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CounterPunch
September
30, 2002
To Case the
Promised land
by DAVE MARSH
I prepared for the opening of Springsteen: Troubador
of the Highway, a photo exhibit at the University of Minnesota's
Weisman Museum, by making a Bruce mix for a teenager. My way
in turned out to be Arthur Baker's hip-hop remix of "Born
in the U.S.A." and the first disc (you expected less?) ends
with "War," with the ultra-contemporary introduction,
"blind faith in anything can get you killed."
Still, I wasn't prepared for Troubador
of the Highway hitting me like my personal madeline. (Fortunately,
the book's already written.) Joel Bernstein's 1979 shot of Bruce
on the Asbury Park boardwalk made me lose a breath and look around
for my kids, who spent a good bit of their childhood summers
there.
About half the photographs in the show
were taken by Bruce's sister, Pamela. Bruce appears in very few
of them. Instead, Pam offers a travelogue based on The Ghost
of Tom Joad, a series of images evoking the California where
prosperity is barely a rumor and incessant sunshine just makes
labor more arduous. A shot of a farmworker trudging through a
lettuce field lays out the whole relationship between industrial
agriculture and migrant labor. The landscapes are beautiful but
 relentlessly bleak. The gas stations
look like relics of another culture, and the only symbols of
hope are beat-up, distorted church signs--grubby neon and ineptly
asymmetrical crosses. Against one wall, a TV set endlessly plays
the "Ghost of Tom Joad" video made by director Arnold
Levine from Pam's pictures. All that's missing is that sign from
the Tunnel of Love tour: This is a Dark Ride. A point reemphasized
by Springsteen's anything-but-bleak presence in the other half
of the show, especially the shots Frank Stefanko took in Freehold
25 years ago and Edie Baskin's image of Bruce as James Dean in
front of a sports car in the dark.
The vision of this compact little show
belongs partly to each of the Springsteens and partly to curator
Colleen Sheehy. Sheehy risks her reputation by doing such a popular
exhibit, I suppose, but her conviction about what constitutes
art, what inspires it, and where it may lead us makes that risk
worthwhile.
Sheehy's my kind of Springsteen fan.
At the other end of the scale, Danny Alexander describes a St.
Louis concert where he was "surrounded by middle-aged business
men--in khakis and ballcaps and filled to the brim with beer
(in other words, the most obnoxious and rude species on the planet)."
There's a contradiction there that Springsteen-and everyone who
likes him, or thinks that they do-needs to resolve. Whether The
Rising might mark a real resurrection, rather than a one-shot
return to glory days, depends on it.
In the lecture I gave as part of Troubador's
opening, I talked about Springsteen as an American life with
not two acts but a full three, the last just beginning to unfold.
The first involved trying to answer the question "I wanna
know if love is real." The second, affirming that it is,
shows a man trying to figure out what difference that makes,
exactly. I'm not positive about the third-my hunch is that it's
topic is finding out how to realize "the land of hope and
dreams."
By ending his 9 11 album in the shabby
streets of an abandoned American dream town, amongst the rubble
that Al Queada had no part in creating, Springsteen takes a quiet
stand. In calling on his audience to "rise up," he
addresses not so much those abandoned lives on the Asbury streetcorners
as his own khaki'd multitude pouring suds into the voids created
by their complacency. Speaking out against the coming war during
each show makes his intention clearer. Can he head that way and
still command the attention of a big audience?
Can anyone? If I knew I'd tell you.
(Troubadour of the Highway will travel
to Detroit, Newark and Seattle next year.)
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. Nothing to Fear, A Rough Mix by Steinski
(bootleg)-Now available at various websites including sandboxau
Jiggers! The cops!
2. The
Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
3. Jerusalem,
Steve Earle (E Squared)
4. Scarface (Def Jam South)-Restores
my faith in hip-hop as urban autobiography.
5. The
Queen in Waiting, Aretha Franklin (Columbia Legacy)-Waiting,
hell. She was a great singer already and more of this rocks than
you've been told. Besides, I like her Dinah Washington
act.
6. Leadbelly
Live! 15 June 1949 University of Texas (Fabulous UK)-Possibly
the last solo show of his life but he sounds even more vibrant
than in the studio, carousing through 16 songs, beginning and
ending with "Goodnight Irene."
7. Pachuco
Boogie featuring Don Tosti (Arhoolie)-For those who doubt
that rock'n'roll was born bilingual.
8. When
Lightnin' Struck the Pine, Cedell Davis (Fast Horse
Recordings)
9. Home,
Dixie Chicks (Columbia)-Natalie Maines as the real Patty Griffin?
Bluegrass with more joy than droning? Father-daughter collaboration
as a means to #1 albums? Yep, yep and yep. And hallelujah too.
10. Down
in the Alley, Alvin Youngblood Hart (Memphis International)-Miles
from Hart's usual mixture of blues, soul and funk, this Delta
blues set sounds less pure than distilled, by which I mean it
kicks like a mule outside its stall.
11. "The Talking Sounds Just Like
Joe McCarthy Blues," Chris Buhalis (demo)-Woody'd be proud.
Best line: Ashcroft's response to "Give me liberty or give
me death"--"Don't tempt me." P.O. Box 2896 Ann
Arbor MI 48106 or chrisbuhalis.com. A patriotic $5 1
2. Easy,
Kelly Willis (Rykodisc)-If I think this is the weakest batch
of songs she ever had, how come I can't stop listening to it?
That voice. (And the fact that my daughter wouldn't let me, if
I wanted to.)
13. Hey
Y'All, Elizabeth Cook (WB)-What's an actual country singer
doing on a major label? "God's Got a Plan"?
14. The
Deep End Vol. 2, Gov't Mule (ATO)-The only jam band I
love-because Warren Haynes understands that the music isn't just
rooted in the blues but a species of it. His singing on "Hammer
and Nails" suggests Paul Rodgers in his heyday.
15. Sleepless,
Peter Wolf (Artemis)
16. My Name's Not Rodriguez, Luis Rodriguez
& Seven Rabbit (Dos Manos)
17. Fattening
Frogs for Snakes, John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars
(Okra-Tone/Rooster Blues)
18. The
Dark, Guy Clark (Sugar Hill)-Saturated with mortality,
these are his most confident vocals since Dublin Blues. Highlights:
"Homeless," a portrait of a discarded woman that's
chilling in every sense, and "Queenie's Song," a protest
against the bastard who shot his dog on New Year's Day in Santa
Fe.
19. Distance
Between, The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash--The singing's
more like Waylon than Pop. Maybe that's just because they mostly
play rock'n'roll.
20. I Don't Do This, Sidney Joe Qualls
(Expansion, UK)-First (and last) of the New Al Greens. '70s tracks
produced by the great Carl Davis, but it's mostly Al you'll be
thinking of.
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
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September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
An Entire
Class
of Thieves
Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra
and Shatila
Amelia Peltz
Anniversary with Life
in Palestine
Susan Martinez
By the Hand
of the Father
Ben Tripp
Advice from
a Polemicist
Adam Engel
From Above:
Forgetting bin Laden
Chris Clarke
The Ann Coulter Test
Tariq Ali
Doing as the
Romans Did
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Bush Victory
in Iraq
Ralph Nader
Greed Without Limits
Thomas Croft
The Life of Jim Cummings
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen:
a serialized Novel,
Episode One
Wolff, Dailey, Metres
& St. Clair
Poet's Basement
September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master Jean
Chretien's
New York State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
Vermont Breakfast
Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
to Silence
Pro Palestinian Voices
Salam Rahal
The Rape
of a Nation
Richard Falk
& David Krieger
War with
Iraq:
It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
Can Fight Corporate Crime
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
Resources:
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By
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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Whiteout:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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