For some time now I've been urging my fellow Jersey Shore resident Bruce Springsteen to get a hobby.
I realize the winters can drag on here at the Shore, especially when that cold wind comes off an ocean that doesn't warm up till July.
But Bruce has to find something to do to keep him busy enough so he doesn't dabble in politics.
In this 2011 piece on one of Bruce's failed forays into the political arena, I suggested he follow the example of former Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman and get into amateur archaeology. There's a creek not far from his Colts Neck crib where you can find lots of fossils.
I also note in there that if he wants to get into the realm of political criticism, he might want to look at the record his drummer Max Weinberg has compiled as a rapacious real-estate developer.
Instead the Boss is getting a bit too bossy. It's one thing to say you disagree with that decision by North Carolina politicians to restrict people to the rest rooms that match the gender on their birth certificates.
It's quite another to cancel a concert over it.
Faced with the same choice, Jimmy Buffett simply said he didn't like the law but would play the concerts anyway. Buffett is from the Deep South, Alabama to be precise, so he's learned not to get too judgmental about regional foibles.
As for Springsteen, a lot of this seems to me to be an effort to get people to realize what a wonderful guy he is for taking such a politically correct stand.
That's nice and all, but from a rock-and-roller's standpoint if you're going to start boycotting states, how can you do concerts in the many states that still outlaw marijuana?
I suspect that thousands more people are affected by marijuana laws than by rest-room regulations. And those people are hauled off in handcuffs and locked up, sometimes for years.
So there's an idea Bruce. Play all your concerts in places like Colorado and Washington, D.C.
If you grab your girl and go barreling down this road near Bruce's Colts Neck estate, you'll hit a dead-end. It's a cul-de-sac with million-dollar homes.
Second thought, cancel Washington D.C. I went to a Springsteen concert there a few years ago and I was shocked to learn that cops were cracking down on people for drinking outside the stadium.
Did they expect you to watch Bruce totally sober? Apparently so.
Not only that, most of the fans didn't seem to mind.
I realize most Springsteen fans think his concerts are really wild events, but they're like funerals compared to Buffett's concerts.
I suspect Buffett would boycott that joint just on principle. Half the fun of his concerts is the parking-lot scene beforehand. It's particularly lively at his annual summer concert in Camden, where the cops are too busy dealing with real crime to bother Buffett fans.
The rest-room issue has been hashed out to death in prior blogs.
So let mere hereby offer another topic of debate.
I have long argued that Springsteen, while an excellent performer, is really a second-rate rocker. I'll grant that he's among the very best of the second-raters, but he still doesn't qualify as one of the musicians responsible for major innovations in rock.
Look at the Beatles, for example. They popularized the concept of the self-contained band that wrote its own material
The Stones? They adapted the blues format for rock-and-roll.
Jimi Hendrix: The dominating guitar sound combined with great songs.
Even Buffett offered an innovation that can be easily identified. He combined Caribbean music with country.
As for Bruce, what did he do that was new?
I suppose I've seen him 30 times going back to 1974, when he had just two albums out. He seemed on the verge of creating some new rock form that incorporated some great jazz piano.
But by the next album pianist David Sancious was gone - as was the great drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez, replaced by "that headache machine" Weinberg, as some critic once tagged him.
Still "Born to Run" was a great album. As it happened, I saw him do it on July 4th, 1976, at the Stone Pony.
It seemed that ever-greater stuff was to come. Alas, that was not to be. That was easily the best Springsteen show I've seen.
He wrote a lot of good stuff after that, but it had no unifying theme - or at least none I can identify.
But perhaps you can. So here is my challenge: Describe Springsteen's contribution to the development of rock music in 10 words or less.
Either that or find him a hobby.
COMMENTS: No one seems to have succeeded in summing up Springsteen's innovations, if they exist, in 10 words. Please limit your comments to that length. I am honestly interested to hear them.