- “Blue jeans or black jeans: a debate.”
- “All my best drummers are Jewish.”
- “It’s good to be The Boss, part 1: Banging Courtney Cox before James Woods got a hold of her.”
- “A dump of Sting-related anecdotes.”
- “Terrible secrets I’ve heard about Jon Bon Jovi.”
- “In which a rearrangement of locale, most beneficial and salubrious to all involved, is embarked upon, and the aforementioned conglomeration of minstrels, wastrels, and roadies is fortified, in fullness, by a newly-arrived male stranger of prodigious mass and bold health.”
- “Stories about my father.”
- “More stories about my father.”
- “Further stories about my father.”
- “Breakthroughs I made with my therapist (concerning my father).”
- “My mom, and how she was treated by my father.”
- “It’s good to be The Boss, part two: Joyce Hyser from Just One of the Guys before Warren Beatty got a hold of her.”
- “The Ballad of Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter.”
- “Steen, not Stein: How to explain you’re not Jewish without coming across wrong.”
- “How to train up a band.”
- “How to yell at a road crew.”
- “How to avoid Warren Zevon’s calls.”
- “Remember all those ‘rivals’ I’ve had, and all the ‘next Springsteens’ there’ve been? Let’s discuss those folks.”
- “The Heineken years.”
- “Cruel observations about famous people I am friendly with.”
- “The time I joined KISS.”
- “Because ‘speedball’ scans better than ‘fastball’ and if you don’t like it, you can write your own top-ten single.”
- “I have never had an actual conversation with Roy Bittan.”
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: bruce springsteen (Page 3 of 4)
And I got you, and baby you got me.
What a great Bruce song; I wonder where it would rank if you listed all of them.
Today will most likely not be another Bruce Day, though who can tell the future? I will, however, share this with you and encourage all right-thinking Enthusiasts to give it a spin: Bruce in Cleveland at the Agora Theater, broadcast* over the mighty WMMS, the rock station that broke Rush and Zep and KISS and basically created the soundtrack for guys in blue jeans forevermore.
*Not simulcast: apparently, there wasn’t a truck or a hookup available, so the engineers at the station recorded the show an hour at a time and had an intern drive the tapes to the station.
Hey, Bruce. Whatcha doing?
“Well, you know, man: sometimes ya gotta fight injustice. Also, I’m wanted in Greensboro.”
For what?
“Arson.”
Really?
“No, it’s the injustice.”
Okay.
“Y’see, man: I was driving in my car the other night. Nobody else on the road, no cops, nothing. A good driving road, y’know? And before I knew it, I had missed my stop and found myself on the Highway of Hard Decisions.”
Oh, God, you’re gong to tell one of your stories.
“I was makin’ good time, and I passed the Gas Station of Bigotry, and the Stuckey’s of Pettiness, and I had the radio up real loud.”
Roy Orbison?
“Obviously. And I started thinkin’ about something my father used to say.”
Wouldn’t be a Bruce story without your dad.
“He said ‘Stop playing that goddamned guitar.'”
What does that have to do with anything?
“Lemme introduce the band–”
No one has time for the band introductions.
“–on the organ, now you see him, now you don’t: Phantom Dan Federici; on the piano–
Two keyboardists? That’s a terrible idea.
“–Professor Roy Bittan–”
Everyone knows everyone’s names. Stop it.
“–and on the saxophone! The king of the world! The master of disaster! The Big Man, Clarence Garcia!”
What?
“Hi, there.”
We’re done.
I tried, Enthusiasts: I tried. Opened up the actual text–the PDF, dammit–of this North Carolina HB2 law that’s caused all this hubbub. I was going to quote and cite and opine; my arguments would put a duck’s ass to shame in terms of watertightness. Also, I was going to try to be serous and not use made-up words like “watertightness,” or refer to ducks’ asses.
It was going to be epic, my friends, in vision, in virtuosity, in vituperative erudition: I was planning on weaponizing quotes from many famous men, and even some women if it occurred to me. I was to dip into the long history of entertainers using the only power they have–not showing up–to effect social change; check off the list of illustrious venues that only integrated after the headliner refused to go on with the show.
I didn’t know whether I would clap back or drop the mic first, but I was going to do both.
There’s no point, though: is there? What argument can be made against this legislative shiv that (barely) pretends to cure a problem that doesn’t exist in defense of nebulous “values” and “liberty.” Scrawled in crayon on a Chick Tract and blatantly unconstitutional, HB2 is the legal version of something its writers profess to hate: an abortion.
This world is full of mean fuckers who like to put the screws to weirdos; you need to choose sides.
I’m with Bruce, and I hope other bands scheduled to play North Carolina are, too.
I didn’t imagine it.
You don’t understand my feelings about Bruce Springsteen; that’s okay: I don’t, either.
My childhood was spent in New Jersey and during the 80’s. My best friend Jay Dorfman’s mother attended Freehold High at the same time as Bruce; my music teacher Amadeo Ciminisi had a framed picture of the time Bruce jumped onto the stage to jam with his bar band. My friend and bandmate Matt Tahaney and I drove down the shore on Sunday to see the Stone Pony: there was no band playing, and we were too young to get in, anyway. That wasn’t the point.
The night after I graduated from high school, Jeff Shulberg and I skipped all the parties (not that we were invited) to see Bruce at the Brendan Byrne Arena. The highway-facing side of the building was covered with a sign stretching the length of the facade, with 20-foot high letters: WELCOME HOME, BRUCE. The sign had been up for all eleven nights he sold out, and it could have stayed there all summer and he would have sold out every show.
(Jeff and I spent our pre-show parking lot time brainstorming how to steal the sign.)
This was the 90’s, and Bruce had gotten divorced and fired the E Street Band; he had also put out two records at the same time like Guns ‘n Roses, Lucky Town and Human Touch and there’s a reason you haven’t heard of them. Like all double albums except London Calling and Exile, what could have been one great album was instead two unsteady and forgettable records. Plus, this was during the initial years of CD bloat, so both albums had 14 or 15 songs on them; I didn’t buy them.
And his new band was a mess. The guitarist was a rocker dude, but he had chubby thighs stuffed into his rocker trousers and a massive bouffant that shimmied and swayed when he did his rocker moves. The drummer was the dreadlocked guy who played with the B-52’s in the Love Shack video. Roy Bittan was still in the band because Bruce owns him, just like Bobby owns Jeff Chimenti.
I don’t remember if we had tickets or scalped them in the lot, but our seats were two rows from the roof of the arena, and straight back; Bruce still managed to make eye contact with both of us and sing at least one verse of Bobby Jean to us.
The man can work a room.
At the time, Bruce was doing two sets (just like the Dead, but with more fining musicians for missing cues) and a long encore, but not this show: Steve van Zandt (whom most know as Little Steven, but will always be Miami Steve to those of us from New Jersey) came out to thunder and raised arms and flicked lighters at the end of the first set, and Bruce called an audible and kept the band playing through the break: it was like he couldn’t stop himself.
Somewhere along the way, Max Weinberg slipped behind the drums–he wasn’t announced or anything and we all just kinda realized he was there after a few songs–and the arena lifted up its petticoats and did the frug, and the horn section came on and the song was Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, which has this lyric:
Change was made of town;
And the Big Man joined the band.
And there he was: our black shining prince. Twelve feet tall and just as wide with bare arms like waterfalls of muscle; I know there was jewelry involved, but I cannot confirm denim. He needed his sunglasses to protect him from the shine coming off his saxophone.
The woman next to me was grown, at least from my 18-year-old perspective, and heavy. Her hair was light and cut short, and we had been cordial the entire show, but not more than that.
When Clarence Clemons walked on that stage, that woman and I hugged like refugees reunited after the war.
So maybe when I see people talking shit about Bruce on Twitter, I overreact.
Fuck it: it’s Bruce Day.
Seriously: does anyone have this information I’m looking for? Who’s playing Charlotte on June 10th? The circus? Monster truck show? Is it a band? Is it a band I’ve heard of? Who could it be?
I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I’m from Jersey. Proud of that today.
Does anyone know who’s scheduled to play Charlotte on June 10th?
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWoTfcaqZU4[/embedyt]
I forgot to fall in love.
You put things off ’til tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but it never turns tomorrow and you wake up at 40 and the house is empty. You put things down and they stay in the same place until you move them. Piles form.
Some things got done. I remembered to stick needles in my arm. I remembered that I was the only person that mattered. I remembered to steal and lie and cheat and skip town in the middle of the night.
Forgot to fall in love.
Maybe next time. Too late now.
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