sides to tell me I was dead wrong to not appreciate any Bruce Springsteen appearance. I do; I intend to go see him even. Geaux Boss!

It's just that social media is such a curious, obsessive mirror. When we see something in its reflection that doesn't look like us, our tendency is to correct it or excise it or blot it out, whereas in real life, we let friends and strangers say stupid things all the time without comment. Something about it being on the screen, our screen, makes us react. I'm pretty sure this is how contemporary politics and class dynamics works as well.

Bruce Springsteen is a wide wellspring of (re)discovery for me. I came of age in the late 80's where da Boss suddenly was re-animated into an all-consumptive media entity, an agent sent from Adult Contemporary America to eclipse Prince. As insouciant teenagers should do, I shunned it, leaving his entire ever-expanding catalog for me to revisit now.

For instance, until today I hadn't listened to Devils & Dust, (and I have Spotify's ticker to thank for my doing so) which is a sepia thundercloud casting a shadow on peasants and the locusts eating their crops alike, occasionally parting to let in little rays of light like "All I'm Thinkin' About" shine through.