Intellectual House o' Pancakes Comments Page and Grill

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Janet - 2007-08-25 21:11:25
Sounds a lot like "867-5309/Jenny". But oh it makes me so happy.
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Greg - 2007-08-26 10:32:42
Wow... that single is pretty good. He's actually singing too, which I don't remember him doing in some time.. could be wrong though because I haven't paid much attention. Is the whole album good?
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Paula - 2007-08-26 16:58:07
I've only just heard that one song. The album is due on October 2.
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2fs - 2007-08-26 18:12:24
I like it too - but yeesh! it starts up loud. (Maybe a warning that clicking on the link starts up the song w/o your having to do anything else?) Hopefully I didn't wake up Rose, who's taking herself a nap. Anyway, yeah: I wish he'd changed the first part of that riff just a bit so as not to remind me of "867-5309." Not that that's not a good song - it's just a different song.
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Sharon - 2007-08-27 10:22:04
It's hard to think of another pop artist who remains so popular and relatively cool after 30 years.I have to admit when I was a teenager (God I'm sooo old!)and everyone was "Bruce! Bruce!", all I knew was "Born to Run", a song I found mediocre in its overearnest NewJerseyness "Strap your hands cross my engine"...yuck!It wasn't until years later I discovered how beautiful and well-crafted many of his songs were.I hadn't realized what a touchstone he was for so many interesting artists like Patty Smith (Because the night) or Joe Strummer. I'm reading a book on him so I've got Strummer on the mind!) Strummer first saw him in London in 1975. After the show, Strummer bought an excessively long guitar lead so he could wander around the stage and into the audience a la Springsteen, he decided to make the sets longer. He was in the 101'ers at the time, and a lot of bands were just doing 35-minute shows, including encore. A 3-hour all out show was a revelation. And Sprinsteen's lyrics about his gritty Asbury Park partially inspired Strummer's mythologizing of his gritty Notting Hill.
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Paula - 2007-08-27 11:20:17
I am not surprised at all by the Strummer-Springsteen connection! And, Sharon, I too have had a complicated Bruce history. He was too mainstream for my tastes as a teenager, plus he kind of "belonged" to my sister, and could not be shared. However, even back then I thought he really had something goin' on, and now I unabashedly admire him as a person and songwriter.

I have to insert here, though, that Bruce, as far as I know, was a fairly middle-class kid, and Strummer was a diplomat's son and boarding school brat, so I never really bought the "gritty" thing from either of them.
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Sharon - 2007-08-27 14:29:48
True, they did not have dirtpoor childhoods like Elvis Presley or Ray Charles or Ice T, but I see them both as having had one foot in the working class experience and the other in the middle class--like Dickens, a unique perspective for creating art. For many years, Strummer did live in poverty--in a squat at 101 Walterton Road. And I think Asbury Park definitely has a more working class vibe than where we grew up in NJ--especially in the 60s and 70s. Or maybe I just want to believe in their down-with-the-people bona fides!
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2fs - 2007-08-28 00:22:47
"I have to insert here, though, that Bruce, as far as I know, was a fairly middle-class kid, and Strummer was a diplomat's son and boarding school brat, so I never really bought the "gritty" thing from either of them."

But Bruce did do the endless playing-of-clubs thing - which, you know, is gritty in a different way. Still, the whole thing's one reason I don't care for the whole "authenticity" notion re rock'n'roll. I mean, c'mon: if you're really starving, you can't afford a guitar or have the time to get a band together... Rock'n'roll is almost entirely the product of the middle class. That doesn't mean it can't speak to other people, or that it hasn't had a powerful effect in a lot of ways. Insofar as it spoke against class hierarchies, particularly in the UK, it hardly matters where that voice was coming from - and in the US, the fact that it brought out establishment racism in such an ugly way - and gave "the kids" a new and different way to get around that racism - is also a powerful part of its legacy.

Actually I seem to recall reading somewhere that Marx actually expected most the intellectual and, well, "managerial" work of socialism to be done by the middle class...simply because, as I said, the working class was too busy working (and too dumbed down by its lack of education as well: not constitutionally so, but in effect).
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Paula - 2007-08-28 08:59:04
Marx actually expected most the intellectual and, well, "managerial" work of socialism to be done by the middle class.

I would like some sort of administrative position with the socialists. Something easy, that will allow me to make booking phone calls and stuff during the day.
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Sharon - 2007-08-29 00:33:35
"i recall reading somewhere that Marx..." Karlo Marx and Fredrich Engels/ Came to check out the 7-11/ Marx was skint-but he had sense/ Engels lent him the necessary pence The Clash ah,youth
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