Have you heard Bruce Springsteen’s keynote? I want to hear your thoughts.
Springsteen Speech SXSW
It oughta be required listening for anyone who has ever loved/listened to/written a single note of rock music, in all it’s forms. Because… and pardon my french, but after listening to The Boss’s uninhibited slang I feel at some liberty to follow suit… it’s so fucking important.
Highlights for me:
He discusses the “genesis moment” that a musician has, when he/she hears that one band, or that one song, that “initially inspires you into action”.
For me, ironically enough, that moment was early in my life being exposed to my parents’ music blaring out of the jukebox in our basement, and my brother’s records (at the heart of which was The Boss himself). And so goes the proverbial passing of the rock and roll baton.
Some other notables, for me:
On Roy Orbison who taught him that: “Life is a tragedy, broken up by moments of unworldly bliss.. I was half right. It wasn’t life. It was pop music.”
Perhaps my favorite quote, one which slinkily slipped by, to my surprise, without a single audible acknowledgement of it’s sardonic tone, was his thoughts on Soul music (and even more-so, perhaps, on modern “pop” music?):
“It was the music of gritty determination. Of the blues, of the church, of the earth, of the sex-soaked heavens. It was adult music. It was sung by soul men and women…Not teen idols“…
Kudos on that one, Bruce 
