Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick Rocky Ground (Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball)  ''The verses are the blues, the chorus is the gospel." - Bruce Springsteen in Conversation With Jon Pareles in  The New York Times  July 14, 2002 Gregg Chadwick The Luminist 12"x12" oil on linen 2010  As if reaching out from the past into the present, Bruce Springsteen's song  Rocky Ground  (Listen Here)  opens with a   ghostly voice calling out the refrain "I'm a soldier." This verbal fragment was culled from a historical performance of the Church of God in Christ Congregation's rendition of   I'm A Soldier In The Army Of The Lord ,  recorded by musical historian Alan Lomax in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942*.  The song then shifts to the chorus, sung by the gospel singer Michelle Moore: We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground Only after this sp...

by Gregg Chadwick We Are Alive (Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball) "Also, those are voices from history and other sides of the grave. If you listen to the record, I use a lot of folk music. There’s some Civil War music. There’s gospel music. There are ’30s horns in “Jack of All Trades.” That’s the way I used the music — the idea was that the music was going to contextualize historically that this has happened before: it happened in the 1970s, it happened in the ’30s, it happened in the 1800s… it’s cyclical. Over, and over, and over, and over again. So I try to pick up some of the continuity and the historical resonance through the music." -Bruce Springsteen,  Théatre Marigny press conference ,  Paris, February 2012 Gregg Chadwick Ciudad de la Memoria  38"x38" oil on linen 2005 Michael and Renee Hertzberg Collection, Beverly Hills   The final track  on  Wrecking Ball ,  We Are Alive    ( Lis...