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Watch Bruce Springsteen Win SXSW with Arcade Fire and Tom Morello

Bruce Springsteen's SXSW 2012 keynote

After sexagenarian legend Bruce Springsteen delivered his SXSW keynote speech, he took over the Moody Theatre in Austin to perform to a relatively tiny crowd of 3,000 festgoers. By the time he got to the last song in his 26-song set (eight of which composed his encore alone), the Boss had amassed a veritable dream team of politically-leaning artists, including members of Arcade Fire, Jimmy Cliff, Tom Morello, Eric Burdon of the Animals, Joe Ely, and Alejandro Escovedo. They, naturally, performed “This Land is Your Land,” which you can watch below (via Consequence of Sound). It’s Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday, and Flaming Lips did the same thing this week, albeit with a technological twist.

As SPIN noted previously, Arcade Fire is down in ATX to deliver a post-SXSW lecture at the University of Texas at Austin on the sociopolitical climate in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. Given the Boss’ political bent of late, the band’s SXSW performance with him was an appropriate precursor to the lecture.

We also highly recommend watching Springsteen’s SXSW keynote speech below. As the folks over at NPR note, he uses lots of swears in the self-penned address, in which he argued, certainly more poignantly than most old-guard dudes decrying the fate of the industry, that there really is no single “keynote” to be had in the music world anymore.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rWVp7NBp9XU

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