Album Of The Month - Motorcycle Highway Songs

Flashback
Album of the Month

The Ghost of Tom Joad
Bruce Springsteen
CBS

Despite the fact this album debuted just a scant 16 years ago in 1995, the songs ring even truer and more relevant today, with all of the economic woes, unemployment, and a splintering of the American Dream. By the time you read this, Sturgis will be coming up and there’s no better collection of songs to take on a road trip to remind ourselves of where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and who we are. On the title track, Bruce takes the central character from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and places him in the context of today:

Men walkin’ long the railroad tracks
Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back
Highway Patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin’ round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest
No home, no job, no peace, no rest

He even incorporates the speech Tom gave at the end of the movie to sum up the plight many of our friends, neighbors, and us have experienced. In “Youngstown” Bruce sings about the decline of a once proud town, which could also be anywhere else in the U.S.:

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard’s jus scrap and rubble
He said, “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won the country’s wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we wondering what they were dyin’ for

Other songs deal with the plight of immigrants, hope abandoned, and dreams dashed. But the important thing this album provides, especially on a road trip, is to remind us that after all we’ve been through, we’re still standing, and we’re still riding. Listening to these songs while on the road provides hope and gives each of us the chance to reflect on our own personal situations. These days, there’s a lot to bitch about. But there’s just as much to be thankful for as well.