Brendan

“It is thus inevitable that the New Man of rock ’n’ roll was incarnated in the mid-seventies in the figure of Bruce Springsteen, a singer-songwriter whose principal merit was that of showing us the entire DNA map of American music. There is not one paradigm of modern music that he did not bend to comply with his personal narrative urgency: rockabilly, soul, rhythm and blues, punk, folk, country, pop, jazz . . . Springsteen does not change popular music, he incessantly reworks it, keeping its roots alive.”
― Leonardo Colombati, Bruce Springsteen: Like a Killer in the Sun: Selected Lyrics 1972-2017

“Although the denazification process was widely reviled in Germany and beyond, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the logic of Nuremberg was revived in postcolonial contexts under the name of transitional justice, which repackages criminalization and victim’s justice in the language of human rights. The”
― Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities

“The atmosphere in the hall is electric with anticipation, as it might be for Bruce Springsteen at a sold-out concert or at a public appearance at Buckingham Palace by the queen of England. Indeed, this hall is also packed with breathless and enthusiastic devotees. But the star the audience is waiting for is not a musician or a queen, but a simple-living, elderly rabbi—the Rebbe or grand rabbi of the exclusively Hasidic village of New Square, New York. And what he will do is not entertain but simply light a Chanukah menorah.”
― Joseph Berger, The Pious Ones

“The Boss is the perfect blend of Elvis and Dylan, come from New Jersey (America’s armpit) to save the seventies from further Mellotron arabesques and Minimoog, with a stars-and-stripes ass to die for snugly fitted jeans on the cover of Born in the U.S.A., the minstrel descending the Lincoln Memorial staircase to crown Obama, the knight in shining armor for the Super Bowl halftime show, the musical equivalent to fried chicken wings and the E pluribus unum motto engraved on the national crest.”
― Leonardo Colombati, Bruce Springsteen: Like a Killer in the Sun: Selected Lyrics 1972-2017