The other night this song played on the radio, and I was waiting for my husband and son to get out of Blockbusters, and I really got goosebumps listening to the words...I don't remember paying as much attention to it in the 80's, cause I lived in my hometown...and never thought about leaving it then...so it didn't have the effect on me as it did now, and I thought.. boy ,is it a well written song:
I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown This is your hometown This is your hometown This is your hometown
In '65 tension was running high at my high school There was a lot of fights between the black and white There was nothing you could do Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun Words were passed in a shotgun blast Troubled times had come to my hometown My hometown My hometown My hometown
Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown Your hometown Your hometown Your hometown
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed talking about getting out Packing up our bags maybe heading south I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around This is your hometown
Posted by Devolution (Member # 1731) on :
Devolution here,
I never really got into Bruce, that might be because I considered some of his songs boring.
On an interesting side note: Isis, Congratulations! You are really a parent, you pluralize store names (Blockbusters). My parents say things like "Kmarts" and "Costcos"
WE are DEVO
Posted by cindymancini (Member # 679) on :
Devo, that is so funny because it's exactly like that here where I live...My Mom and I always joke about going to Wal-Marts or Bon-Tons ! I thought it was a PA thing, apparently not. You gotta love it!
Posted by Chris the CandyFanMan (Member # 3197) on :
When I listen to it, it sounds like the foreman's saying the jobs are going "north." Regardless, too true, even today 20 years later. Combine this with "Born in the U.S.A.'s" "things are going bad for us Vietnam veterans" message, and you've got one heck of a politcal statement from Springsteen (who's still bitingly liberal today). One is thus left rather surprised that Reagan misinterpreted it as being rah rah.
Posted by MotleyRulz (Member # 3598) on :
I never could get into Bruce either. Thought he was an overrated musician....
Posted by Mr. Tia (Member # 4374) on :
yup, not a big boss fan.
Posted by ISIS (Member # 1780) on :
Actually I am no big Bruce fan either...infact I never really even liked this song back when it was out, or any other Bruce song...but when I heard it the other night...the words to the song really effected me...I think of my hometown just about every day...my mom was born there and never lived anywhere else (except for when she went to college)...but after that she went back home, and I grew up there, my grandparents grew up there. My great grandfather owned almost the whole entire street I grew up on ....at one time, and the house I lived in, he built it, and there were 3 other houses on the alley way off the main road that I lived on, and my family had owned all of them at one time, and my Grandfather built another one of the houses on that street. So, generations of my family are connected to that town...and sometimes I think it would have been cool to have raised my son there too....that's why when I was listening to this song...it was bumming me out.
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! I thought it was a PA thing, apparently not. You gotta love it!