vain, selfish & lazy.

Wednesday, January 17, 2001

blogjam: some blog... and some jam: well, fraser of vitaminic has finally done as threatened and created his own personal blog and, whaddya know, it's great. he also has the good sense to link this here blog. a fine chap, so be sure to check out blogjam.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Tuesday, January 16, 2001

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - "BORN TO RUN"
being born in new jersey, your birthright is to forever be the butt of the joke: you smell, there are bodies buried under giants stadium, bon jovi, etc. but, on the other hand, you also get springsteen. sure, sinatra was the kid from hoboken, but frank belonged to the world whereas springsteen, in a unique way, will forever belong to us, chronicling our lives and deaths, hopes and failures. each child born into a new jersey hospital, along with his/her birth certificate, also receives a copy of the man's greatest hits; move in from out of state and, now no one knows just how this works or whose behind it, one sunny day, you'll find an album in your mailbox, corresponding to your particular background and lifestyle. going from one shitty job to another? darkness on the edge of town. happily married and fond of soft rock? a lucky town/human touch two-fer. got kids? born to run.

growing up in new jersey, you're positioned between two major metropolises, new york and philadelphia, with the north tending to resemble the former, and the south, the latter. in that way, bruce springsteen, born in freehold, cut his teeth in asbury park where, among other things, he played at my dad's bar, and i live in two different new jerseys. he had amusement parks, whereas i had malls (which is to assume that the south is lacking in malls; in my experience, it is). my visits to the south, usually for vacation -- okay, always for vacation, showed me a place where life was more carefree and slower; maybe it has something to do with their nearness to the ocean, keeping them grounded. up north, the closest body of water is the hudson river: a lot of things are done in the hudson river, but swimming isn't one of them. nevertheless, the experience of growing up in new jersey seems to be universal, as no one has ever summed it up quite so well as bruce in his opus, "born to run."

springsteen, as history has dictated, is what we'd call a classic rocker, a genre not well known for its sensitivity and willingness to display vulnerability. "born to run," lyrically, isn't too far removed from the themes of belle & sebastian and the smiths and, on top of that, it's production is modeled after phil spector's wall of sound, a backing more suitable for the crystals than for credence. how, then, did he turn "born to run" into an fm-rock staple, a song played after giants' wins at the meadowlands with everybody singing every word?

simply stated, "born to run" rocks in a way spector either never utilized or, more likely, never envisioned. it's the wall of sound on steroids, with testosterone coursing through every note. "born to run" served notice that there was a new kid on the block and, well, you better just watch your backs cos he plans on taking over this here rock n' roll thing. the opening is immense, and yet it feels suspended in air, running in place, like that moment right after you've made your mind up about something, but have yet to do anything about it.

one of spector's grand strokes was to elevate teenage angst to an aria, lending it an air of gravitas. springsteen took his model, beefed it up musically, and gave his general lyrical themes -- heartbreak, alienation, disillusioned -- a precocious yet undeniably poetic edge, never forgetting that the secret ingredient was hormones: bruce, age 26 at the time, writes and sings it like he never got over being 18.

"born to run" features the unnamed narrator and his girl, wendy: it is from these two that every springsteen character would evolve. strike that, there are only two characters in the springsteen oeuvre -- one male, one female -- they just go by different names. the narrator slaves away at a job that he hates during the day, and takes to the road at night in search of the freedom that only comes when he's riding his motorcycle down some dark new jersey highway, trying to escape if only momentarily from both that brokedown old town and from himself. (highway 9, incidentally, will lead you to the george washington bridge, but riding down some deserted, tree-lined road is certainly more romantic than riding through washington heights).

it's on these nightly trips that the narrator probably comes up with his fantastical scheme -- filled with as few details as possible -- to get away from that town for good, and he just has to spring the idea on his girl. "together we can break this trap," along with other lines from the second verse indicate a vulnerability, that he can't make it alone, perfectly encapsulating that time in your life where you know everything and you know nothing. clemons' exuberant sax solo represents the freedom that comes from realizing this; it's the sound of the butterflies in your stomach breaking free, of tension and nerves released.

in the bridge, springsteen details all of the kids out there just like the narrator, a subculture in which the girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors and the boys try to look so hard, and they're all gathered in the shadows of the amusement park and huddled on the beach. "i wanna die with you wendy on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss," he sings sounding for all the world like the chorus to the smiths' "there is a light that never goes out," except delivered with a straight face. judging by the music in the instrumental break -- charged, driving, hopeful -- one assumes that wendy took him up on the offer, that they've taken flight on a road to nowhere. then the music quiets down and the tension builds, and the countdown commences. you want the moment to last forever, but you're equally glad when it ends and the last verse kicks in: it's the aural equivalent of rolling the windows down and letting the wind blow through your hair. none of these kids know where they're going but they don't care, because they're young and they'll get there someday.

there are hundreds of towns in new jersey like the one in "born to run." the people are hemmed in by the town's small borders and, to use a particularly springsteen-like turn of phrase, folks are just born so they can start dying. places where the towns just bleed into one another and the only way you can tell you've entered a new place is by the different colors of the varsity jackets worn by guys who will grow up and become drunks and beat their wives and cry themselves to sleep. "born to run," but to where? the song never answers explicitly answers this question; it becomes apparent, though, that a more appropriate title would be "born to run away": anywhere is better than here.

when i got off the train today, i looked around at the small town that gave birth to me. i thought of all of the people, like me, who take this train into manhattan to work, partially out of here, but also partially entrenched here. and then i thought of all of the people who'll never leave here, particularly those who i grew up with, those who litter the police blotter, those stuck in dead-end jobs, and those who died far too young. "born to run" is not about escape: it's about that very moment when you realize that you've no other option, that your only way to survive, is to run, and it's about that moment when you summon the courage to share this with someone. "baby, we were born to run," the song goes. i ran, and now i've come crawling back, leaving me with a question the song never even considers: where do i go now?
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Sunday, January 14, 2001

james carr, r.i.p.: while searching through deja.com, i accidentally came across news that on january 11, james carr, the greatest soul singer you've likely never heard of, passed away at the far-too-young age of 58. you may have heard him without knowing it, his "the dark end of the street" is one of the truly classic songs, not only of soul, but in the history of popular music. he was possessed of a mercurial temperament and his records never received the distribution needed to take him where his talent clearly indicated he should be. nevertheless, carr bathed you in the full-on radiance of his soul, no matter how dire the lyrics or how shoddy the production. "there's a light, a certain kind of light, that never shined on me," he sang in his immense cover of the bee gees' "to love somebody," delivering each word as if they were his autobiography, and in a way they were: a man abandoned at age 3, one who fell through society's cracks in the 60s, and then died alone, suffering from lung cancer, in a memphis housing project: the words form an undeserved epitaph. if you'd like to buy a compilation of mr. carr's work, click on the link: perhaps he'll receive the recognition and appreciation in death that was never to be his in life.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss