[Harp-L] Meet the new Boss, Same as the old Boss

[Hellerman, Steven L.]

Sounds like some folks have let their political persuasions influence and change their musical tastes. Perhaps you now prefer Kanye West?
But, as an esteemed Professor said to us in grad school: "We may be able to predict behavior in the social sciences, but one can never predict taste. There's no accounting for taste." 
Nebraska is a great album, if only for Johnny 99, Open All Night, and Atlantic City (because the Band did a great cover of that last one, much better than Bruce's, actually). 
But just so you know: Frank Zappa completely repudiated that earlier statement of his regarding politics, and was himself starting to involve himself in such, c. late 1980's, early 90's. (He was a Democrat as it so happened; wanted Mario Cuomo to run for president.) Unfortunately, he was sidelined from such activity by the cancer that eventually killed him. 

SLH

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2016 12:26:21 -0500
From: <bfrain at xxxxx>
To: harp-l at xxxxx, Ronnie Schreiber <autothreads at xxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Meet the new Boss, Same as the old Boss
Message-ID: <20161215172621.QZ0VV.19474.root at xxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

the hypocrisy of rich libs never ceases to amaze me...dicaprio jetting around in his private plane to receive an award for his stance on global warming, etc etc etc...
oops, now i'm talking politics, lol
---- Ronnie Schreiber <autothreads at xxxxx> wrote: 
> >   He's Elvis and Dylan combined into one person, the most complete and perhaps greatest rock star of all time.
> 
> Well, at least you said "perhaps". I was a fan of Springsteen's early 
> on. I owned his first two albums before seeing him on the Born To Run 
> tour, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, before he started playing arenas. 
> A great performer and a decent songwriter and I came away from that show 
> thinking he was the real deal and worthy of the massive hype that Jon 
> Landau was generating with his connections in the music publishing biz. 
> My oldest child was at a Springsteen show when she was a year old (but 
> obviously doesn't remember Bob Seger coming up to do Thunder Road with 
> Springsteen during the encore).
> 
> Then he started thinking he was a serious artist with his Nebraska 
> album. He may be as dynamic a performer as Elvis was in the early days 
> but he ain't no Dylan or Leonard Cohen when it comes to serious stuff. 
> They'll be playing Dylan and Cohen's songs long after most of Bruce's 
> oeuvre will be forgotten.  Then Springsteen decided to ignore Frank 
> Zappa's sage advice ("Listening to a musician talk about politics makes 
> about as much sense as listening to politicians making music.") and use 
> his platform as an entertainer to make it clear that he really didn't 
> like about half of his audience. I just love having a man who spends six 
> figures on a single horse for his equestrian daughter (now that's a real 
> working class New Jersey sport, isn't it?) lecture me about income 
> inequality and how he supports the working man.
> 
> His dynamic performances may have evoked the early Elvis Presley, but 
> like Elvis, Bruce Springsteen isn't very smart (source: The Mansion on 
> the Hill). $100 spent on seeing local bands and upcoming touring acts 
> seems to me to be a wiser choice.