Where The Cool Of The Night...

From time to time I check out the anti-Springsteen conversations on message boards or Bruce hating bloggers. You should try Googling 'Springsteen sucks' or 'I hate Springsteen' but not if you are easily riled. I'm not sure why I do it.  They used to really annoy me but now they just give me a good laugh.  I don't want to cast aspersions (well yes I do actually) but it appears to me that most of these people have no logical argument for not liking our man.  In fact you're lucky if most of them can string a sentence together.  Certainly not without using the 'F' word several times.

Those people who do attempt some sort of reasoning either don't like Bruce's politics or they complain that he can't know about the working man when he has so much money. Well he was poor once. He came from a working class background.  I know he's getting older  I don't think he's lost his memory yet - autocue not withstanding! Anyway surely you don't have to live it to write about it. As far as I know Steven Spielberg  hasn't met an alien and J K Rowling doesn't have any wizard friends. I read lots of crime novels - love a grisly killing or two but I don't expect my favourite authors to be murderers.

Speaking of authors I have a bit of a soft spot for Harlan Coben.  He's a bit of a Bruce fan and often gets a reference in his books.  There's a  little quote in  this old article.

The music that plays in your head when you read Coben's fiction, though, is also that of Bruce Springsteen: Coben's idol, and New Jersey's other populist poet of wistful moral complexity, regret and hard-won virtue.


Mike has just read his latest 'Live Wire" and he manages to get two references in here.

The premier of Jackson Cage got me thinking this week. Being a song from 'The River' it, of course, reminds me of a certain night at MSG in 2009.  I also wondered whether, for the folks in Jackson Cage, hard times come, hard times go and hard times come again.

Baby there's nights when I dream of a better world
But I wake up so downhearted girl
I see you feeling so tired and confused
I wonder what it's worth to me or you
Just waiting to see some sun
Never knowing if that day will ever come
Left alone standing out on the street
Till you become the hand that turns the key down in...

Did they get out do you think during more prosperous times? Get a decent jobs, a nice little house, a mortgage and if they did are they suffering again because of the recession?  A bit deep, I know, but it just shows that back in the eighties much the same things were bothering Bruce as they do today.

Everything changes yet everything stays the same.