Posts Tagged ‘bruce springsteen’
Photos: Bruce Springsteen @ Verizon Center
The fact that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band last played in D.C. just this past May didn’t seem to put a damper on the reception that the Boss and friends received when they hit the stage at the Verizon Center. After the jump and at the full gallery, check out some images from the initial moments of last night’s show.
Springsteen/Suicide, Discussed
In which the author contemplates the Boss’ misguided affinity for an obscure New York no-wave duo.
Louis P. Mazur’s excellent Slate piece on Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 album Born to Run hails the hit record as the fruit of one visionary’s dogged persistence. Springsteen, laboring Lincoln-like through the 1970s, had twice failed to make good on the record industry’s big bets on his ramshackle boardwalk aesthetic—1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park and 1974’s The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1974) had pleased critics, but failed to move units.
According to Mazur, Springsteen’s problem wasn’t a lack of spontaneity, but bad editing. Born to Run documents Springsteen’s triumph over his own first thoughts. “What mattered to [Springsteen] was to sound spontaneous, not to be spontaneous,” Mazur writes. “It took him six months during the spring and summer of 1974 to record the title track.”
This devotion to excellence is why Bruce Springsteen can’t cover Suicide.
Suicide, the revolutionary, drummer-less duo formed by New York art fucks Alan Vega and Martin Rev in the ’70s, was reviled by punks. But, like many reviled things, Suicide still looks and sounds like the future. Here’s an undated performance of the ballad “Dream Baby Dream”:
Springsteen Freaks Declare D.C. Crowd ‘Embarrassing’
Bruce Springsteen fans have a lot invested in the Jersey man. They may have had a lot more invested in last night’s show at the Verizon Center. Tickets sold out in minutes. Then a company sold tickets they didn’t quite have. Anyone who had a ticket was lucky. This was no mere Dad Rock.
And Springsteen doesn’t have mere fans. Every other dad wore a faded Boss shirt from an old tour. I’ve never seen mom jeans rock so hard during the trips to the back catalog. At this point, Springsteen doesn’t even have to sing “Born to Run,” the audience—even a D.C. audience—did more than a fine job screaming about Jersey desperation, springing from cages out on Highway 9. At least that’s what I saw/heard from my nosebleed seat. At this point, the obsessives are the ones willing to wait in lines for tickets, and refresh furiously at the Ticketmaster website. Last night, Springsteen seemed to acknowledge the Backstreet freaks in his midst. On this tour, he’s started taking requests. Last night, the Verizon center went epileptic when he picked “Blinded By the Light” despite the song’s hilarious backstory.
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BriTunes: Why Brian Williams’s Music Experiment Won’t Work
In the last half of the 20th Century, the national television news anchor played a deific role in American life: benevolent, yet possessing of an aloof omniscience that suggested divinity (and, by implication, infallibility). Behind the heroically concerned brow and dispassionate baritone there seemed to lie a great wisdom: unrevealed, and therefore perfect–the archetype being longtime CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whom opinion pollsters in the ’70s and ’80s perennially deemed “the most trusted man in America.”
In the 21st Century, everything has changed: Information is ubiquitous; newsmen are no longer godheads. The role of the national news anchor in American culture must be redefined. The question is: as what?
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams seems to be molding a new archetype. Newscaster 2.0, as Williams has shaped it, is not so much an avuncular sentinel as a cultural tycoon–one who regularly parries with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, gushes about pop culture on MSNBC, and appears in Saturday Night Live sketches making fun of–and effectively disavowing–the role of self-serious journalistic demigod that he inherited from the likes of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ted Copple, and Cronkite.
Meet the latest extension of Williams’s tycoonery: A Web-exclusive music interview series called “BriTunes.” The site, hosted by MSNBC.com, will feature band interviews alongside a blog and a constantly-updated playlist of Williams’s fave songs. “The thinking that went into this,” he explained last week, “is that Al Roeker does about nine shows on the air, I think, about barbeque and food, Matt Lauer does men’s clothing beautifully, and so why not talk about our hobby here?”
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Want Springsteen tickets? Donate To DC Central Kitchen
DC Central Kitchen announced in an e-mail that they are auctioning off four tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s May 18 show at the Verizon Center:
“DC Central Kitchen is auctioning four tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s May 18 show at the Verizon Center, complete with E Street Lounge Passes and the opportunity to meet Bruce himself! In addition to donating the tickets, Bruce has agreed to match your donation, up to $50,000.”
Is there a catch? Not really. You just need to have a lot money and a lot of love for Springsteen/Feeding the homeless.
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Inauguration Radio Station: Sounds from the Lincoln Concert
Just returned from a spot of Indian food after the “We Are One” concert, where I collected some supremely lo-fi recordings of the hit-or-miss performances. Garth Brooks got a lot of stagetime. Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock got glossed over. Will.i.am and Sheryl Crowe did some decent Marley with a sanitized “Where Is the Love” interlude. My favorite performace, amazingly, was Bettye Lavette and (wait for it) Jon Bon Jovi on Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
Also dug U2 more than I’d expected and found Pete Seeger a welcome presence.
First batch below. More in a bit, plus a rundown of last night’s Mike Errico/Alfonso Velez/Sketches show at Jammin’ Java.
Springsteen, with gospel choir, on “The Rising”:
National anthem:
Lavette & Bon Jovi on “A Change Is Gonna Come”:
James Taylor & John Legend on “Shower the People”:
