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I first saw and met Brucie long before he became popular at a small and crowded New Jersey nightclub. He was then a Bob Dylan wannabe, an impressive one at that, and I thought at the time that I and others at that club were discovering a major new talent. I liked his first two, maybe three albums, but the more I listened the more uncomfortable I became, without being able to articulate it in words. Keef's remark defined it for me. Contrived, like Steely Dan, who are kinda proud of that (go figure!)

The moronic bait above sent me to the antonym dictionary searching for an antonym to "contrived". Evidently, there is no direct antonym, only this:

"INDIRECT (VIA affected) -> unaffected, natural -- (free of artificiality; sincere and genuine; "an unaffected grace")"

Bruce, in my view, is a middlesized talent who was hyped by Landau and Wenner into a god. Like all middlesized talents in popular music, he was good for a couple of albums. Like Bob Lind before him (y'all remember Elusive Butterfly?) he should have disappeared after that. But the hype machine was in place, and, after the political disappointments of Dylan, the Stones and others, his politics, which expressed themselves in his music, were perfectly in lockstep with the infants at the media, so there he is now. But he reminds me less of Dylan than of Johnny Cougar, another manufactured star, who to his credit remade himself into John Mellencamp and a champion of the working class as well.

But if anyone feels or wants to feel affinity with the working class, I would recommend listening to authentic country music instead of these poseurs and in particular to somebody like Aaron Tippin, a real down to earth singer and songwriter. Or as another FReeper once sagely advised: don't like popular music? Listen to unpopular music!