The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Max Weinberg – what a drummer!

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I’ve been watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s 2002 Barcelona gig on Sky TV, and just wanted to share my appreciation of the mighty Max Weinberg.

Good lord but that man can really, really play the drums. I’ve got a few of the Boss’s albums, but never really noticed the drumming. Live, though, MW is on fire throughout, hour after hour. On Born in the USA in particular, he is the very definition of an engine room, powering the band to rock out more and more.

The rest of the band are obviously musicians at the top of their game, but this was the first time I really understood what a difference an ace powerhouse of a drummer can make.

I couldn’t be a drummer due to my total inability to keep time with different limbs simultaneously, but if I could, driving a whole stadium mad during BITUSA would be a very nice way to spend a few minutes.

https://youtu.be/ytGnFoZ89CA?si=DZxWNyEk8SY2_QGu

Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle”

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I have no particular recollection of noticing many comments or articles here about this show. Hence, I’m interested in your experience of it. I recall buying season one on DVD and pretty much rushing home to watch it thinking that I was in for a treat and a feast. I expected insightful interviews with an interesting array of people.

It certainly is an interesting array of people and season two, which is available now on YouTube, continues in that vein. However, to my surprise, Elvis is a terrible host and a bad interviewer. He reminds me a little of James Lipton who had the job of hosting Inside the Actors’ Studio. Great guests, but Lipton could make you squirm as he leaned into his guests attempting to oil his way into their affections.

Costello seems not to know how to actually ask a question. This is a problem that I see in the vast majority of interviewers, even professional ones, so I’m not that surprised to see it in an amateur. Costello is not a professional journalist and it shows. Instead, he’s egotistical, determined to show that he is the star here and everybody else is a guest. This seems » Continue Reading.

The Boss for Sale

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Bruce’s live show website is having a 4-day sale. Any of their live shows can be downloaded for just $6.99 (approx £5.36) or $16.99 (£13.04) for CDs.

The sale ends at midnight on Monday 13th May.

Fill yer boots.

http://m.live.brucespringsteen.net/bsmobile.asp

“Finally,”

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44 years ago this week I walked down the hill to the small group of shops in the village we lived in.

Amongst the Woolie’s, Boots and small, local independent shops was an electrical store, a shop that sold fridges, washing machines and records.

Behind the record counter were the two most contrary, intimidating characters you could ever not wish to meet.

I took the album out of the rack.

I queued and, to my horror, the string-bean with the long, greasy hair became free first.

I handed him my intended purchase.

He looked at it, looked up at me, and looked down at the album again.

He yelled.

“Ladies & Gentlemen, Finally, we have have someone with taste.”

He winked at me.

“Finally, we have someone with taste.”

“Every one of you still shopping, you better bring an album this good up to the counter. If not, why would you bother?

It remains my proudest moment.

Springsteen – Freedom Cadence

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I just watched a film called Thank You For Your Service. I won’t write a review cos I’m a lazy feck, but it was ok. Not bad, not great. The based-on-true story of some soldiers who went a bit doolally after coming back from Iraq. Anyways, my favourite thing about it was Springsteen’s take on a standard army marching song that’s used in the end credits. Best thing he’s done for a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbhCPcM-Q8o

You sap.

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It was raining. Not heavily, just that light rain that can fall on an English summer, that makes everything glisten and the air smell of cut grass. I was looking out of my bedroom window at the little cul-de-sac that we lived in. It was a weekday, early summer, 1977 and I had a lieu-day off work. It was 10am, and a day off stretched out before me. And it was raining. Which was perfect. It matched my mood, bringing it’s grey clouds into my world and, potentially, turning them black. And it was own fault, which just added to the heap of misery. Of all the things I could be doing on my day off, I had agreed to drive two people to Hampton Court for a day out, and then pick them up later. ‘What a nice thing to do,’ you might be thinking. Wrong. The two people were a bloke I had never met and his new girlfriend, the same girlfriend who had dumped me just ten days earlier. After two and a half years together.

“What the fuck are you doing, agreeing to drive her about?” My brother knew exactly how to get right to the » Continue Reading.

Who will be the 90s musically?

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After the sad events of this year I would like to propose the following are their decades musically: 1960s – The Beatles 1970s – David Bowie 1980s – Prince

Disclaimer: this is an arbitrary exercise and should not be taken as any final assessment of stature. But…

Their imperial periods are all neatly within these decades. We do cut off just before Scary Monsters…and there is the late rally, but pretty well DB is the seventies. I’ve been thinking who else can rival Prince for the 80s crown? Really only three: Jacko, Madonna and Springsteen. Jacko – two albums – two monsters yes – but hardly an imperial period. And you lose Off the Wall. Madonna – her best work straddles the mid-80s to 2000 – as strong in the 90s as the 80s Prince – you have to lose Diamonds and Pearls, the squiggle album – er that’s about it. Otherwise in the 80s we get 9 albums in 10 years almost all of which are of the highest possible quality. Springsteen – lots of great stuff over four albums (River, Nebraska, USA, Tunnel of Love) but like Madonna he’s as good in other decades.

So two questions:

» Continue Reading.

Springsteen’s latest tribute

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By now, those of you with any interest will have probably seen Springsteen and the E Streeters doing ‘Purple Rain’ as a tribute to Prince at the start of their show the other night. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he makes it his own (as if!) but it’s a pretty decent effort all the same. There’s a few versions of it online at the moment but this one’s probably the best – mixed, as it is, from various different fans’ recordings.

Even better is the audio version (link below) that his Bossness has made available as a free download on his website. More than makes up for the dodgy sound on the youtube clips. It’s probably only a matter of time before the audio is mixed in too.

Wonder if Bruce is running the band through ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ as I type..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNyqjHHCGw

http://live.brucespringsteen.net/live-music/0,13914/Bruce-Springsteen—The-E-Street-Band-mp3-flac-download-4-23-2016-Barclays-Center-Brooklyn-NY.html

Springsteen autobiography klaxon

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Simon & Schuster is proud to announce the world-wide publication of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run, which will be released internationally on September 27, 2016. The work will be published in hardcover, ebook, and audio editions by Simon & Schuster in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and India, and rights have already been sold to publishers in nine countries.

Springsteen has been privately writing the autobiography over the past seven years. He began work in 2009, after performing with the E Street Band at the Super Bowl’s halftime show.

In Born to Run, Mr. Springsteen describes growing up in Freehold, New Jersey amid the “poetry, danger, and darkness” that fueled his imagination. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized.

“Writing about yourself is a funny business,” Mr. Springsteen notes in his book. “But in a project like » Continue Reading.

Springsteen does Bowie

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Springsteen kicked off his 1980 River tour in Pittsburgh last night, opening the encore with a tribute to David Bowie, one of his earliest supporters. Unsurprisingly he manages to make Rebel Rebel sound like just another foot-stomping Bruce Springsteen bar song. Nice try, I suppose, but there’s an air of ‘will this do?’ about it.

Incidentally, new tour, same old stage wardrobe for Bruce and the E Streeters. He truly is not the chameleon of rock. On the plus side he seems to have dropped about 8 non-essential members from the band. Just the 10 (ten) of them now.

We danced as the evening sky faded to black

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This popped up tonight. I haven’t played it in years, yet it is one of my favourite Springsteen songs. I spent the length of the song thinking about why I haven’t played it more, especially recently. Then it hit me. It’s because I associate it with the unhappiest time of my life. And I am really happy, at the moment.

When my first marriage was caving in, I would spend nights downstairs, after she’d gone to bed, delaying going to bed myself, and playing the Tunnel Of Love album. This was always the last track I would play before giving in to the responsibilities of work the next day, and climbing the stairs. I haven’t thought about that for years.

After weeks of suspicion and phone calls that went dead if I answered, I confronted her. She denied the affair. I walked out of the house and spent the rest of the day buying the 300 paracetamol, the brandy and the various things I needed to kill myself. The fact that total liver failure takes a few days, and a smart young doctor’s persistence, meant that I am still here, happily fifteen years into a second marriage.

When people » Continue Reading.

Broooooooooooooce !!

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Takes me back to being 19 when I saw him a few months after this. There has been some criticism of The River here and this is one of the tracks that probably would come in for a kicking. A throwaway song, but f*** me, what a great live band

http://www.vevo.com/watch/bruce-springsteen/Ramrod-(The-River-Tour-Tempe-1980)/USSM21502075

Bruce covered

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I played this tonight. Its one of my favourite Bruce Springsteen songs, performed by two of my favourite singers. its a mark of Springsteen’s quality as a songwriter that so many very different artists have covered so many of his songs. Your best examples of Bruce cover versions please…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCEB9HTRQuI