Though sometimes with a roar, rockers ripping on other rockers is rare, despite what the many trumped up headlines online tell you, would-be pundits pumping incipit stories with quite little bite that instead demonstrate there is no real beef between the parties involved. Not like Hetfields vs. the Real McCoys.
But these days when politics get involved … The real Real McCoy, Kid Rock called out Springsteen, who called out Trump, who called up Musk, who dressed down many thousands with firings, and beefed up with funding and manpower ICE, who pulled out an even greater number, with those (mostly) illegal immigrants to be deported..
But let’s start with The Boss, and its not Trump. From stage of a pack show in Europe, positioned between sound speakers, he roundly denounced Trump and his administration, but frankly could have been even tougher on him. The language used in the criticism was kind of on the nice side, all things considered.
Still, both Trump and Kid Rock used much harsher language to shoot back, and Trump even said that Springsteen has no talent, and that he would face a just-as-harsh reception when he gets back to The States from his tour of concerts in other countries.
Now wait a minute. Springsteen has no talent? Clarence Clemmons would roll over in his grave and use his sax to blow Trump off the golf course.
This has been the same tired old tack used from all from conservatives to cops to say that rockers are not musically gifted, when the opposite is obvious. This even more than the usually misguided criticism of their lyrical message shows that the ones Fighting the Foo and friends have little credibility.
Springsteen has said that he speaks in favor of Democrats and the disadvantaged when the times call for it. That’s when he gets political, which is when he’s often at his best. And it doesn’t just end with Born In The USA, which unless you are living in a cave you know is critical of the US role in the Vietnam War.
Other examples of people just simply having no clue as far as critiquing music are much earlier, before there even was much of such a thing as death metal and the like, when a St. Paul Pioneer Press family-life columnist ripped on Marilyn Manson, and a police group raked on Rage Against The Machine. Manson was said to be found, by his curious rock-newbie son, to be seen as a non-talent when the young gun actually got to the concert venue, and such a show was actually banned at Somerset. When Rage raged, the cops were simply mad that the band had rallied against the wrongful death of a man at their hands. The powerful but spot-on lyrics made me wonder if I could even get away with singing the song, at times explicit, at karaoke. Like when a deejay, based on the lyrics-misunderstood complaint of his wife, refused to honor a request that I sing Closer by Nine Inch Nails.
Lastly, a group back in the day when there weren’t ones around every corner had their show cancelled in Hammond. What agaian? The Amish Armada proved at a later gig that did go on in nearby River Falls, to have one of the most entertaining shows, although a little raunchy, I had seen to that time. (There were questionable doings with a plastic doll, like if you add a second one, trending toward the reference by Trump that kids should suck it up and help absorb the hurt of tariffs by not having 30.) But the anti-band hype was just that. By the way, do you get the upshot of the irony of the name? The Amish do not live near hardly any large bodies of water. But an entertainment editor at the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram was spooked by the complaints of the locals and herself didn’t get it, so she nixed my story and called while I was on vacation to complain to me.
The Amish Armada, a group of talented mostly high schoolers, in a way that resonates greatly now, about three decades later, viewed themselves as a spoof but I saw something more and deeper in their original lyrics, which often spoke against colonialism.
Changing tune …
And aiming at such lyrics about now sea-faring farmers? Topical today. If you can get the goods produced, such as produce, across those seven seas fast enough. With tariffs, and the fact they’d go into effect literally a tick of the clock past midnight (which time zone?) on a day that was a deadline, well put, for exactly when the duties rate would almost double, the clock would start ticking the moment they left port and would hit the high seas, with the upshot being ships already on the ocean would not be subject to the increase. So the duties of the deckhands would include scrambling across the deck fast in the middle of the night to get past that last lakeside buoy in time. Whatever floats your boat.
And gets it to turn around, like a canoeist with just one paddle, pick left or right side, and ends up going in a circle. The case was something like this, one would think, if warships deployed in the midst of the long and quickly changing series of ceasefires, or especially those hauling away to-be-imprisoned deportees, had their orders and directions reversed because a court just met and overturned them. Could have even convened just after midnight, a time close to that when lawmakers got together over that Big Beautiful Bombastic Budget Bill. Of course such a reversal is exactly what also happened when a busload of deportees courted by a court, heading south and not for spring break, ending up abruptly turning around and heading home back north. Think there was a bill in Congress to have a new exit ramp constructed on the spot to allow a split-second U-turn. For once they’d be getting something done quickly.
That bus trip went bust just like that. It could happen again if you take a different road and head east to look at another series of busts, those figure-heads of presidents set in the stone on Mount Rushmore. It has been proposed that Trump’s mug be put up there as well, but it most certainly would be vandalized like oh so many Teslas. I think that was a rider on a bill to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Oh wait, that wasn’t a bill. It was an executive order, part of which was to have the author put himself up on a mountaintop. After all, Trump has to simply wave his magic wand and things happen. Look how to has made America great again, given us the best economy ever, made grocery prices go below zero …