The Groanbox Blog

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Reelin' and a Rantin'


Well, we finally bit the bullet and started a blog, primarily to disseminate to the world all that encompasses the Groanbox Boys ethos, but also to humor our egos.
Mainly, we'll use this as a forum to express our creative musings, and to rant and rave about all that rattles the Groanbox id.

First diatribe: who does Bruce Springsteen think he is?
We're on our way to our final recording session yesterday, when we run smack dab into a billboard advertising Springsteen's latest atrocity: "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions". We begin to seethe. It's just plain wrong on so many levels!! First off, "We Shall Overcome" is a protest song written by Pete Seeger during the Civil Rights movement, and the fact that Springsteen has hijacked it and is capitalizing off of it is sickening. Secondly, the Seeger Sessions? Springsteen has taken a bunch of songs written or sung by Seeger and turned them into an album. I wonder if Seeger, the famous folk singer and political activist blacklisted in the McCarthy era, is in his heart of hearts OK with this?
The question is: why, pray tell, would Springsteen release something like this now? Could it be because the music execs/producers around him have done market studies showing that the 18-34 demographic is now shifting to more traditional acoustic-oriented music after having been inundated for so long with the loud, sappy, superficial pop music that Springsteen himself was (and still is) a purveyor of?
As folk musicians trying to remain true to ourselves and unfettered by the unruly forces of market trends, it was disheartening to see this poster yesterday (but by no means, a suprise). This ire, however, is nothing compared to the wrath we'll feel when he starts playing the freedom boot or gourd banjo!