Collin Kottke: All-Around Swell Guy

30th Anniversary Retrospective of Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA

In preparation for this writing I want it to be known that I did a lot of research. I listened to Born In The USA three times today, twice by CD in my car and once by vinyl at home, which probably is more commonplace than special, but I still call it research.

Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA album turned 30 years old on Wednesday (June 4). Born In The USA is the most successful album of Springsteen’s career going off of sales. It’s a diamond record going over the platinum threshold fifteen times. The album spurred every song he’d release off of it to the top of the charts. Plain and simple, the album made Bruce Springsteen a household name and a real commercial success.

Most hardcore Springsteen fans will tell you that Born In The USA is nowhere near close to being his best album musically or artistically, but after doing my research today I must admit that Born In The USA is more than just an in to the Bruce Springsteen world. Everyone knows the album cover and therefore Bruce’s ass, but everyone also knows about the classic songs.

Born In The USA

If you are ever feeling patriotic this is an easy go to. Being a Springsteen snob, this song sometimes annoys me. The title track wasn’t the biggest single off the album, but it seems that whenever you bring up Springsteen to someone who isn’t big into Springsteen they start belting the chorus.

The interesting thing about the song is that it might not be that patriotic if you actually listen to it. It’s quite a sad song sang to an upbeat musical score. It’s a hidden message of sadness, something that Bruce Springsteen does better than anyone else.

On The Charts: #9

Favorite Line: You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much, till you spend half your life just covering up.

Cover Me

When the Minnesota Twins were playing against the Yankees in New York last week, the game went into a rain delay. The grounds crew rain out to cover the field with the tarp and this song started playing over the stadium speakers. For a moment I loved the Yankees or at least the Yankees’ game ops. It was a weird moment.

Covering a baseball diamond is a weirdly perfect presentation of this song. In the song Bruce sings about being desperate for someone to cover him up and just get lost in their love. A baseball diamond needs that too. This desperation is so vivid and strong and is only emphasized by the sound of emergency in the music.

On The Charts: #7

Favorite Line: Turn out the light, bolt the door. I ain’t going out there no more.

Darlington County

References to prostitution, women and working. If that’s not enough to suck you in, the fun in the sound should be more than enough. Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s a fact that every song that has a ‘sha la la’ in it has to be loved by the masses. I still don’t know why Wayne disappears for a week, but I’m thinking that it has to do with one of those things that Bruce references. I’d say it’s probably the first one I list, knowing Wayne’s fate.

My favorite line in the song was kind of ruined by the national tragedy that inspired virtually all of Bruce’s 2002 release, The Rising.

On The Charts: Song was not released to radio

Favorite Line: Our pa’s each own one of the World Trade Centers, for a kiss and a smile I’ll give mine all to you.

Favorite Line 2.0: Driving out of Darlington County, seen Wayne handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford.

Working On The Highway

A couple years ago some publication, probably Rolling Stone, had a slideshow feature kind of thing on ‘the songs that even Springsteen die hards don’t know’. One of those songs was entitled ‘Child Bride’ which was written for Nebraska or at least during that time period. It probably isn’t as perverted in nature as it could be, but the gist of it is that the girl is underage as is easily guessable. ‘Working On The Highway’ is basically the same exact song just Born In The USA-fied.

Y’know how her daddy says she’s just a little girl and she knows nothing about this cruel, cruel world. Also the narrator was taken in the black and white and the judge put him straight away. It’s because the girl was too young. Bruce points out in ‘Child Bride’ the following, ‘well they said she was too young, she was no younger than I’ve been’, but that doesn’t stand up well in a court of law.

Bruce again hides the story rather well in the happy-go-lucky sound of the song. When listening to ‘Working On The Highway’ perversion doesn’t exactly cross your mind, but it’s there waiting behind the hammering guitar at the end of every line.

On The Charts: Song was not released to radio

Favorite Line: I went to see her daddy but we didn’t have much to say. “Son can’t you see that she’s just a little girl, she don’t know nothing about this cruel, cruel world”

Downbound Train

God, I love this song. It’s another one of those really depressing love went wrong and it sucks songs and I absolutely love it. I don’t know what that says about me. I add my love of the song up to my love of The Boss, trains and one line in this song.

The bridge of the song is so vivid that it’s almost scary. Bruce never made a music video for ‘Downbound Train’, but I can see in my mind Bruce running through the forest to this old house that he used to live in. I think that’s what really good songs do for the listener. They provide a vivid movie in your mind that doesn’t need to be supplemented by a music video.

On The Charts: Song was not released to radio

Favorite Line: Now I work down at the carwash where all it ever does is rain.

I’m On Fire

The closing song to side one of the album, if you go the vinyl route, and an insanely popular song. Bruce again pens a song desperate for a girl and it kills him not to be with her or at least there is a burning sensation of some sort without her.

It’s such a simplistic song. It’s straight forward which isn’t a thing that Bruce does a whole lot of. The directness of the song almost cuts like the edgy and dull knife he talks about in the song. Plus, the music video to this song is masterful. Bruce Springsteen as a mechanic is basically a picture of the ideal America.

On The Charts: #6

Favorite Line: Tell me now baby is he good to you. Can he do to you the things that I do? I can take you higher.

No Surrender

If you want a good song to start side two of a record, I’d say that ‘No Surrender’ is a pretty good choice. The drums in the beginning are awesome and instantly grab your attention for the rest of the ride.

It’s a combination of rebellion and perseverance. The start of busting out of class is a feeling that anyone that has ever had any kind of schooling can relate to. As the song progresses so does the time line, but they aren’t going to give up. They’re not going to surrender.

I hope a high school graduating class used this as their class song somewhere. It’d be perfect for that occasion. Let’s pray some group of Bruceheads got to their class out it New Jersey.

On The Charts: Not released to radio

Favorite Line: We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.

Bobby Jean

It’s widely believed that Springsteen wrote ‘Bobby Jean’ about Steve Van Zandt, who needs no introduction but is Bruce’s right hand man guitarist and co-producer on many albums. Little Stevie was leaving the band at the time and allegedly this was Springsteen’s way of saying goodbye. It was a strong goodbye.

‘Bobby Jean’ is one of those songs that you don’t really understand, or as some would say ‘get’, until you’re a little older. Once a little life happens, you start drifting away from people or people are gone. I think Bruce puts that feeling of someone being gone perfectly in this song.

On The Charts: Not released to radio

Favorite Line: I’m just calling one last time not to change your mind, but just to say I miss you baby, good luck goodbye, Bobby Jean.

I’m Goin’ Down

Girls are out there, man. This is probably a well-known fact, but one that men don’t go saying to everyone because, frankly, we don’t want to be slapped. Springsteen illustrates the whole ‘what the hell am I supposed to do, honey’ side of the argument. Maybe what he is supposed to do is the sexual innuendo that is in the title… Are we supposed to ignore that?

Apparently, people we’re giving Bruce grief that he kept releasing singles off the album with this being his sixth release off of it. There’s an argument to be had there, but if the people want more stuff off of Born In The USA, give them more. Bruce responded by releasing another song off of the album to radio after ‘I’m Goin’ Down’.

On The Charts: #9

Favorite Line: I’m sick and tired of you setting me up. Setting me up just to knock-a knock-a knock-a me down.

Glory Days

‘Glory Days’ is the more fun, laid back cousin to ‘No Surrender’. It has that same kind of vibe of ‘we’ll always be together’ type of thing, but yet brutally honest about nostalgia. Bruce points out that nostalgia is fun, but maybe there’s more to life than reliving it. He later admits he does the same, because that is how life works. Life was fun when you drove too fast, drank too much beer and could do things athletically that you can’t do now.

The song is fun for me two years out of high school when you can see this happening a little bit already. I can’t wait until the 40th and 50th anniversary of this album, so I can look back and tell you all how much I love the ‘Glory Days’ and how badass I was. I wasn’t that badass.

PS. Bruce calling a fastball a speedball is one of the most adorable things ever because no one ever called a fastball a speedball until now and that’s because of him.

On The Charts: #5

Favorite Line: I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school. He could throw that speedball by you. Make you look like a fool, boy.

Dancing In The Dark

I don’t know if ‘dancing in the dark’ is a sexual innuendo because it’s just that obvious. Apparently people love sex, because ‘Dancing In The Dark’ is the highest charting song in Springsteen’s career. There’s more to this song than just sex though. Bruce hides this need for sex a little bit behind his discontent, need for change and depression. It’s virtually a pouring out of his soul that life sucks, but, hey, I can go have some sex and that’s kinda cool.

Also, I’m pretty sure that Springsteen refers to his penis as a ‘gun’ which is awesome and about the ballsiest thing you can do.

On The Charts: #2 (that’s right, Bruce Springsteen has never had a #1 hit)

Favorite Line: You sit around getting older, there’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me.

My Hometown

Neil Young recently did an album that he recorded in an old-timey recording booth owned by Jack White called A Letter Home. The album features a bunch of covers including one of Springsteen’s ‘My Hometown’. Rolling Stone called ‘My Hometown’ a third-tier single from Springsteen and that Young should have done anything off of Nebraska instead of this song for his acoustic album. Pretty strong words for one of Springsteen’s best charting songs.

‘My Hometown’ has the small town feel to it. I can relate to it coming from a corn field. Well, everything but the racial violence thing which is a weird lyric to include in the song, but that’s beside the point. Stores closing and people getting out are still very prominent to a lot of small towns across this country. That might be the magic behind a lot of Bruce’s music, it’s still relevant 30 years later.

On The Charts: #6

Favorite Line: He’d tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown.

Born In The USA was insanely popular. It’s one of only three albums ever to have seven singles make the top ten on the Hot 100. Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 are the other two.

It’s no Born To Run musically, but I probably have Born In The USA to thank for my getting into Bruce Springsteen. I think all current day Springsteen fans have a lot to thank Born In The USA for. The popularity of this one album fuels a lot of fans to go to Springsteen concerts and let real Tramps enjoy him for a long, long time.

Depression and love are intertwined throughout this album, subtly some ways and other ways not so. Nebraska shows the obvious depression, Born In The USA hides it and laughs it off and Tunnel Of Love shows that love can be found. Bruce Springsteen had a very interesting 1980’s.

I’m going back to my research now. I have only a year and change until the 40th anniversary of Born To Run. More importantly, a year and five months until the 20th anniversary of The Ghost Of Tom Joad.

MSHSL Screws Over BLHS Two Point Ohhhh

For once in my life I felt like Craig Ferguson this morning. I woke up to a tweet and emails telling me that Buffalo Lake – Hector – Stewart was moving to 9-Man in a couple years. This move does explain why the Mustangs were placed in the district that they were. It even crossed my mind that Renville County West was 9-Man but I assumed their rise and not the fall of my beloved high school. Despite me getting it wrong, in my previous posting, the Minnesota State High School League still got their districting wrong.

In 9-Man football in the state of Minnesota there are the guys way up north and there are the guys that are so close to Iowa that sometimes you have to pray for them not to be swallowed up by the children of the lot of corn. It doesn’t take a geography major, or maybe it does, to tell you that BLHS and RCW are a lot closer to Iowa than to Canada.

The Mustangs shouldn’t be taking on Hancock or Underwood for the homecoming game, but Fulda or Nicollet or Madelia. Welcome to the South District.

The West District currently has 21 teams with all but four of them being south of Mankato and Rochester. West Lutheran High School is in the north suburbs (they get screwed over wherever they get placed), Randolph High School is just south of the Minnesota concrete jungle and there is Cleveland and Nicollet which are virtually just north of Mankato.

The two teams based around the Twin Cities screw up the natural split of the district. There is an obvious east and west division coming with one going from Albert Lea/Austin to La Crosse and the other from Mankato to Sioux Falls. BLHS, RCW and possibly MACCRAY should all be in the Mankato to Sioux Falls subdistrict.

In the last post I pointed out that Rothsay is the furthest away in the obvious subdistrict being 164 miles from Hector. The longest travel in the subdivision the Mustangs would be in the South is 150 miles to Hills-Beaver Creek. Hills – Beaver Creek is by far the team that is the furthest away and is still closer than Rothsay.

Like I mentioned earlier, the two schools that are in the Cities makes the split a lot tougher to find for a subdistrict, but a common BLHS football schedule would be: Cleveland, Nicollet, Madelia, Granada – Hutley – East Chain/Truman, Mountain Lake Area and then a combination of the Cities schools and Westbrook – Walnut Grove and Fulda, the hometown of Patrick Reusse.

It’s becoming clear that BLHS was placed in their new district based on enrollment more than anything. BLHS has the fourth highest enrollment in their West District, but would be number one in the South according to the State High School League’s numbers.

Not by much though, Mountain Lake Area claims 140 for their enrollment while BLHS sports 147. A handful of other teams are in the high 130’s and 120’s.

It is 147 miles from Hector to Austin. It is 139 miles from Hector to Brainerd. The problem in those eight miles is that BLHS fans should never have to travel to Austin with the subdistircts, but BLHS will be traveling consistently to the Brainerd area

The South District simply makes a lot more sense for BLHS and RCW. We’d much rather play the Iowa Hawkeyes than the Winnipeg Blue Bombers… Mainly because the Hawkeyes are a college team and the Blue Bombers are a Canadian pro team, but that’s beside the point. They are weird up there. Haven’t you seen Fargo?

Here’s the map of the Mustangs’ new West District.

Here’s the map of where they should be playing in the South District.

MSHSL’s New Districts For Football Does No Favors For BLHS

UPDATE: Sources tell me that BLHS will be switching to nine-man football in two years, so in reflection of that this plan does some sense sense. It still does a screw job on BLHS and RCW, though.We’ll explore that in a new post coming quite soon.

Hey, Buffalo Lake – Hector –Stewart football fans, are you ready for 2015 Homecoming against Hancock High School? How about 2016 against Underwood High School? How do you feel about traveling just went of Brainerd to see your son play under those Friday night lights? Well, you better like it because that is what a 10 person committee under the direction of the Minnesota State High School League has just assigned the BLHS football team to do.

On Monday, it was announced by the High School League that they have adopted ‘District Football’ scheduling for 2015 and beyond. The claim is that this is to help some smaller schools in the state that were having trouble filling out an eight game football schedule every year. The High School League puts it on the small town schools, but what they did to BLHS makes it seem like it was so that Eden Prairie doesn’t have to fly to Winnipeg, Canada to play another team.

The High School League divided the state up into 18 districts taking into account the size of the school and apparently location. The Mustangs were put in the West District with 26 other teams in the state. The kicker of it is that along with the Mustangs, Renville County West and MACCRAY are the only teams in the district that are south of St. Cloud.

The districts are tasked with breaking into subdivisions, assuming that the district will break into south and north divisions, BLHS will have the following teams to play during the regular season: Renville County West, MACCRAY, Hancock, Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley, Wheaton Hermann Norcross, Brandon-Evansville, Ashby, Bertha-Hewitt, Verndale, Underwood, Hillcrest Lutheran Academy and Rothsay.

If BLHS and Rothsay were to play, one team would have to travel 164 miles one way. By the time the bus departs after a football game the visiting team would probably not arrive home until around 2 AM.

On the Minnesota State High School League’s website it says the following on its post about the districting process, “More than 90 percent of the schools’ requests were met, and a significant majority of schools were placed in a district with most, if not all, of the schools that they now play.”

BLHS didn’t play a single team in their new district in 2013.

The High School League did this in an attempt to even out the playing field, but it really does screw over a little team like BLHS. Gone are the rivalries with Cedar Mountain/Comfrey, New Ulm Cathedral, Sleepy Eye Public and Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s and instead the biggest in-season rival now for the Mustangs will be RCW.

All those now soon-to-be former rivals of BLHS are in the same Southwest district, a district that barely reaches south of Mankato instead of reaching all the way up to Thief River Falls, a district that would be perfect and really the same as what BLHS currently has.

The bright side for BLHS is that in the district placement, they are one of the big dogs enrollment wise. BLHS will be the fourth biggest school enrollment wise in the West district, where they’d be 12th out of 19 if magically placed in the Southwest.

When undergoing a big task like this someone is always going to get hurt. It just happens to be that a couple farm schools down on 212 didn’t quite grab the attention of the districting squad. It just seems wrong that the country boys have a better chance of playing a team on the Iron Range than taking on the kids on the other side of the corn field.

For more on the Minnesota State High School League’s new district program for football click here.(you may need to click on District Football at the top to stop it from scrolling)

To see a map of where all schools in the new district for BLHS are click here.

The Minnesota Sports Attitude Has To Stop

The infamous weeping blondes. Picture via: http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/900*619/7patr1221.jpg

David Ortiz taunted us. Not even on the baseball diamond or even about baseball. Big Papi taunted the Minnesota sports fan about basketball on Twitter. The former Twins first baseman/DH turned Boston Red Sox DH took time out of his feud with Tampa Bay Rays ace David Price to troll the seemingly helpless Minnesotan. Oh, how far we have fallen.

As we open up June in the state of Minnesota, a couple storylines run wild amongst the rubes: how horrible Joe Mauer looks and what in the world is going to happen to Kevin Love. The faces of the Target Plaza franchises are currently the talking points and points that aren’t exactly good for them personally or for their current franchise.

It’s been ten years since the Minnesota Timberwolves were in the NBA Playoffs. Never say never, but it will more than likely be a four or five year absence before the Minnesota Twins return to play in the MLB playoffs. Hell, the Vikings look to be in a rebuilding year, so we might as well throw that in here, too. This is our outlook. Our very Minnesotan piss poor outlook.

We ignore the Golden Gophers winning the NIT tournament despite it being Richard Pitino’s first year as coach. We ignore Jerry Kill getting the Gophers back to bowl games and building back up what Tim Brewster tore to the ground. We ignore the fact that the Minnesota Wild won a playoff series, their first in ten years. We ignore the Minnesota Lynx who have been to the WNBA Finals three years in a row, won two of them if you hadn’t noticed, and are the only undefeated team in the association in 2014. Snap out of this crappy attitude people.

It’s sports. The ball won’t always bounce your way if we want to be cliché, but there’s no reason to have this poor, poor pitiful me attitude about the sports teams in this state. Success ebbs and flows. Not that long ago, the Twins were winning division championships, the Timberwolves were making the playoffs every year and the Vikings had a boatload… of talent.

The Wild will win a Stanley Cup sooner than later, they are way too young and talented not to. The Twins have Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano and a field of dreams of prospects coming up the pipeline that we lead this team to the playoffs again. Give it a couple years of fermentation and a couple years of Aaron Rodgers getting older, the Vikings will probably see the top of the NFC North soon enough. If the Timberwolves pull off the Kevin Love trade right, they should be setting themselves up for success sooner than later as well.

Has it been a longer valley of defeat than most, God, I hope so, but let’s stop being an easy stomping ground for Big Papi slam tweets. It’s hard to imagine, but maybe one day the Twin Cities can steal the hashtag Ortiz used and claim themselves to be: #CitiesofChampions.

Postcards From The Past: Greetings From Buffalo Lake, Minn

As I get older, I get more interested in the history that came before me. This might be because I now have a little bit of history to share with the world myself or maybe I’m just becoming more curious in things that actually matter instead of the typical teenage and twenty-something drama.

Recently, I went down one of those endless rabbit-holes the internet provides. The severe weather warning sirens had gone off in my dorm, that brought about me telling my roommate about the Buffalo Lake tornado and I couldn’t remember what year it was, so naturally I googled it. I found the date and read about an hour’s worth of material despite living through the darn thing 11 years ago.

My search for the tornado lead me to Google Images which brought me to generically searching for images of Buffalo Lake. This first actual picture that is seen is a shot of Main Street from 1908. I’ve seen this picture multiple times, but never investigated more. Eventually, I landed on the Minnesota Historical Society’s website and multiple images of my hometown that I had never seen.

Instantly an image jumped out to me. A lovely postcard illustration of what Buffalo Lake, the actual lake, used to look like. The Minnesota Historical Society says that the postcard is from the 1940’s, but Buffalo Lake’s official website says that Renville County drained the 40-acre lake sometime in the 1920’s to provide more acreage for farmers.

It took my interest because I instantly knew where this was. I haven driven by that location a thousand times, but my whole life it’s been a field. Sometimes during a wet spring, it has looked like a lake, but by my Google Earth approximation this is where the illustrator was standing all those years ago.

I don’t know how embellished this drawing is. I find it hard to believe that we had well-manicured flowers right along the roadway and that the shoreline was that perfect, but maybe our work ethic has fallen off that much even here in the hardworking Midwest.

My formula has the hill that you see on the left hand side of the postcard being where the cemetery on County Road 8 is currently. The hill across the lake is now the trees that are located across the field. County 8, the road that leads back home, has been straightened out over the years it seems.

A second postcard popped up. All I can figure is that this had to be from a little further north than the initial one.

I love my hometown. I still believe it’s one of the most beautiful little towns that I’ve ever set foot in, but in her younger days, oh boy, she sure was pretty.