Bruce Springsteen
Devil & Dust

FARCE, FOLKLORE, AND MYTHS FROM PANINI STICKER ALBUMS.

I admit it: I have never been a big fan of the Boss, and I own just 5 of his CDs: "The River", "Born to Run", "Nebraska", "The Ghost of Tom Joad", and this latest one, "Devil and Dust". I have never been fully convinced by this philosophy of a sweaty, muscular working-class guitarist, a child of that American Way that, from the '50s onwards, took root even in Italy, in literature, design, music, and clothing. These songs with two/three chord verses, choruses, verses with shamefully standard, not to say banal, arrangements have never persuaded me. Songs that were good "before" — perhaps, when everything was still to be done, to be discovered, the "western" epic of the early pioneers, rolling up sleeves and working hard, spitting on the palms of the hands. Before, "blues" had a meaning, the nihilism of the early songs of the tortured blacks of the South, the country and folk of the early '70s. Now less so. Much less so. Now it's (almost) all farce. Farce, folklore, and Myths from Panini sticker albums.

It's a farce when a billionaire multi-owner of apartments, bars, restaurants, and ranches, owner and shareholder of majority stakes in various American holdings, basically, someone like that who "plays" at singing to us about the homeless, about lost America, the lack of values of a betrayed and violated America (always bringing up this September 11). Someone who "acts" by dressing in jeans and a leather fringed jacket and who "enjoys" still treading the stages of half the world for the "staging" of yet another repeat of the script that "everyone expects from him". A "skilful showman" who started from nothing and made it all by himself: the incarnation of the American dream, still possible and still making us poor little Italians dream, grappling with the national Berlusconi clowns or the Fassino phone calls, or the Big Brothers from Mediaset or the family doctor soaps, or the various wheels of fortune.

He's a product, you'll tell me. Just like many others, actually, all in all the least worst. And even more. It's precisely in front of this Fair of Italian Mediocrity that products like this, all in all, stand out. Not for the authenticity or the good intentions that animate them (beware: there's always business underneath, there are the marketing offices, the advertising agencies, foreign agents, graphic departments, PR agencies planning interviews etc., don't worry, there are thousands of people on the Boss's payroll!) but because, all in all, they speak "to our imagination", they speak of the "stereotypes" we Europeans want to hear "from an American". The same reason why abroad films by Benigni, Tornatore, or Salvatores (very Italian) were successful in America: they talk about Italy in the '50s, evoke the ghosts of NeoRealism that still haunt us, reiterate the caricature of Italy as Americans want to imagine it, all pizza, spaghetti, noise, and beautiful women. An Italy, like an America, that in fact, no longer exist but that bothers us more to admit than to ignore. But we insist on believing it because that's what we love. This historical regression, this desire to stop time when everything was "better", more genuine, more true. The desire to still feel "like in those days", do you remember?

And then YESsss, let's stage these myths and legends. Let's have fun with the "Lonely Hero" with a big hat and boots, who plays a dusty guitar, in a colonial-like shack with a suffering and resigned face with a three-day beard (the result of the skillful work of 3/4 hours of good makeup artists from specialized production houses), dressed in a few rags (half redesigned and sewn just "to look rustic" with a stylist following) as seen in the video for "Devil and Dust". But yesss. It's all fake, I know it, you know it, everyone knows it, but the important thing is to know that THAT'S FINE WITH US. And so let's enjoy yet another masquerade on the DVD attached to the CD, armed with popcorn and big drinks, which, all in all, won't be super original, but it's still one of the few American dreams we can still afford. Without taking too seriously the words and music of this New Harlequin servant of 2 masters.