A Perfect Storm

by Gregg Chadwick

President Barack Obama comforts Donna Vanzant today in Brigatine, New Jersey
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) 

The Megastorm Sandy roared into the Atlantic Coast on Monday night.  A thousand mile wide swath of destruction marked its path. The storm raged from the Carolinas to New England,  dumped a massive freak snowfall on West Virginia and flooded much of coastal New Jersey and New York City. Hundreds of thousands lost electricity, buildings were washed away, homes burned to the ground, and many died. But it could have been so much worse. As the night of Sandy wore on, many of us were reminded of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the feeble efforts to save the city of New Orleans. I was on twitter most of the night, communicating via 140 character messages what we knew and how to reach help. People were scared, information was spotty and at times poisoned with fake news from a now disgraced  Republican campaign manager who cruelly spread dangerous rumors of trapped emergency personnel. But arching over the discord and disinformation was the understanding that President Obama, via the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and his own personal courage, had our backs. 

Gregg Chadwick

Belle Ville

11"x11" oil on linen 2005

Private Collection Los Angeles

As Sandy raged, I thought of my painting, Belle Ville, inspired by images flooding through the media of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It struck me that this strong woman carrying her child away from the storm, could in many ways be seen as Michelle Obama. And I knew that the man who married this heroic woman would carry us as well. Today  President Obama inspected the damage that Sandy brought and determined the continuing course of action with the head of FEMA, Craig Fugate, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. President Obama spoke to the American public across from a damaged marina in Brigatine, New Jersey. Barack's words were purposeful, calming, and filled with effusive praise for those working hard to take care of the people of New Jersey, in particular Governor Christie. Those words will be noted. But what will be deeply remembered is President Obama's comforting embrace of Donna Vanzant - who lost her livelihood, the marina from which the President spoke, in the storm's wrath. Pablo Martinez Monsivais captured a stirring photograph of that moment. This is how Hurricane Sandy will be remembered. A simple image of one man helping another in need. The question is answered. We do take care of our own. 

Springsteen Performs at Ohio Rally for President Obama

Springsteen Campaigns for President Barack Obama in Ohio
 Thursday, October 18, 2012
(Complete Show on Video With Introduction by President Bill Clinton)

 1. No Surrender
2. The Promised Land
3. Obama Rally Song: Forward
 4. Youngstown
5. We Take Care Of Our Own
 6. This Land Is Your Land
7. Thunder Road

Springsteen's Poignant Words to the Crowd:


"I'm here today for Ohio, and for President Obama, and because for 30 years I've been writing about the distance between the American dream and American reality. I've been gauging that distance through a big part of my life. I've seen it from inside and outside: as a blue-collar kid from a working-class home in New Jersey — where my parents struggled, not always successfully, to make ends meet — to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina, to meeting folks from food pantries all around the United States, working daily to help our struggling citizens through the hard times we've been suffering through.

Our vote — our vote is the one principal way we get to determine that distance in that equation. Voting matters. Elections matter. Think of the events of the last 12 years and try to convince yourself they don't. We get an individual hand in shaping the kind of America we want our kids to grow up in.

I'm a dad, I've got three kids, I'm 63... and I've lived through some galvanizing moments in American history: the Civil Rights struggle, the peace movement, times when you could feel the world shifting under your feet. I remember President Obama's election night was an evening when you could feel the locked doors of the past finally being blown open to new possibilities.

But then comes a hard, daily struggle to make those possibilities real in a world that is brutally resistant to change. We've seen that over the past four years; the forces of our opposition have been tireless.

But I came here today because I'm thankful for universal health care, the lack of which was for so long an embarrassment to our country. I'm thankful for a more regulated Wall Street. I'm thankful GM is still making cars. What else would I write about?! I'd have no job without that!

I'm here today because I'm concerned about women's rights. I don't have to tell you about the dangers to Roe v. Wade under our opponent's policies.

I'm also here today because of the continuing disparity in wealth between our best-off citizens and our everday citizens. That's a disparity that I believe our honorable opponents' policies will only increase and that threatens to divide us into two distinct and foreign nations, until many of us are going to end up like a song I wrote in the 1980s, "Jackson Cage": "just the scenery in another man's play." If we marginalize so many of our citizens, their talents, their energies, their voices will go unfound and unheard. We will lose their contributions to this great land of ours; we will impoverish ourselves and set ourselves on the road to decline. So their opportunities must be protected, and I think President Obama understands this.

And I'm here today because I've lived long enough to know that despite those galvanizing moments in history, the future is rarely a tide rushing in. It's often a slow march, inch by inch, day after long day, and I believe we are in the midst of those long days right now. And I'm here because I believe President Obama feels those days in his bone, for all 100 percent of us. I believe he's got the strength, the commitment, and the vision to live these days with us, and to carry the standard forward toward a country where, as I've written, "nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."



 

We Take Care of Our Own

by Gregg Chadwick

Bruce Springsteen's first single "We Take Care of Our Own", off his forthcoming album "Wrecking Ball", opens with pounding drums and a guitar screaming like a siren. The song is a call to action and a populist anthem that follows up where "Born in the USA" left off. With a nod to the Clash, the cover of the single is a blurry, black and white photo of a black leather and guitar clad Springsteen overlaid with crudely scrawled white type that evokes the windows of closed up storefronts and used car lots.

"Where are the eyes with the will to see?" Springsteen wails. From his vantage point, good hearts have been turned to stone. We are our brother's keeper. But what happened? "From Chicago to New Orleans, from the muscle to the bone, From the shotgun shack to the Superdome", Springsteen growls. "Where's the promise from sea to shining sea?"

photo by Gregg Chadwick

The album was recorded before the current occupy Wall Street protests, but as a devoted follower of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, Springsteen had his finger on the pulse of a country that has succumbed to greed and apathy.  For most of Springsteen's career, the American Dream was a false promise. Now Springsteen realizes that we are a nation of citizens that need to take care of each other, that the promise can be realized if we take care of our own.

Much more to follow...

Listen to Bruce Springsteen's New Single "We Take Care of Our Own": at New Bruce

Available Now from iTunes in the UK at 

Available tomorrow -Thursday, January 19, 2012 - at Amazon in the US

Further Discussions on Springsteen's "We Take Care of Our Own":

LA Times First Take on Pop and Hiss

Ann Powers writes for NPR on Springsteen's New Wave of Social Protest 

Salon: The Boss Embraces Occupy

Gregg Chadwick

Belle Ville

11"x11" oil on linen 2005

Private Collection Los Angeles

"From Chicago to New Orleans, From the Muscle to the Bone, From the Shotgun Shack to the Superdome"

Lyrics to "We Take Care of Our Own" by Bruce Springsteen

(No mondegreens I hope):

I've been knockin' on the door that holds the throne

I've been lookin' for the map that leads me home

I've been stumblin' on good hearts turned to stone

The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

Wherever this flag 's flown

We take care of our own

From Chicago to New Orleans

From the muscle to the bone

From the shotgun shack to the Superdome

There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home,

There ain't no one hearing the bugle blown

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

Wherever this flag 's flown

We take care of our own

Where are the eyes, the eyes with the will to see?

Where are the hearts, that run over with mercy?

Where's the love that has not forsaken me?

Where's the work that'll set my hands, my soul free?

Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me?

Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?

Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?

Wherever this flag is flown

Wherever this flag is flown

Wherever this flag is flown

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

Wherever this flag 's flown

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

Wherever this flag 's flown

We take care of our own

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Bruce Springsteen's New Single Bleeds Compassion

by Gregg Chadwick

Bruce Springsteen's first single "We Take Care of Our Own", off his forthcoming album "Wrecking Ball", opens with pounding drums and a guitar screaming like a siren. The song is a call to action and a populist anthem that follows up where "Born in the USA" left off. With a nod to the Clash, the cover of the single is a blurry, black and white photo of a black leather and guitar clad Springsteen overlaid with crudely scrawled white type that evokes the windows of closed up storefronts and used car lots.

"Where are the eyes with the will to see?" Springsteen wails. From his vantage point, good hearts have been turned to stone. We are our brother's keeper. But what happened? "From Chicago to New Orleans, from the muscle to the bone, From the shotgun shack to the Superdome", Springsteen growls. "Where's the promise from sea to shining sea?"

photo by Gregg Chadwick

The album was recorded before the current occupy Wall Street protests, but as a devoted follower of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, Springsteen had his finger on the pulse of a country that has succumbed to greed and apathy.  For most of Springsteen's career, the American Dream was a false promise. Now Springsteen realizes that we are a nation of citizens that need to take care of each other, that the promise can be realized if we take care of our own.

Much more to follow...

Listen to Bruce Springsteen's New Single "We Take Care of Our Own": at New Bruce

Available Now from iTunes in the UK at 

Available tomorrow -Thursday, January 19, 2012 - at Amazon in the US

Further Discussions on Springsteen's "We Take Care of Our Own":

LA Times First Take on Pop and Hiss

Ann Powers writes for NPR on Springsteen's New Wave of Social Protest 

Salon: The Boss Embraces Occupy

Gregg Chadwick
Belle Ville
11"x11" oil on linen 2005
Private Collection Los Angeles

"From Chicago to New Orleans, From the Muscle to the Bone, From the Shotgun Shack to the Superdome"

Lyrics to "We Take Care of Our Own" by Bruce Springsteen

(No mondegreens I hope):

I've been knockin' on the door that holds the throne
I've been lookin' for the map that leads me home
I've been stumblin' on good hearts turned to stone
The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun shack to the Superdome

There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home,
There ain't no one hearing the bugle blown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

Where are the eyes, the eyes with the will to see?
Where are the hearts, that run over with mercy?
Where's the love that has not forsaken me?
Where's the work that'll set my hands, my soul free?
Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me?
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?

Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag 's flown
We take care of our own

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012