Bruce

Millions of Americans: ‘COVID?’ 🤷‍♀️

November 25, 2020

AP

Defying warnings, millions in the US travel for Thanksgiving

The CDC and state and local authorities have begged people not to travel and urged them to keep their Thanksgiving celebrations small.
Millions of Americans took to the skies and the highways ahead of Thanksgiving at the risk of pouring gasoline on the coronavirus fire, disregarding increasingly dire warnings that they stay home and limit their holiday gatherings to members of their own household.

Those who are flying witnessed a distinctly 2020 landscape at the nation’s airports: plexiglass barriers in front of the ID stations, rapid virus testing sites inside terminals, masks in check-in areas and on board planes, and paperwork asking passengers to quarantine on arrival at their destination.

 

More than 88,000 people in the U.S. — an all-time high — were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, pushing the health care system in many places to the breaking point, and new cases of the virus have been setting records, soaring to an average of over 174,000 per day.

Orlando International Airport

AXIOS

If you are gathering with people outside your household, at the very least:

  • Open windows if you can, or sit outdoors.
  • Wear masks when you aren’t eating.
  • Use separate bathrooms if possible.
  • Don’t share towels.
  • Use HEPA filters.
  • Limit the duration of your visit.

Bruce Springsteen: “Teamed up with some fellow New Jerseyans to encourage everyone this holiday season to wear a friggin’ mask. Let’s all come together and #MaskUpNJ so we can get back to what we do best – singing along and dancing together.”

 

“…ultimately a spiritual songwriter.”

June 24, 2020

THE ATLANTIC

Bruce Springsteen’s Playlist for the DT Era

“I don’t know if our democracy could stand another four years of his custodianship.”

by David Brooks

Contributing writer at The Atlantic and columnist for The New York Times.

This is a moment of tumult, anger, hope, and social change. At moments such as this, songwriters and musicians have a power to name things and help us make sense of events—artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monáe, Tom Morello, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

It’s been 20 years since Springsteen wrote “American Skin (41 Shots),” a powerful song about the police killing of a black man. I thought it might be a good idea to check in with Bruce, to get his reflections on this moment and on music in this moment. Here’s a slightly edited transcript of our conversation, which took place on June 9.

“…at the heart of our racial problems is fear. Hate comes later. Fear is instantaneous. So in “American Skin,” I think what moves you is the mother’s fear for her son and the rules that she has to lay down so he can be safe. It’s simply heartbreaking to watch a young child be schooled in this way.

I want to understand the structural issues, personal issues, social issues that are pressing down hard on the people I’m writing about and still living among. That’s where what I’m looking for resides. And so that’s kind of where my politics really began to develop, out of concern for my own moral, spiritual, emotional health, and that of my neighbors.”
If you look at the long narrative, like a half century ago when I was 20 or in 1968, when I was 18, you would say there have been great improvements—the civil-rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, the Obama presidency. Of course, there’s a constant pushback to whatever progress gets made, by a reactionary element. But I feel that that’s smaller now than at any time in the past, and it’s diminishing. It’s folks who see themselves being left behind by history and losing status, and it’s forces within the Republican Party and in society that are intent on keeping the power balance of the nation in one place, when that’s simply going to be impossible.
The Democrats haven’t really made the preservation of the middle and working class enough of a priority. And they’ve been stymied in bringing more change by the Republican Party. In the age of Roosevelt, Republicans represented business; Democrats represented labor. And when I was a kid, the first and only political question ever asked in my house was “Mom, what are we, Democrats or Republicans?” And she answered, “We are Democrats because they’re for the working people.”
But I reference my Catholic upbringing very regularly in my songs. I have a lot of biblical imagery, and at the end of the day, if somebody asked me what kind of a songwriter I was, I wouldn’t say I was a political songwriter. I would probably say a spiritual songwriter. I really believe that if you look at my body of work, that is the subject that I’m addressing. I’ve addressed social issues. I’ve addressed real-life issues here on Earth. I always say my verses are the blues and my choruses are the gospel. And I lean a little heavier on the gospel than the blues. So I would categorize myself as ultimately a spiritual songwriter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/bruce-springsteens-playlist/613378/
—

Woody Guthrie- This Land Is Your Land

Waitin’ on a Sunny Day

May 4, 2020

Ode to better days…and Bruce.

?

30 Shore musicians record ‘Waitin’ on a Sunny Day’ to benefit Asbury Park Music Foundation

 

30 Shore musicians record ‘Waitin’ on a Sunny Day’ to benefit Asbury Park Music Foundation

‘Thirty Shore-based musicians, including the late Clarence Clemons’ son Jarod, have recorded a socially distanced, group version of Bruce Springsteen’s upbeat anthem “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” as a benefit for the Asbury Park Music Foundation, which provides music education program for under-served youths.

Springsteen released “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” on his 2002 album The Rising and has continued to perform it frequently at his concerts since then, often as an audience participation number.’

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Bruce.

April 23, 2017

“Don’t tell me a lie

And sell it as a fact

I’ve been down that road before

And I ain’t going back.

Don’t you brag to me

That you never read a book

I never put my faith

In a con man and his crooks.”

-Bruce Springsteen and Joe Grushecky

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