Couldn't have said it better

So I will just re-post what IvyTodd posted on Daily Kos.

Springsteen + Wal-Mart= Oh No!
by IvyTodd

Sat Dec 27, 2008 at 08:50:46 PM PST

Bruce Springsteen released his Born to Run album six weeks after I was born, but there is hardly a musical artist I love, respect and seen more in concert. Its a coin flip between him and my hometown boys, Pearl Jam for my favorite artist. I even talked my wife into having Thunder Road as our first dance song at our wedding reception.

IvyTodd's diary :: ::

Part of what makes Springsteen what he is, besides being perhaps the greatest songwriter of his generation (performer too? though I know I missed his prime by far), is he has never fallen far from his blue collar roots. Its evidenced in his songs (most of the Born to Run and Born In The USA albums...you know the lyrics "And boy these jobs ain't comin back") as he writes often about the working man. The acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad album is filled with songs about the working class. Joad was inspired by the book "Journey to Nowhere, the Saga of the New Underclass." What song other than "Youngstown" better symbolizes than what's happening in the Rust Belt:

Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

Lately Springsteen hasn't been at all shy about pushing his political agenda after he publicly stumped for John Kerry in 2004 and often for Barack Obama this year. Springsteen discussed the importance of "truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of every American to have a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, and a life filled with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of home...But today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless and morally-adrift administration."

So imagine my shock, my horror, my dismay, my utter disbelief when I read that Springsteen's new greatest hits CD would be available only at...Wal-Mart?

It had to be a typo. But no there it is on backstreets.com and other blogs.

I won't dare link to the Wal-Mart page, but trust me its there. You can pre-order it now.

Why Bruce why? A career singing about and standing up for the working man, and now you give Wal-Mart a monopoly? Please tell me it isn't so. Everybody with any heart and any gray matter between their ears knows that Wal-Mart is all that is unholy. Wal-Mart is the reason so many people have lost their family wage jobs. Wal-Mart is the reason so many Youngstowns are spread across America.

My hope was that some record executive cut a deal and Springsteen found out about this when we did. That like the backwardness that the record business is, the artist has no say in his own music. I hope, I hope.

But maybe the first stanza of Badlands says it best...

Lights out tonight trouble in the heartland
Got a head-on collision smashin' in my guts man
I'm caught in a crossfire that I don't understand
But there's one thing I know for sure girl I don't give a damn
For the same old played out scenes baby I don't give a damn
For just the in-betweens honey I want the heart I want the soul
I want control right now you better listen to me baby
Talk about a dream, try to make it real
You wake up in the night with a fear so real
You spend your life waiting for a moment that just don't come
Well don't waste your time waiting