Trapped by Jimmy Cliff/Bruce Springsteen

"Trapped" Jimmy Cliff live performance
“Trapped” Bruce Springsteen 2008 live performance
"Trapped" Bruce Springsteen Born In the U.S. A. tour live performance

You never know what you are going to get at a Bruce Springsteen concert. With over two hundred songs in their repertoire, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have a remarkable amount of songs that they can perform. In the earlier days, Springsteen would throw out random songs to his band to play on stage that they often had never rehearsed just for the fun of it.

At age 59, an age when most people decided to play it safe, Springsteen has started taking request. Since the beginning of the Working On A Dream tour, Springsteen has taken time during each show to collect signs from the audience that have requests on them. Some of these signs request old Springsteen favorites while other signs ask Springsteen and the E Street Band to play songs that they have never played before. These performances have a garage band-like energy as the band rocks out to songs from “Wild Thing” by the Troggs to the Clash’s “London Calling.”


During last Tuesday night’s performance at the United Center, Springsteen again took requests. He played “Candy’s Room” responding to birthday wish on a sign and rocked out to “Mony, Mony.”

Any doubt that I had whether Springsteen and the E Street Band was actually playing some of these request for the first time ever were blown away as I watched Springsteen try to figure out what key to play the song. He asked Steve Van Zandt, one of the guitarists in the E Street Band to find the starting chord from a snarled tone that Springsteen kept repeating. Once they settled on the key, he warned that the song may “have a weird part in the middle.” If you ask anyone who saw the E Street Band on Tuesday, they will tell you the performance of “Mony, Mony” was awesome and that the rocking bridge was one of the highlights of the evening.

Out of all the songs that request that Springsteen played there was only one that I didn’t know. Now listening to songs that you don’t know at a Springsteen concert in the United Center can be challenging. It is be difficult to know what Bruce is singing with the speed that he moves through lyrics in some songs and the mediocre acoustics of the United Center. Because of this, I highly recommend that if someone is not familiar with Springsteen’s music and is going to one of his concerts, that they prep themselves and get to know a couple of his more regularly performed songs to enhance the experiences.

So when Springsteen pulled out a sign from his stack that he had collected that had the word “trapped” on it and the crowd went berserk, I was baffled.

Honestly, when I heard the chorus with the word “trapped” being repeated, I thought it was lame. Bruce usually has more subtle and creative ways to describe the feeling of entrapment. I thought the rise through the chorus was powerful and the sudden drop into the verses was effective but overall, the song did not feel significant.

When I woke up Thursday, two days after the concert, one line from “Trapped” kept rolling around in my head: “And it seemed the game I played made you strong.” On the way out the door to go to work, I hesitated and went to my computer to see if by some chance I had a recording of “Trapped.” I did have a live performance of it that I never got around to listening to. After a quick internet search, I found out to my surprise that Bruce did not compose the song and that it was originally written and performed Jimmy Cliff. I downloaded the song from itunes, loaded it on my ipod and ran out to my car.

For Springsteen, a man that rarely performs music that he does not compose, it seemed odd that “Trapped” which he featured in his Born In U.S.A. tour would play such a prominent role in his catalog. Well, after listening to Jimmy Cliff’s recording of the song it made perfect sense.

Jimmy Cliff is a reggae artists and one of most revered Jamaican musicians. He is best known for his cover of “I Can See Clearly Now.” Jimmy Cliff’s composed and recorded “Trapped” for his 1989 album, Images.

Listening to Cliff’s performance the optimism of the song seems to shine through the song. The relaxed reggae beat and Cliff’s gentle soulful voice expresses a sense of calm reflection. Springsteen’s voice on the other hand seems to dwell on the darkness of the situation and feelings of regret which permeate his interpretation.

Cliff is able to express similar feelings to Springsteen but with fewer words. Maybe that is what attracting Springsteen to this song. With all that is going on in the world, sometimes Springsteen’s metaphors are not as powerful as a man singing the word “trapped.”

It’s funny how it took listening to the original recording of “Trapped” to fall in love with Springsteen’s recording. Sometimes people you meet simply make sense when you get to know their parents. In a similar way sometimes it takes getting to know the original recording of a song to find meaning in a different version.

Part of me wishes I had known “Trapped” before I heard Springsteen perform it live, but I’m glad I came to love this song as I did. As great as it is to fall in love at first sight, it’s even more rewarding to change how we feel about things in our lives, giving us confidence in our lives that no matter what how we feel in life we are never trapped in our emotions.