Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick Shackled and Drawn (Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball) In a recent interview session in  Paris , Springsteen described the impetus behind the songs of  Wrecking Ball : "My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American dream." Like the music of Woody Guthrie, a core group of songs on  Wrecking Ball  looks at the status of labor in the United States. And the view isn't pretty. Bruce Springsteen's  Shackled and Drawn  ( Listen Here)  is an homage to Guthrie and an ode to the dignity that hard work engenders. At the same time, underneath the rollicking music,  Shackled and Drawn  mourns for those who have lost their jobs in the current corporate drive to downsize, outsource, and maximize profits:  Freedom, son, is a dirty shirt The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt The shovel in the dirt keeps the devil gone I woke up this morn...

by Gregg Chadwick Jack of All Trades (Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball) "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake." -Kurt Vonnegut Giorgio de Chirico The Enigma of the Hour  oil on canvas 1911 Private Collection A synthesizer wash, p laintive piano, and haunting horns like those found in  Michele Lacerenza 's  Johnny's Theme  accompany the world weary singer in Bruce Springsteen's  Jack of All Trades  (Listen Here) .  The aural landscape is bleak. The world in  Jack of All Trades  seems as if dust blowing in from the 1930's has choked off all color and most of life in the small towns and suburbs of the US.  A hardscrabble emotional landscape remains with little in the way of  work or meaning. The only wage to be found is in odd jobs and small errands. I am reminded of the h...