Springsteen.

The Boss is playing at this year's Glastonbury Festival. I've been a fan of him now for a couple of years but I've only really got into him in the last three months. My love of him started with Born to Run (1975). After that, I fell in love with Nebraska (especially with the songs Nebraska and Atlantic City).

In 1984, Born in the USA was released. The title song instilled in many fans the idea that Bruce bore some vague sense of conservatism when in fact the song was dedicated to all the freedoms America enjoys which a large portion of Americans have forgotten - or whose values have become somewhat sidetracked over the past eight years (ahem, Bush).

In 1995, he demolished the idea of his conservatism with The Ghost of Tom Joad - an indictment of US foreign policy. The album is played out as a story involving the struggles of Mexican immigrants seeking solace in the USA via the crossing of the Mexico-Texas border. The name of the title track is derived from a character in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

After searching on the internet for a live version of the song, I came upon a version in which Bruce is aided by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine fame. Check out the video. You'll crap your pants.



This song is about the history of Youngstown, Ohio - a mining town founded in 1803 which used to have one of the biggest coal industries in the world. (It's also, of course, about migrant workers who'd travel there to find work.)