5: Cry / Dance / F**k

Hey, it's Holly. Just a quick note before we start. If you're enjoying Because the Buss Belongs to Us so far, please tell people. It makes a huge difference to us if you like, subscribe and review the show on your listening platform, and if you literally just tell your friends to listen. We are on a mission, after all, and for the sake of science, we need as many people as possible to go on this journey with us to get Bruce recognized as a queer icon. You can do your bit too.

Because.

This is episode five of Because the Bus Belongs to Us, a podcast where we acknowledge that the world is on fire, no one is perfect. And even though sometimes it's particularly jarring for people with our politics to spend so much time thinking about the queer credentials of a man who neither of us knows personally and whose financial situation and social status is simply unimaginable for us, it's also fun and stupid and a way for us to find meaning and joy in our lives.

In other words, I'm Holly, I'm Jesse, and we're back baby.

Maybe approach it from a hopeful point of view rather than a cynical point of view, Yeah, go with open hearts.

With so much data guidance from our agony anti CJ. Ray last episode, we've decided to complete our mission to get Bruce Springsteen recognized as a queer icon with open hearts.

Before our small crisis of confidence last episode, we decided that Bruce is camp. Our second checkles point was does Bruce qualify for underdog status.

To which we said kind of half yes, yes, his music makes us feel seen, and then no, because maybe the whole checklist point and our relationship to the celebrity is a bit icky.

So now it is time to investigate the next point on our is Bruce Bronksteen a queer icon checklist?

Your queer icons music allows us into our emotions? Can you dance to it? Can you cry to it?

Can you fuck to it?

That's Tom Rasmussin who helps us figure out our checklist in episode one.

Yes, a queer icons music needs to help us reaccess the emotions we got so used to pretending weren't there as closeted queer teenagers, which Tom's so eloquently summed up as dancing, crying, and fucking.

Okay, Holly, one of these three mini questions, Can you dance to it? Can you cry to it? Can you fuck to it? Is a very straightforward.

Yes, Yes, I think I know the one you're talking about.

Okay, let's say it on three one two three? Can you cry to it?

Every time I seem live it's the first time I've ever seen I go goose pimples. You know, I'll get emotional now. It's just when he walks out and he guns up, and I know what's coming, and I still I'd steal well up. See it's a credit. It is madness? Is it really madness?

Please?

Welcome to the show. Our tokens Sis White straight man to fulfiller diversity Quota. It's ser giopep Pinie aka my friend's dad.

I am sixty two and I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen for most of my life, seeing him a good few times. It's got to be in the eighties eighty times.

I think Sergio runs Beppe's calf in London with his cousin Daniello. That's what you can hear in the background. Beppe's is a fourth generation family business set up in nineteen thirty two by Sergio's grandparents who migrated to London from Italy. It's a proper classic London calf full fry ups, paninis, banging samages, tea coffee, juice delicious. I thought, if we're thinking about whether you can cry to Bruce Springsteen's music, we had to talk to Sergio.

There's always a tune that's always gonna make him weep. He came in eighty five. We saw him. Saint James's Park, Born in USA was just massive and we were in seats at the time. I really came out.

I was.

Crying. I was crying.

Can I ask you this about crying? Yeah, go on, I'm just wondering about, like if you was like, it's it's very it's kind of like ritual vibes, right, like following someone around and like yeah, you're going and queuing up before and like being really special and like going to the front and then like waiting for someone like crying. I just wondering whether that's like the space in your life where you do crying.

Oh yeah, no, that's a really good point. I suppose that's where that is where you Yeah, that's really quite cool. Actually, there's something that you you've got something or near mind that you and it just literally opened everything. So my Luke was ill. Luke was ill, we had cancel.

Luke is one of Sergio's sons. He had lukemia when me and his brother Steph were in school together. A few years later, once Luke had got the all clear, Sergio went to see Bruce Springsteen in Paris. It was a Wrecking Ball tour.

Wrecking Ball is the last studio album that saxophonist Clarence Clarence appears on he passed away in twenty eleven, and Wrecking Bowl features the last recorded saxophone solo from the Big Man.

The tour became a kind of dedication to Clarence and all he had given to Bruce and the Street Band. They'd have his empty chair on stage lit up by a spotlight. There was a moment each show where they would project a montage of Bruce and Clarence on stage together throughout the years.

I remember being really close to the front of that tour and I could literally see the tears on Bruce's eyelashes.

When Serge went to see him in Paris, one of the first songs he played was a track of that album.

Called We Are Alive, a song that gets into the pin beauty and hope that comes with grief.

They couldn't talk to me for I reckon half an hour. I reckon I missed the show. What is brewing inside you? Just it must connect somewhere. There must be a release of emotion that he sings. And then you, yeah, you think of your family, or you think of a problem, or you think of a situation. He's got a spell over the audience.

There's a couple of songs and the edge of town where he's being like wailing. But does this like screaming? And when I have like an emotion to process that I don't have words for yet, I'll just put one of those songs on and just scream in my room as loud as I can. And it's just like released. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, no, no nose.

Obviously you know you were emotional. Because he's emotional, you are drawn in and once you're in, it just sucks you in.

You got no chance.

It tempts you to look to, it brings you in, It brings you in, chaws you in, and then you're double for.

And in your DUBFA. I think as simple as that, really, So.

He do you told this he often saves up his emotions, knowing he'll get the cathartic cry of released that he needs next time he goes to see Bruce live.

Every single time I've been to see Bruce live, I've seen men crying, which sadly is quite a rare thing to I.

Know we've been focusing on Bruce as a queer icon, but I do think this is a real gift that Bruce gives all of his fans, this window into accessing emotions that, for whatever reason, are hard to face.

Yeah, there's something so beautiful about how his music helps all kinds of people cry, not just queer people.

Which I think definitely makes him iconic. But let's be scientists for a second. Yes, of course, in order to be certified as a queer icon, Bruce brings to his music needs to help people access emotions that they have learnt to repress in some kind of coping mechanism around queer trauma.

Okay, well, I've released Bottled Up Anger, crying and shouting along to bad Lands at his live shows.

I've finally let myself cry after a breakup, lying curled up on the floor listening to Drive all night.

I've cried for my lonely teenage emo self dancing to No Surrender with my friends, and then rolled right through to continue crying to the next song on that album, Bobby Jean.

I've cried missing an experience I never got to have listening to Walk Like a Man.

I'm crying right now thinking about how much he's helped me access parts of my more difficult emotions over the years.

You can definitely cry to Bruce Springsteen.

You can definitely cry to Bruce Springsteen. Next, can you Dance to Bruce Springstein?

It was Shinky Shonky, a trashy pop queer club.

This girl came up to me with these pomp poms, sort of femin looking girl, and she just sort of disappeared and beckoned me to follow her.

That's after the break. We're back.

We've split our good music queeric on checklist point into three Can you dance to it? Can you cry to it? Can you fuck to it?

We started with the easiest, Yes, you can definitely cry to Bruce Springsteen. Now we're on Dance.

And Tamsin. I'm one half of Unskinny Bop.

Hi am Rudy.

I am the other half of Unskinny Pop.

I took Jesse to meet two absolute legends of my life, Rudy and Tamsin, aka DJs and founders of Unskinny Bop, a queer club night in London that's been running for over twenty years centering fat queer weirders. Rudy and Tamsin are also a couple. You heard Tamsin starting to tell

Oh, I was because I did not the traditionally pull at shinky shonky. And then she just disappeared and revealed this face looming up.

At me that would be Rudy's face. The hot fem with pomp poms was in fact Rudy's straight sister in law.

She probably said something along the lines of your vice, you fancy me mate. I'd seen Tamsin across the dance floor and I think she was one of about three girls in the place to be killed. But I'd seen her and was like, oh my god, look at that American girl. She's so cute, and she had these like cool glasses and she.

Just looked America.

I was wearing a mohair polar neck so then we ended up chatting for a bit. You had a Christina Ricci homemade necklace on which I was quite impressed by, and we bonded over the fact that we both really liked Letigra and yeah, and that was the beginning of the rest of my life.

Rudy and hams In are those kinds of queers that are just properly obsessed with music. They started djaying together and shared their frustration that they weren't seeing themselves represented in a London queer clubbing scene.

This is bullshit.

There should be something about like how cool fat people are. And so from that idea we were like, let's do a disco celebrating fat people in pop and.

Let's call it on Skinny BOPO.

At one point we were going to have a tape measure on the door, which like you're only allowed in if you've got past to sell, and we decided that was a bit much, so we ditched that on and it was like the it was the formation of like our queer community friendship group that like as much as much as it was about like doing unskinny boppets, how we met all of our friends.

All the people that we now consider like our best friends, who we've known for twenty years. That shared interest, that shared politics, and shared tasting music as well, like is what really formed those bonds.

It's just that thing of being on a dance floor and screaming out lyrics with people and you all like the same songs, and it's a bit too hot, you're a bit too close together, You're screaming in each other's faces.

It's beautiful.

Queer club nights. Queer dance floors hold so much power in this way that dancing and the dark lyric I was so obsessed with as a teenager. There's something happening somewhere, babe. I just know that there is. That came true for me on Skinny Up. It's where I found so much of my queer community. And not to be all suppy, but I actually met my partner screaming meat laugh into each of the's faces at the Buck.

And sometimes we know it will clear the dance floor to play I don't notice slater kiddie album tracker like quarters to two, but we know that there are, like there will have been somebody there who's been badgering us all night and they have been dancing all night to everything, and we will they.

Deserve, but we do like to reward people.

Are you talking about me? Not even?

Not even?

I don't know.

I think there's something about being obsessive about music when you're like technically an adult that is very queer. I think some straight people do it as well, but I think it's like quite a thing for queer people that we like. That's part of how we do our queerness.

In a way, this is a queer thing that actually transcends music. I think I'm definitely someone who just doesn't know how to love things and not amount and I love other people who are obsessed in the same way.

Yes, exactly literally, that's why we're friends. This whole pocus is proof that we do not know how to just casually like something.

Tams In and Rudy are obviously the same. So when it came to Bruce and where the queers can dance to his music, they had a million opinions.

I think there's maybe a longer history of femininity being like queered, shall we say, I think it's like a newer phenomenon as part of dyke culture to be like queerying masculinity in a similar way, it's like that Dike camp thing, which I think Bruce like. So you know some of the outfits that Bruce has on. It's just such classic dyke looks in terms of like songs themselves. I think it's like there's got to be a bit of camp in the either camp or pathos, and ideally like a bit of a mix of the two.

A tiny producer pup in here we interviewed Rudy and Tamsin in their home. Well, some pretty serious building work was going on. You might hear some funny noises in the background.

I mean quite often we have wanted to play Born to Run and I've said, no, it's not gonna not gonna work.

Like in the moment it would. We really disagree on this point. Have we not DJed it? We must have?

But it doesn't it It dies a death. Holly is the only one dancing. It doesn't have I'm going to say the word that you don't like grooves.

It's a screaming your lungs out on the dance floors.

That's true.

That's the point of it on a dance floor, is it's more like you jump and scream.

Yeah.

The one that we've dj' the most is danced in the dock, and we've never had a point where I've never regretted.

I'm not going to get this.

I think it's the Y word yearning. His esthetic is I am alienated from love and from society. I mean, I've got a Bruce inspired tattoo from racing in the streets on my on my leg.

It says easily found. And it's just it's just a little gap filler. But like there's something about that.

Line where she wants to see me tell her I'm easily found. Is like my yearning is so craven and so desperate, and it is so obvious that it should be this like lighthouse to the people that I want to love me. That's how that's kind of like how I relate.

To that in a moment that.

I've just realized it's darkness on the turn, not racing the street.

But now I realized that, I was like, oh no, but you know, edit it, well, you can edit away. But they're both both those songs. They both convey that same energy.

To me, well, they actually belong together.

There's two sons really that their book and each other. It's the same character, the same woman he's singing about, the woman that's in Racing on the Street is the one that's left him in darn.

Thank you for validating me.

Okay, So DJ Legends on Skinny Bop say yes, yes, yes, you can dance to Bruce Brinsteen's music. And even more than that, the lyrics have got enough queer meaning in them that Tamsin got them etched in to her skin forever.

But for tams In, just because his music is great doesn't necessarily make him eligible for icon status.

I'm on the fence, you know.

I firmly believe that there are like sort of five or six Bruce songs that are queer anthems that I love and will love till the day I die. But I don't know if it makes him an icon. I don't know if I would describe as a queer icon.

Uh.

Yeah, we're running into the same problem we had in episode three with Naomi Gordon lerbul There just is a difference between getting meaning from someone's songs and making the person who wrote those songs into a queer icon.

I love streets of Philadelphia the song, was completely in love with it.

Bruce wrote Streets of Philadelphia in nineteen ninety three for the film Philadelphia, the first mainstream film to tell the story of a gay man during the AIDS crisis.

I guess he put his neck on the line to associate himself with a film about a gay man with AIDS at a time when you know, a lot of big names would not have touched that.

I love him for that, and he's you know, he's a good egg. Might not be a far right.

There you go, there you go.

Okay.

So Bruce has a track record of showing support for the queer community, and we feel like we can dance and crit his music. But for tams In, that's still not enough for icon status.

What would be enough? That's next, Jesse Holly, because the bus belongs to us. We know that.

Queers can definitely cry and dance to Bruce Springsteen, but we're unsure about whether queer is liking your music is the same as being a queer icon who makes good music. We are scientists. We need to dig deeper, get more granular. We need someone on a new level of technical analysis.

I was actually just playing around with the drums for one of the tracks in the podcast.

This is Alex.

I make music as talk bizarre. I'm making the music for this podcast, this delightful podcast.

Alex is someone who I can only describe as a musical witch. They understand sound like no one else.

I like learned how to process my feelings first and foremost through kind of reflecting it back to myself in music form. My strongest language, I think is music and sound before like a. I don't know. I'm struggling to talk about it because English is my second language.

Our executive producer, Jasmine J. T. Green went to visit Alex in their music studio slash bedroom in Little Haiti, the heart of Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Welcome to my home, my home, my studio, the place that I should probably leave more. Can see that I've been expanded. Oohoo, there's no room. You walk in through the doors and you are instantly met by a tall tower of synths, on top of which is a fashionista ken. This was a birthday present when I had longer hair, and I kept it in a bun. My dad just couldn't get over it, I guess, And so for Christmas one year, I received this illustrious fashionista Ken with a bun.

Oh my god, So the energy of Bruce is literally in these walls.

Yeah, Alex made almost all the music you hear in the podcast, even including the little checklist sounds we're using.

It's such a tough brief through musician to make a body of music which is a nod to and a celebration of Bruce Springsteen and his queer repeal without actually copying any of Bruce Springsteen's work.

A fun thing that came out of it for Alex was I started hearing Bruce's songs in a whole new light.

I had a great time going through the archives and like actually listening to what's happening. The drum sound like this, and the reverb sound like this, sound like this, sound like this, big classic gated reverb on the snare. I got to get really like nerdy and granular and vnular. There's so little happening. Actually, every time I like approach music with like a critical Okay, if I was gonna make this, how would I make it? Kind of brain? Nine times out of ten I come back with the

So the interesting point figuring out if Pruse is in fact a queer icon is that like a queer icon must make quote music that narrates a certain part of a queer person's emotional life. This idea totally hits for me, Like I'm thinking about like the moment when I was like a little kid. My queer icon and still to this day is Anita Baker. Oh Yeah, particularly rapture for me as a child who could not express herself with words out of a degree of fear, trauma, et cetera,

Yeah, I think I'm all in on this criteria. I think that often the music that pulls me out of dissociation maybe fits into kind of like two camps. I guess both of the directions that I will take kind of existed at a similar point in my life when maybe I I was also actively learning to bottle things up. One direction is like Joni Mitchell sad Girl, Like I

Where does Bruce fall into this mix?

It should, of course, first be said, I grew up in the greatest state in this here Union, New Jersey. Home of Bruce. I grew up just outside Princeton, in Princeton, right on Nassau, very close to Hogi Haven, the place that changed my life. There was a bust of Bruce that was It was in that the gas station. For a while. It was like at a roundabout kind of nearby. I don't know where it is anymore because I haven't really been in a while, but Bruce was a presence

I'd say there's nothing more queer than that, right.

I think that is right. Yeah. I've been able to access a lot more enjoyment in Bruce world as I have come to terms with masculinity and what it means for me. My relationship with Bruce has changed because I understand like Camp and like this is something silly, right, Like what machismo is is silly, and we can also have fun with that. So that's been the arc, and now it's fun, and now I'm having fun.

I didn't know any of this Bruce backstory when I first met Alex. They're the partner of one of my best friends in the world, and we were introduced in a way. I've become accustomed to you, which is something along the lines of, hey, Jesse, Alex likes Bruce Ta.

I love Bruce as much as I am critical of Bruce the first time I met Jesse lu By the end of the night, we were screaming thunder Road together in a subway station. Bruce is so much more than Bruce. Music is contextual. Music leaves the person making it and becomes something that is actively created and fortified by everyone else who engages in it. And I love thunder Road not just because Bruce said it, but because we all get to say it to each other there.

I have always said that the queerest thing about Springsteen's music is the wailing. There's this specific kind of howling scream that he does which just goes right through me every time it comes up in a few songs something in the Night that Jesse mentioned when we talked to Sergia.

And Backstreets, he's really hitting that scream over and over again, and it's delightful and it's like, oh, yeah, me too. It's literally the sound of abusing your vocal cords. It is the sound of pain, literally what I was like

To be honest, for me, this technical musical analysis of Bruce's scream is credit enough to say that his music qualifies for queer icon status. If the broad question is does their music make us feel things that we've kept hidden from ourselves for fear of shame, rejection, or danger, then I honestly challenge anyone listening to go and play Backstreets or something in the night and not be moved by that sound that Alex just described so beautifully.

Yes, I agree, But we weren't just here for the technical details. There is one more important question we needed Alex to answer. We've said you can dance to Bruce Springsteen.

We've said you can cry to Bruce Springsteen.

You could totally fuck to Bruce go to town, but I can't do that. There was a bust of him in my local gas station. It's too close to home.

So that is a no for you. In regards to putting Bruce on the Sex SCE mixtape.

I don't see it for myself, and as much I know you know, I'm pretty open minded, I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

You better know we were prepared for this Queers and Stem deal. In evidence. To secure our findings, Alex listened to three songs that we think could be included on a world class sex playlist.

Okay, so I've just started playing I'm on Fire.

Song one. I'm on Fire from the album Born in the USA.

You've got the like palm muted guitars, and the like gentle mellow. Since it sets the scene it's nighttime, you've spent hours looking into each other's eyes over at Martini. Oh, Bruce just started singing, Yeah, he's really tender in this one. I can fuck to this. Yeah, I have to go.

Check you can fuck to I'm on Fire. The second song is Prove It All Night from Darkness on the Edge of Town.

I am less immediately down to fuck to this. It's like a little too cheery and bubbly for me. He started to sing, He's got more of the like I'm Bruce and I'm having fun and it's working. But it's a little too close maybe to like all the funny connection that have in my head to Bruce. So this one doesn't make the cut for me. I think.

Okay, so we're in one yes and one not. Let's see if we can get a majority without a last song from the album the Promise.

I have just pressed play on Fire by Bruce Springsteen, and this feels more fuckable than our previous entry. It's still got a bounce, It's got like that kind of muted bass. It's really round. The tambourine is doing its thing, keeping things moving, but it's a little less in your face than prove it all night, which I appreciate. I need my own room to spread out in however I would like, and Bruce is allowing me that we've picked up. The snare has entered. It's propulsive. There's a little organ

All right.

We have proved in this episode that you can dance, cry, and fuck to Bruce Sprinsteen's music.

In other words, Bruce Bingstein's music can and does help us access the emotions we've learnt to associate from due to being queers who live in a homophobic and transphobic society.

So that's basically three out of four items on our checklist fulfilled. Bruce is camp. Even if Bruce Sprinksteen himself is somewhat still a question mark ari being rooted for as an underdog, there is a sense of struggle in his lyrics and stories that we vibe with as queer people.

And we basically decided it was a bit icky anyway to root it and tootle around for struggle in celebrities personal lives. So that's it, Yes, and I'm too underdog.

Status And we've just spent this episode conclusively proving with scientific eviddents that you can dance, cry, and fuck to Bruce Springsteen's music, and that his music helps trag us back from years of association.

All we have left is to see if other queer people would be willing to recognize Bruce as a queer icon.

To how do we go about doing that convincing.

That's next episode, Because the Bass belongs to Uds.

As a production of Malton Hart and iHeart Podcasts were hosted by Jesse Lawson and Holly Cassio.

The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and created by Jesse Lawson.

This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson, with production assistants by Tess Hazel. Michelle macklum is our mix engineer.

Our original music and theme is by Talk Bazaar at Talk b a z AAR Underscore, and our show art was designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio at Holly c Asio.

Fact Check in Serena Solin. Legal services provided by Rowan, Moran and File.

Our executive producer from Modern Heart is Jasmine J. T. Green. Our executive producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman.

Don't forget to review the show on your podcast platforms.

And tell your friends to listen. It makes a huge difference. Bye bye bye