quite extraordinary

[realthog]

This must be one of the most extraordinary, impassioned rock performances of recent years, and it could hardly be more relevant than right now. Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) perform what is anyway one of my favourite Springsteen songs, "The Ghost of Tom Joad".

Even if you're not much of a Springsteen fan (myself, I think he's done some great albums and far too many that are a lot less so), please give this a try -- and persevere through a somewhat wayward violin permeating the opening moments. The performance moved me to tears -- tears for what the brutal, arrogant, destructive bastards of the current Adminstration have done at every level to this country, to the world, to our standards of morality, and to our children's future.

Comments

[nballingrud.livejournal.com]

Holy God, that's great stuff. But I'm a big Springsteen fan already. I'm sure you've heard his Pete Seeger album. Brilliant, and -- by its very nature -- steeped in the same aesthetic as this song.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I was reminded on discovering this clip (which I did thanks to Rock & Rap Confidential) that when I got the CD The Ghost of Tom Joad I liked it so much I mentioned it to my aged mum on the phone to her -- me in NJ and her in Edinburgh, Scotland. Then in her late 80s, she drew me out on this a bit, and I said she might actually like the album herself because it's all acousticy and, in among the Beethoven and suchlike that formed her ordinary taste, she did enjoy some folk music. Try me, she said, so I bought her a cassette of it -- she didn't have one o' they newfangled CD player things -- on the strict condition that she tell all her similarly aged Edinburgh pals she was listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Which she did, and recomended it, too.

I've not listened to the Seeger album, alas. I know, I should. I listened to far too much "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" in my youth, and I've yet to recover from the overdose.

[nballingrud.livejournal.com]

I posted something to help remedy this problem!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Ta!