Deliver Me From Nothing

 

Back in the day people made records. Short for recordings. Some were clearly better than others but all of them have their stories. There was no spell-check-auto-tune-digital-anything. But there were always real things and fakes. I guess Nebraska would be considered a real album. I watched "Deliver Me From Nowhere". It's a film that's as bleak as the album. I saw it on the Disney Channel. Somehow that doesn't seem right. But the Beatles live there too now. Modern culture is a strange soup. Eventually they'll make a movie of everything and that will slowly over write all our memories with an alternative version of history. A creeping correction or just another more diluted “visionary” adaptation? I don’t know.

I first became aware of the Springsteen sound when my drug dealer neighbour played "Born to Run" over and over when "friends" visited. Then a rival drug dealer smashed in all of his house's windows one night. The music stopped for a while. I kind of missed it but the kids got a little more sleep. Then I heard "The River". History hasn't been so kind to that song, academics and critics might pan that simple and dark explanation of the times, but in 1981 and at 26 years old I felt I'd already lived every verse. The lyrics strangled me. I stayed stuck for a while. I can't listen to it anymore.

Springsteen rode the myth. He became a stadium act and a symbol. Millions heard his songs, hummed the tunes but missed the meanings. It's hard work to stop and think when there's always another song coming up as the algorithm pushes your taste along in whatever direction. Rich pals fly to New York to attended those rare shows. It's an experience. Springsteen's on your bucket list. He's not on mine because there's no bucket and no list.

So "Deliver me from Nowhere", the film about Nebraska: It seemed honest and paced about right. Troubled families and the monochrome 50s. Familiar shit that I can understand. I just never was gifted with a singing voice that could express those things. That's why I'm sitting here today supping tea and thinking about scrambling some eggs. Memories of factories, fights, family, religion, women and troubles; they haunt me, almost like that famous curse. Those records provided an accurate but mostly unwelcome explanation, but nobody really wants to be understood anyway. It's all this film tries to do now in it's cinematic short-hand. Cut them some slack. Irn-Bru for Coke. A bag of chips for a hot dog. A Volkwagen Passat for a GTO. I've been down in dead man's town too.