todays irony

figured on kittys back for piss breaks 1 & 2. that i instead stood through the entire thing slack-jawed and happily immobile is todays notable irony.

new york city serenade

there is no other place on the fucking planet id rather be than this loud fucking arena has always been the magic of bruce and i havent felt that magic in 10 years. but standing in front of the stage under them big madison square garden speakers i was 16 all over again listening on my aiwa headphones and hanging on to every life-affirming breath.

21 aprils ago

my first show. and pretty much all i ever needed to know.

tunnel of love
be true
adam raised a cain
two faces
all that heaven will allow
seeds
roulette
cover me
brilliant disguise
spare parts
war
born in the usa
tougher than the rest
shes the one
you can look (but you better not touch)
im a coward (when it comes to love)
im on fire
one step up
part man part monkey
walk like a man
dancing in the dark
light of day
born to run (acoustic)
hungry heart
glory days
love me tender
rosalita (come out tonight)
detroit medley
sweet soul music
raise your hand

protest songs

pete nice sent me the same (blah) dream set list xmastime talks about here. fuck that noise. the entire tour should be scrapped (unless of course dude calls in the wondermints). i read he rehearsed johnny 99 and seeds and i aint got no home (my favorite cover) but that shit aint enough. ever since bruce was first tied to obama ive expected a song to top atlantic city. the jon stewart working on a dream only fueled that fucking fire. i suppose if it werent for the great seeger sessions i never wouldve suggested such a thing; instead i would have only tilted my head at the thought of another ghost of tom joad or devils in dust. but fuck man, time to channel this populist thing. and not with one more cathartic running of the warhorses. what i want is for bruce to pound a beer or two, knock out some timeless shit from his living room and save the next free-form rock tour for tracks fucking 2.

state of me

ao scott on neo-neo-realism:

Neorealism rests equally on the acknowledgment that life is hard and the recognition that life goes on, that there is something in human nature that will persist in the face of defeat.

In the ’50s and after, Visconti and De Sica — and Italian cinema generally — moved on, to bigger stories and more elaborate productions. The Neorealist impulse, however, proved remarkably mobile and adaptable. It might be thought of less as a style or genre than as an ethic that finds expression in various places at critical times — touching down in Bengal in the ’50s and early ’60s and infusing the work of Satyajit Ray; migrating through Brazil in the ’60s, Senegal in the ’70s and ’80s and Iran in the ’90s; surfacing in the recent waves of post-Soviet cinema from Romania to Kazakhstan. But in the United States, Neorealism has sent up only fragile shoots, popping up at the edges even of what is habitually and somewhat misleadingly known as independent film. Historians will point to outliers like “The Exiles,” Kent MacKenzie’s 1961 drama about Native Americans living in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, or Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” (1977), a small masterpiece steeped in the details of black working-class life in Watts. These films, and a handful of others like them — David Gordon Green’s “George Washington” (2000) and Jim McKay’s “Our Song” (2001) serve as more recent examples — offer not only bracing, poetic views of real life but also tantalizing glimpses– of a cinematic tradition that might have been. Their local, intimate narratives remind you that, in spite of the abundance of American movies, there is an awful lot of American life that remains off screen.

as if taken from a favorite novel or from the songs of a favorite songwriter these have always been my favorite movies.

born in the usa

xmastime:

Today being the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War along with my post below about Born in the USA made me think of when Dave took me & Op to meet Bruce – Dave bopping in the room and easily settling onto the arm of a couch and me & Op standing, looking petrified like we knew we were about to be forced with a gun to kiss each other. Anyway, that show was on March 7, 2003, so 12 days before the official kick-off to the war.

Now, for a few years up to this point Bruce has been playing Born in the USA in what some consider it’s original form, the solo 12-string slide guitar version that was meant for Nebraska. So when between songs Bruce started talking about the war and I picked up that he was gonna play the song, I kinda thought “piss break.” But he was talking about the mistake we were making, and then a fucking vein almost popped out of his forehead and he said “This is a song called Born in the USA” and Max’ snare snapped and what followed was one of the angriest 5-6 minutes I’ve ever seen in a show before or since. Full-on band. Dude spit every word. And it wasn’t cute, and nobody sang along, and it wasn’t “anthemic.” It’s the song I most remember from that show, and it was bone-shattering. Like it was meant to be. Like it always was.

he sang upright as if death were fine enough so long as he said what he fucking said while the other sang all curled up and affected like and i thought this is why i never dug the cure or any of that stuff cuz id rather be hit in the jaw than fucking hugged to death.

context

on jan 12 i wrote:

i like bono but ive always thought he fancied himself some mad irish poet which he aint of course. too wordy. too needy. too fucking schmaltzy.

on jan 24 the irish times said:

And unlike Bono, who has a fascination with America that displays itself as a cloying neediness, Springsteen understands that country intimately. It means that Springsteen is authentic and authoritative in a way that Bono can never hope to be, no matter how much he mentions that he’s from the northside.

thank you for reading our blog but please dont use our shit out of context.

bruce bruce bruce

suddenly a new 60s pop record plus the idea of 12 breathless minutes feels like elvis and the animals and mitch fucking ryder and the first time i ever saw dude.

At rehearsal he strutted across the stage: testing banter, brandishing his guitar, belting lyrics and jiving with Mr. Van Zandt. As the band finished a run-through, someone holding a timer called out the length of the set. “We’ve got one-sixteenth of a second left,” Mr. Springsteen exulted. “And we plan to use it.”

balboa vs the earthslayer

bruce has always been loyal to new material so i predict hell play a song from working on a dream. (then again he sort of gave up on magic last tour.) the others i figure will be roadhouse rave-ups like ramrod or darlington county but not born to run. though i can imagine dancing in the dark in the dark. i can also imagine a brand new land of hope and fucking dreams-type song.

new song (solo)
something from working on a dream
rave up/cover rave up

working on a dream

gone are the days when long waits between bruce records meant a glut of good songs. now its lets go go go cuz dude aint getting any younger and his 60s muse wants to fucking twist. ive said all along magic is underrated and i suspect working on a dream will be overrated but a combination of the two on the usual schedule would have been great:

side one:
radio nowhere (magic)
livin in the future (magic)
youll be coming down (magic)
girls in their summer clothes (magic)
good eye
my lucky day

side two:
working on a dream
this life
tomorrow never knows
surprise, surprise
last to die (magic)
long walk home (magic)
the last carnival

inauguration

were heading to the mall today and i heard bruce might do a woody guthrie song and i also read he soundchecked the rising but if ever there were a time to roll out a new song for all fucking time.

greasy album of the week

working on a dream, bruce springsteen.

the soaring epic that kicks things off is cormac-lite or some watered-down re-imagining of the re-imagining of brad pitt as ned kelly. fuck that. give me tales of skinny roosters hellbent on glorious death! other than that the record is a comfortable continuation of his new found atavism. a shame though that he didnt make one record from this & magic; the result of which would be something to talk about.

[slices: working on a dream & surprise, surprise]

working on a dream

for the last 20 years bruce records have all had some bloat (save for the seeger sessions). a very good record could have been made from lucky town and human touch. the ghost of tom joad often felt contrived. the rising was important but suffered from moments of forced levity. half of devils in dust felt like a rehash of his worst moments. but then came the underappreciated magic, a record that finally felt like a proper record; partly due to its manageable length and partly due to a sound that suggested phil spector, brian wilson and a younger bruce. i really have no opinion one way or another regarding brendan obrien but my favorite bruce songs of the last 20 years are the atavistic joints he produced: countin on a miracle, girls in their summer clothes and now working on a dream. for each there is no deep insight, no lyrical greatness, just the right balance of words and sound to capture a feeling, which is what bruce does best.

a night with the jersey devil

bruce shares writing credit on this new song with gene vincent; my dream of him paring down to a raucous 3-piece just got one crippled step closer.

land of hope and dreams

i have never seen better shows than those on the reunion tour. they were loud, loose and unpredictable. though at the end of each he usually played the same new and unrecorded song: the rambling land of hope and dreams. i dug the song from the start, thinking there may never be a better summation of his music than those 10 triumphant minutes. most people made for the exits. i never understood that.

soon after that jersey show i found a bootleg at generation records (back before file sharing) and sent a mix of bruce shit (that led off with land of hope and dreams) to my high school basketball coach. we never talked about it. and i never thought about it. two years later 9/11 struck. land of hope and dreams was the first song i played. on 9/11 five years after that my coach died suddenly of cancer. during the funeral his pall bearers began the procession only after 10 minutes of land of hope and dreams. i cried the whole fucking time. over beers afterwards i was introduced to a close friend of murphs. he told me about murph burning the cd i gave him, and how land of hope and dreams reminded him and others of murph. it was one of those typical bruce moments that my sappy ass is always thankful for, one that seems to tie everyone and everything together: happy past, trying present, hopeful future.

ug buyers guide

bruce.

1. darkness on the edge of town
2. tunnel of love
3. the wild, the innocent and the e street shuffle
4. the river
5. nebraska
6. born to run
7. born in the usa
8. seeger sessions
9. the rising
10. magic
11. lucky town
12. devils & dust
13. the ghost of tom joad
14. greetings from asbury park
15. human touch

prove it all night

top five.

1. passaic. 1978.
2. berkeley. 1978.
3. phoenix. 1978.
4. winterland. 1978.
5. nyc. 2000.

greasy single of the week

radio nowhere.

a 3-minute squall that conjures rock & roll radio. border radio. roadrunner. but also something deeper and darker. capital radio one. cuz joe strummer is riding shotgun through nebraska and this shit we deal with has got to git better:

I just wanna hear some rhythm!
I just wanna hear some rhythm!
I just wanna hear your rhythm!
I just wanna hear your rhythm…

greasy album of the week

darkness on the edge of town, bruce springsteen.

the record on which he found his [hillbilly] voice. lonesome but never dire. angry but never ugly. a fellah might get knocked down, but hell get back up. so fuck all youse. hell get where hes going. someday. in a car. at night. with [vanilla 60s girls name].

association

a. are you loose?

b. crystal taliefero

c. january 3, 1982

d. christine

e. palisades park

the next one

i want springsteen to pare down e street to a trio and kick out the gretsch motherfuckers. i want steve earle to produce. and i want (to fucking walk) before they make me run.