Badlands as The Promised Land (rock introduction to the topic) / in ENGLISH language

Note: Due to my comitments in promotion of tourism, culture and preparing of new books I will write once a month new texts for this blogspot.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Badlands as The Promised Land
(Rock introduction to the topic of my next post)

(Note: This is my comment on one specific detail about these people, not the band's music criticism and I do not even want to be a rock critic.)
Right at the beginning I admit, I'm not a Bruce Springsteen fan and maybe it's better to take a more
neutral position towards his music. Of course, I liked his commercial, feel-good song Dancing In The
Dark, but most of the others that show sadness and naturalistic descriptions of hard struggle for a
better life I did not.
When I heard first presentation of his songs on the radio (and here we always find out about new
American hopes with a pretty long delay) I thought what everyone would have probably thought of
him.
All right, the man tries to be honest in his songs and looks for that "human touch" with the audience,
but why does he deal with singing profession if he does it so hard with that hoarse, rugged voice? The
voice that sounds not only much older, as if it was damaged with a hard life, but also sadly and
helplessly when trying to reach high tones in vain. It doesn't sound so sympathetic as sounded the
rugged but cheerful voice of Louis Armstrong, who always sticked to one octave or inside the voice
range he could sing.
Despite this, I noticed that this new American has a talent far superior than average. But why doesn't
he choose another profession or type of artistic expression, where he wouldn't be handicapped, right
at the start, with the harder way to the top? Wouldn't it be better for him to choose something where
he would have a comparative advantage, rather than a drawback compared to any other "Elvis of a
beautiful voice and look"? To those guys who are practically born to become singing stars, only if they
want to take that job. (Later I found out that this "new guy on stage" was over 30 years old already,
and had a lot of stage experience in relative anonymity.)
I'm going to take one more extreme example of a bad, rugged voice than Springsteen's. No, it's not
Tom Waits, not even Vlado Kalember, this is Edith Piaf. Now imagine yourself living in France in the first
half of the 20th century and looking on the stage very small woman with a sad throaty voice, that
sounds still much older from sadness and melancholy of life. But she nevertheless gives to the
audience everything of herself. All her inner emotion and intimacy that is touching you deeply. Of
course that you'll always applaud at the end of the song and exclaim: Bravo, bravo Madame! bis!
It's not the case, for example, when you watch the charming and experienced singer and entertainer
Claude Chevalier, whom you can freely whistle when he has a bad performance. When his singing is
bad, when his jokes are unsuccessful, but Edith Piaf... how can you do that to her when she has a
bad day? That would have hit her hard, and look at her. "She surely had a tough life full of pain and
suffering and despite everything, she tries so hard..." I have also read the biography of Claude
Chevalier and I really can't tell who of them two, Edith or Claude had a harder path to his/her success.
However, there are some singers (and other artists too) whom you must always love from a certain
kind of compassion, no matter if their songs were objectively good or not. Their outer appearance and
everything else externally visible, that is not music itself, becomes more important than their songs
and as if begs you to sympathize with them. Such performers seem to emotionally blackmailing you
"not to be without soul and to cry", not just for their songs but more for their whole life story. And
here I ask you, is it a good reason for songs listening?
Back to Bruce Springsteen. I admit however, that as I'm being older I appreciate more and more The
Boss from New Jersey. Looking back on his career, for many reasons, the most interesting album to me
is a "Darkness on The Edge of Town" from 1978.
Not only that this album sounds like a hint that something is hidden in this darkness on the edge of
town, just as some light always appears at the end of a dark tunnel, the fact is that the album was
indeed a turning point in Bruce Springsteen's career. It was released after a full 3-year break, in which
he wasn't even allowed to record his songs(!) for a court dispute with his manager at that time. It
didn't bother (make him pain) him the fact that "he couldn't express himself to the World as a poet and
artist", but one more normal and healthier reason. Springsteen with 25 had already acquired his own
family. No, it wasn't wife and children then, he didn't have them yet. His family was E Street Band, his
musicians to which The Boss felt parental responsibility as for his own family that should be fed by
earnings from songs and concerts. And then, as a "father of the family", he was forcibly deprived, not
only from his job but also from his right to work.
The other singers who have succeeded to become SOMEONE for-whom-we-all-know, mostly sing
about love, (desire for love), happiness (wish to be happy), heroism (dreams to be famous heroes in
everyday life) but rarely someone chooses topics like Springsteen on this album. For me as a foreigner
(who has never been in the United States) it's quite unusual that someone from New Jersey sings
about something called Badlands in South Dakota at the other end of that big country, and finds the
inspiration for an emotional song in something that immediately tells the traveler that it's a difficult
place to live, and there's no need to search here any kind of beauty or paradise for tourists. Okay,
later I saw that the Badlands National Park in South Dakota is indeed a very attractive place for
adven-tourists, who want to explore challenges of the wild nature, and that Springsteen actually got
the inspiration from the title of 1973 movie "Badlands" by Terrence Malick.
To be clear, Bruce Springsteen has always been American folk rocker, inspired by country and blues.
He was never some urban punker I would love to hear, but still from all of Springsteen's classics maybe
the "Badlands" is a song that most looks like punk. Not by pure chance, punk music has dominated the
World in these years, being performed by the same underground rebels against big music labels and
media that decide who will be the next pop star and the goldmine of the music industry. Just like that,
the Boss, with his album that was born and released in these difficult circumstances of uncertainty, as
well succeeded in his rebellion against the system.
Even more interesting for me is that on this same album appears another song called "The Promised
Land", as a kind of response on "Badlands", the song of prayer and hope of the singer's alter ego that
one day he will rise above this "bad land", where he hardly survives. In this next song Bruce sings that
he is no more a boy but a man, and therefore he firmly believes in a promised land. But his belief
doesn't look so powerful and optimistic as one can expect from the song with such name. On the
contrary, his faith in the promised land is of more modest and pious kind, like he explained in one
occasion. With this song, Bruce actually wants to send the message that a man needs to lose his
illusions of a life without restriction, so that he could preserve, for that reason, the determination and
the strong desire to overcome his modest powers, and keep the sense of all the possibilities that life
still provides, despite everything. This Sprinsgteen's thought is really one of the greatest wisdoms of
life I've ever heard in the world of rock and roll. Perhaps only so, a bad land can REALLY become
promised land for you?


The final question. You already know all about him and if Bruce Springsteen was a capitalist corporation, Springsteen and E Street Band would be…
a) Amazon
b) Apple
c) Green Business Alliance






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