Bruce Springsteen Nebraska by: Greg DeGraves Tue:27-Mar-07 Label: Columbia Year: 1982 WB rating 80 out of 100

People like to lump things into categories. As a process this categorisation is quite useful: allowing us to quickly handle new information, to predict events and to develop expectations of people. But when categorisation goes awry – it sounds like a soon-to-air reality TV show – it leaves us hanging; witless and stupid; clinging to mule-like stubbornness.

Let me propose an example.

While it is natural to assume that Doris, the crotchety spinster who refuses to acknowledge your existence at the supermarket, is a cranky bitch, this preconception is easily broken if Doris, the ‘Checkout Chick’, appears courteous in future encounters. But, if said spinster continues to treat you with the same welcoming you give an oncoming yeast infection, then your mental description of her as a vile, back-alley whore will likely harden and solidify – forming a seemingly immovable semi-solid lump of loathing and fear at the base of your throat.

Such categorisation is all well and good, unless one day Doris suddenly changes her tramp like demeanour.

At first we may assume that Doris is simply a troglodyte stuck in a virtually permanent state of menopause. And that somehow, serendipitously, we have struck her in a rare hot flush of mania, whereby she is forced to smile and curtesy in anticipation of an imminent full moon. This would explain the mood change but then again Doris is a wily old cow; she may just be fucking with you.

But if Doris persists in acting quaint, we may have to pull that manila folder out from the confines of our head – the space where we have filed our initial analysis of Doris:  Evil; Anti-Semitic; Constant Menopause; Waxes Upper Lip; Virgin – and challenge what appeared to be the oh-so-obvious traits of a detestable lark.

Could it really be that our ever reliable manila folder is now fucked?

If so, we will be forced to actually consider Doris, the low-level employee, as a three-dimensional character; a complex being, subject to the same mild but constant irritation of life as the rest of us. Who knows, maybe it was RSI that put Doris in her original fetid mood.

The point here is this: expectations are devil-spawned (anyone doubting this should recall that tenth birthday of yours, when all you wanted was a train set like that Mongoloid kid up the street. You’d been good, you did all the shit that parent’s want; you ate green food; you got licked by seemingly all-too-aroused aunts; you visited strange smelling relations in moth-infested shacks. You deserved that friggin’ train set, and as a kid you pissed your pants just thinking about speeding that eight-wheeled monolith along that shiny metallic road. You salivated while dreaming about the Mongoloid bringing his train over so you could just crush it and watch it burn; possibly putting his fingers on the track and squeezing them into the melting debris. Sure you were a twisted little fucker, but it doesn’t matter anyway. You never got that train set. You got Meccano and a fig cake. Remember how shattered you were? Remember how that cut open your tiny 10-year-old heart?).

The majority of the public know ‘The Boss’ by his trademark tight jeans and tucked in shirt look, his all-American image and Footloose-style dance moves in the film clip to ‘Dancing In The Dark’. They gobbled up this image like drunks at happy hour, with Born In The U.S.A. selling more than 15 million copies in America alone. America had a new hero; Springsteen was tagged by critics, the public and even pollies as the voice of the working man – a mantra that only Dylan could previously claim.

All of this was criminally misinterpreted, the album’s title track ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ was not the nationalistic pride vehicle that most assumed, it was a biting commentary on the mistreatment of Vietnam Vets, welcomed home by some of the same new fans of ‘The Boss’ with taunts and flying spittle. No matter how many times the song was played it didn’t matter, the people heard what they wanted to hear and the public manila folder on Springsteen reads: Good; All-American Hero; Voice Of The People; Tight Jeans; Bad Dancer.

The thing about the individual manila folder is that it is open to change if you are. If you are wise enough to admit that Doris has possibly been laid, that you have never heard her utter any anti-Jewish remarks and that her upper lip is relatively hair-free, then you’re able to re-categorise and move on.

But the collective folder offers no second guessing. Once an image of Americana is draped on you it sticks. Your legacy? An eternity known as ‘The Boss’.

So, what happens to albums like Nebraska? Acoustic albums that buck the image created on The River and perfected on Born In The U.S.A.; the image of Springsteen as a square-jawed and shirtless rocker?

Well, the public just don’t buy it – in both meanings of the word. Its intimate, folk-blues narration rejected by those who want more of the same; a public who lacked the fortitude to delve into the home kitchen recording studio with ‘The Boss’ and listen to heart spun tales concerning the real heartland of America – the microcosm of the people, their tribulations and the power of belief.

The album just didn’t fit in the manila folder of the public conscious; they missed the real emergence of Springsteen as the working man’s poet, as he had to twist his skills into anthems to reach the mass consciousness.

You shouldn’t fret about this state of affairs. As I’ve re-iterated many times before, the general public are stupid. They should not be trusted when it comes to art or any resemblance of taste.

You on the other hand are not stupid. You know what you did when you got that Meccano? You stashed it in your cupboard for the first week afraid that that Mongoloid might sniff out the remains of your shitty birthday gift. But after that, you puckered up and started building. You used the little engine in that Meccano set to create your own deformed train: part metal, part reinforced corrugated iron. And when you went to Mongy’s house to play trains you delivered on your birthright; smashing his pretty collectible set to the ground with the ugly weight of your mammoth Meccano monster. And even when the kid’s garage burnt down and the public folder on you read: Deviant; Hell-Child; Potential Axe Murderer or Cars Salesman, you could hold your head proud knowing that you that you beat expectation – fashioning more blood curdling fun out of Meccano than you ever could gain from the envy of a bigger train set.

Now you’re an adult, you’d be well served to remember these lessons you learnt in your youth. So, don’t leave Nebraska shamefully hidden in the corner of some Dirt Cheap CD store. Pulsate your hips, pump your fists in the air, tuck your shirt into your jeans; make like ‘The Boss’ in ‘Dancing In The Dark’ and shake with the rest of the morons. Everyone has to let their hair down once in a while. But, when you’re done acting like a monkey, perch yourself and listen to Nebraska – you owe it to Doris.