Bruce Springsteen’s song, “The Streets of Minneapolis” came out of the gate swinging and smacked Donny’s fragile ego right in the balls. In “response,” Pedo President came out moaning, “White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson shared in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, ‘The Trump administration is focused on encouraging state and local Democrats to work with federal law enforcement officers on removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from their communities — not random songs with irrelevant opinions and inaccurate information. The media should cover how Democrats have refused to work with the administration, and instead, opted to provide sanctuary for these criminal illegals’ and Pedo himself whined back with a limp-wristed slap, calling Springsteen “dumb as a rock” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.” (I guess Trump thinks he’s an expert on “dried out prunes,” since he has to look at one in the mirror while some poor makeup “artist” slathers orange paint on his face.)
But even a biased right-wing source like Forbes Magazine has been forced to admit, “Bruce Springsteen’s ICE Protest Song Soars To No. 1” and not just in Minnesota or the USA but in 19 countries and counting. Bruce took his rage and channeled it into an anthem that people are singing around the world and in some very unusual places. Fairly often, I volunteer at our local hospital and last Friday, as I drove to my “shift” at the hospital, I was listening to “The Streets of Minneapolis” in my car. It put me in a good mood, which has been rare the past year. As I was pushing my cart through the hospital, the song was a total earworm and I have never enjoyed the stuck song syndrome more. In one of the clinic’s departments a nurse who I often talk to when I’m doing that job asked, “What’s got you in such a good mood?”
I said, “I have a song in my heart and it’s moving my feet, too.” She wanted to know what the song was and I asked, “Are you sure you want to know?” She did and I played the chorus of “Minnesota” and, in less than a line in, she and two other nurses started singing along with Bruce and the E Street Band, “Oh, Minneapolis, I hear your voice, singing through the bloody mist. We'll take our stand, for this land, and the stranger in our midst. Here in our home, they killed and roamed, in the winter of '26. We'll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.”
If you are living under a fucking rock and haven’t heard this new anthem for protest, freedom, and getting off of your dead ass (if you’re American) and standing on your hind legs and doing something, here it is:
In early 2020, friends and I started playing music online through a couple of online, real-time music collaboration services (initially Jamkazam, currently Sonobus) and that resulted in e writing my first original tune since the late 1970s, “I Don’t Want to Do This Anymore.” The constant barrage of Republican lies during the early days of COVID and as the 2020 election approached “inspired” me to write a second song, “I’m An American (Lie to Me).” The bullshit was so intense I actually made a slight attempt to move this song into public view with a YouTube video. Last I knew it was on a few of the music streaming services, but I haven’t kept up with that because it’s not worth anything other than some kind of ego boost. Bruce’s song, in 4 days, has 368,000 hits and my song, in 5 years, has 368. We’re not in the same league.
However, when I was ranting about how great “Streets of Minneapolis” is to a friend, he told me he thought “I’m An American” was at least as good. It isn’t, but I’m not ashamed of it, which isn’t a small thing for me. As my YouTube video description explains, “It would have remained an acoustic guitar-only folk song without Harold Goodman's having written and recorded a killer bass part, which forced me to add electric guitar tracks to the song. Stu Anderson and Scott Jarrett added pedal steel guitar and keyboards, online, through Jamkazam.com. Michael McKern recorded the drums in his home studio space.”
It’s almost impossible to explain how much I dislike video editing and the fact that I’ve only managed to put two of my songs into videos is some kind of evidence to that fact. My friends and I (we call our group thing Downstream Consequences) have managed, so far, to record 41 cover songs and 19 originals since 2000. And you can listen to it all in my Dropbox Original Music MP3 folder. Even download some or all of it, if you feel so inspired. In the absence of an album cover with snazzy artwork, credits, and the usual album stuff, I’ve created a document, “Liner Notes.pdf,” that does all of that paraphernalia in a small, electronic format.
For what it’s worth, I’m adding “I’m An American” to the long list of songs inspired by Trump and the fascist in a long line of protest songs that goes back far before Woody Guthrie and even the labor protest songs of the 1890s. When we can’t do anything else, song, poetry, and story is how we mark where we stand against inequity, violence, lies, misery, and outright evil.
Thanks for your attention to this matter and, Donald Trump and all Republicans, fuck you.
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