Thurles Information

Lyrics And Vocals: American singer, songwriter and guitarist Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen rightly named the “Boss”.

I personally welcome and strongly supports Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis”, released as an urgent act of witness and solidarity with Minneapolis, a city now in distress, and with immigrant neighbours who have been left feeling exposed and afraid.

In his accompanying statement, Mr Springsteen dedicated the song to the people of Minneapolis and to “our innocent immigrant neighbors,” and to the memory of Mr Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Mrs Renée Nicole Macklin Good.

This song release matters not only for what it condemns, but also for what it protects; the idea that a community is more than its sirens and headlines, it is families, friendships, small kindnesses, and the ordinary love that holds a place together when the temperature drops and the pressure rises.

In that sense, “Streets of Minneapolis” lands like a fierce kind of love letter: not romantic in the shallow sense, but a vow that people are worth defending, and that grief should never be met with total indifference.

Mr Springsteen’s words and the song in its framing are explicit about the moral claim he is making and we stand with that claim, and with the principle behind it.
Artists should/must be free to respond to public events, to challenge authority, and to stand visibly with those they believe are being harmed.
There are moments when politics becomes personal; when a city’s name is spoken like a prayer; when strangers hold the line for one another; when a song becomes that “comforting hand on a shoulder”.

Streets of Minneapolis.

Streets Of Minneapolis.

Through the winter’s ice and cold,
Down Nicollet Avenue,
A city aflame fought fire and ice,
‘Neath an occupier’s boots.
King Trump’s private army from the DHS,
Guns belted to their coats,
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law,
Or so their story goes.
Against smoke and rubber bullets,
In dawn’s early light,
Citizens stood for justice,
Their voices ringing through the night.
And there were bloody footprints,
Where mercy should have stood,
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets,
Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,
Singing through the bloody mist.
We’ll take our stand for this land,
And the stranger in our midst.
Here in our home they killed and roamed,
In the winter of ’26.
We’ll remember the names of those who died,
On the streets of Minneapolis.

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on,
His face and his chest,
Then we heard the gunshots,
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead.
Their claim was self defense, sir,
Just don’t believe your eyes,
It’s our blood and bones,
And these whistles and phones,
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,
Crying through the bloody mist,
We’ll remember the names of those who died,
On the streets of Minneapolis.

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law,
But they trample on our rights,
If your skin is black or brown my friend,
You can be questioned or deported on sight.

In a chant of ICE out now,
Our city’s heart and soul persists,
Through broken glass and bloody tears,
On the streets of Minneapolis.

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,
Singing through the bloody mist.
Here in our home they killed and roamed,
In the winter of ’26.
We’ll take our stand for this land,
And the stranger in our midst.
We’ll remember the names of those who died,
On the streets of Minneapolis.
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis.

END.

Let compassion be stubborn, to let dignity be non-negotiable, and to let love for neighbour outrun fear.

Donovan’s ‘Hitchhiking Song’ – “To Try for the Sun“.

Donovan’s “To Try for the Sun” doesn’t come roaring in with big declarations, rather it arrives quietly, carrying the kind of determination you only really notice when it stays with you.

Released in the US in January 1966, the single backed with “Turquoise,” gives us a song that feels like a soft-spoken pledge, “Keep moving, even when there’s no proof the road will lead you anywhere”.

To Try for the Sun.

Lyrics and Vocals: Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer, Donovan Phillips Leitch, known mononymously as Donovan.

To Try for the Sun.

We stood in the windy city, the gypsy boy and I.
We slept on the breeze in the midnight with the raindrops and tears in our eyes.
And who’s going to be the one they say it was no good what we done?
I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun.
We huddled in a derelict building and when he thought I was asleep,
He laid his poor coat round my shoulder, and shivered there beside me in a heap.
And who’s going to be the one, that says it was no good what we done?
I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun.
We sang and cracked the sky with laughter, our breath turned to mist in the cold.
Our years put together count to thirty, but our eyes told the dawn we were old.
And who’s going to be the one that says it was no good what we done ?
I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun.
Mirror, mirror, hanging in the sky, won’t you look down what’s happening here below?
I stand here singing to the flowers, so very few people really know.
And who’s going to be the one they says it was no good what we done?
I dare a man to say I’m too young, for I’m going to try for the sun.
We stood in the windy city, the gypsy boy and I.
We slept on the breeze in the midnight, with the raindrops and tears in our eyes.
And who’s going to be the one, they say it was no good what we done?
I dare a man to say I’m too young for I’m going to try for the sun.

END.

The song is tied to Donovan’s early, uncertain years, around Hatfield, Hertfordshire, U.K., his busking, hitchhiking, sleeping rough at times, and learning how to persist before anything “works out”.
Alongside him was close friend and fellow traveller David “Gypsy Dave” Mills, part of the shoestring, unconventional arty style life that fed directly into his earliest writing.

Donovan later described “To Try for the Sun” as essentially a hitchhiking song, and even clarified that its “windy city” isn’t Chicago, it’s Manchester. That detail keeps the track grounded: real roads, real cold air, real miles.

The hitchhiking of the 1970’s for the most part here in Ireland has faded, shaped by reported safety fears, a culture of distrust, and the sheer availibility and convenience of cars and modern travel.

The song’s message still lands, hope without hype, and a simple decision to always keep trying, anyway.