Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce

Bruce Springsteen
Album: Nebraska
State Trooper
State Trooper (live)

Once upon a time, there was a guy trumpeted as the next Dylan.  He had the street cred; he could write a few good sentences in succession; he looked the part.  All was set.  Or so it seemed.  He made a few nebbish records, plucked Courtney Cox out of a gaggle of girls, and ultimately became every jingoist's wet dream.  A pretty sad ending to our tale.  Except that he did no such thing.  Okay, he did pluck Courtney Cox out of a gaggle of girls.  But who wouldn't?

Courtney Cox's new sitcom, Cougartown, is pretty damn funny.

Springsteen the popular myth and Springsteen the reality are actually pretty dissimilar.  To the superficial and/or hopelessly stupid, "Born in the USA" is a simple, beautiful paean to the greatness that is our elephant to the south; to the astute listener it's a howl of anger directed at those very same blind nationalists.

Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that Springsteen is a great artist.  He's not.  And watching him do a synth driven jig while a stadium full of Oxy-5'ed teens cheer his every booty shaking move is cringe worthy, to say the least.  There's no denying that somewhere along the way, Springsteen lost the credibility -- an everyman who spoke out for the plight of the unheard masses -- that made him special in the first place.  But for a while he made absolutely stunning music.

"State Trooper" is from Springsteen's best album, Nebraska.  It's a haunting depiction of a desperate man with violent intentions begging a trailing cop car not to stop him.  It's about as spare as a song can get.  You can hear the scrape of the pick on the strings.  Downstrokes only.  Partially muted.  Bottom two strings.  The music has an inexorable quality, an insistent inertia that speaks to a terrifying destiny.  And then the voice.  A pained, almost hoarse whisper.

Brilliant.

And it's almost certainly the only popular song ever written in homage to Suicide's horrifying "Frankie Teardop."  See the blog post above for more info.