Concert reviews and mp3s from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Relient K, Buddy Guy, the White Stripes, Lost and Found, and anyone else who currently piques my interests.
Let’s get one thing clear: despite what the Larger Than Life…In 3D filmmakers would have you believe, 3D concert films do not make it “as if you were there.” Thank goodness. Anyone looking for the “as if you were there” experience might be better off watching this movie from a couple hundred feet away with strangers yelling in your ear, spilling beer down the back of your shirt and elbowing you in the eye as they crowd-surf over you. Any regular concert-goer knows that “as if you were there” is hardly a selling point for a movie.
Thankfully, while watching the Dave Matthews Band, Ben Harper and Relentless7 and Gogol Bordello in Larger Than Life, you don’t feel at all like you’re there. Rather than try to force an in-the-crowd perspective (look at some audience-taped concert footage on YouTube to see how well that works), the vivid close-ups, hi-def pans and crystal sound quality substitute a whole different kind of energy. You don’t feel like you’re there, you feel bad for the people who were.
The music sounds just about as anyone familiar with the bands would expect it to (jam-rock, jam-blues and gypsy-punk, respectively), but the 3D technology helps bring out the little moments that make live shows so entrancing. When you watch Ben Harper fiddle with his guitar feedback to end his Mile High Music Festival set, his furrowed brow and piercing stare bring out the concentration pouring into the minute sonic fluctuations. When you see Dave Matthews lazily flopping around the stage during “Funny the Way It Is,” it’s like the frat-rock hippie is noodle-dancing right in your lap (whether you want Dave Matthews noodle-dancing in your lap is another matter entirely).
If the choice of performers to break the 3D concert technology to the post-tween crowd has little rhyme or reason – three different tours at three different festivals in three different states – it may be because this film is really a test run, for the technology and for the demand. Reports indicate that AEG, the company behind Larger Than Life…In 3D, filmed much of Phish’s recent Festival 8 shows (hopefully including their cover of the Rolling Stones’ entire Exile on Main Street) and more performances from Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. One imagines they’ll be watching the ticket sales for this film’s one-week engagement quite closely to decide what if anything to do with this unreleased footage.
To be fair, this technology is far from perfect. While mid-range shots looked beautiful, anything with a significant depth of field causes stomachs to turn over. It was hard not to flinch every time an errant beach ball flashed across the screen, but worse still was the random stage equipment which would pop up looking hundreds of yards in front of the rest of the action. If anything, this technology works too well; when Gogol Bordello hypeman Pedro Erazo points at a camera during “Start Wearing Purple,” it’s a wonder no one in the audience lost an eye. Real life isn’t that 3D.
Yes, there’s a long way to go before Digital 3D changes the way we watch concert films. At the screening I attended the inevitable awkward silence at the end of each song where everyone wonders if they’re supposed to clap or not was as uncomfortable as ever. Clap or not, though, the explosive power of Dave Matthews Band’s roaring through “Burning Down the House” in such vibrant quality was hard to deny.
No concert film has yet made you feel like you were there. Most in fact do the opposite: make you wish you were there, experiencing in person what the screen will only hint at. Larger Than Life…in 3D succeeds because you don’t feel like you’re there, and you don’t particularly want to.
‘Larger Than Life…In 3D’ opens in 350 theaters nationwide for a limited, one-week-only screening from December 11-17.
In the spring of 2005 Bob Dylan hired some new guys for his band. Nothing unusual there; Dylan tends to switch around his band every year or so. Except then, for the next four and a half years he didn’t change a thing. Since that spring fans grew a little more tired of those same five people with each passing leg of the so-called Never-Ending Tour. Were these guys the second coming of The Band or something, fans might have been more forgiving, but soon this lowercase-“b” band turned every song into a mid-tempo jazz shuffle, Bing Crosby without the voice. Throughout his career fans have followed Dylan around the globe like the second coming of Jerry Garcia, but as each show began sounding just like a previous show (or previous year) the phrase “jumped the shark” began coming up.
This fall, after four-and-a-half years of slow decline, Dylan finally switched things up. He made just one substitution, but replacing old one-note-solo Denny Freeman with guitar-prodigy Charlie Sexton is a hell of a substitution. Sexton previously played with Dylan from ’99-‘02 (making him the first musician to leave the band and later return) during what many fans think of as latter-day Dylan’s best years and in the seven-year interim he hasn’t missed a trick. During the first two nights of Dylan’s United Palace Theater stand Sexton stole the show more than once with hotrod solos that never held back for fear of stepping on The Legend’s toes.
In fact, The Legend raised his own game to keep up with Sexton’s confident swagger. Though in recent years he has spent each show sulking behind a keyboard, this fall he has taken to performing 4-5 songs each night center stage with only a microphone and harmonica, bringing out a showman unseen since 1975’s all-star Rolling Thunder Revue. On “Ballad of a Thin Man” both nights he stood astride center stage, a larger-than-life vigilante striking a series of Zorro poses silhouetted on the curtain behind him. For night two’s “Workingman’s Blues #2” he wailed out more self-assured harmonica solos than fans have heard in years, swaying back and forth as the harp voodoo took hold.
Too obstinate to veer anywhere near a greatest-hits act, about half of both night’s tunes came from Dylan’s twenty-first century output (though nothing from his recent Christmas disc). Though casual attendees often come away irritated with the lack of solo-guitar “Blowin’ in the Wind”-style nostalgia and hardcore fans may grumble that in the course of two nights he played only one song from the ‘70s or ‘80s (1989’s “Man in the Long Black Coat), the post-Y2K material suits his latter-day croak. The warbly rasp complement the fading-light regret of “Forgetful Heart” and one-last-change hope of “I Feel a Change Comin’ On” (both from his 2009 album Together Through Life) and a deranged organ-grinder arrangement of 1997’s “Cold Irons Bound” turned Bob into a sinister carnival barker.
His forays into his early material (what few there were) were less successful. You could practically see the band’s energy evaporate away during lackluster encores “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower,” playing the crowd-pleasing choices in a half-assed way that pleased nobody. On night one Bob didn’t even bother enunciating half the words of “Rolling Stone,” perhaps expecting the audience sing-along to drown him out anyway. Only problem was the half-hearted delivery meant that many there didn’t even know he was playing his biggest hit, and those that did didn’t care. He only gave a sixties classic the care it deserved on the aforementioned “Ballad of a Thin Man,” turning the signature organ riff into a wailing Charlie Sexton guitar line that practically singed the hair off your eyebrows.
The folk material fared even worse in the transition to Oscar-the-Growler Bob. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” attempted a wholly inappropriate bass-heavy crunch to match his barren holler and the swirling imagery of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” proved overpower for a voice not as nimble as it once was. “Some people, they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice,” Dylan sang in “I Feel a Change,” but the bloody-land approach turns a song like “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” from mournful to grating.
If Bob Dylan is no longer a sixties rocker or folk strummer though, at least he is once again something other than an apathetic songwriter rasping his way to the next hotel. Sexton’s guitar work injects a dose of adrenaline in the music and Dylan’s newfound Frank-Sinatra-meets-Tom-Waits frontman persona does the same to the performance. In almost fifty years of performing Dylan has never been much good at mailing it in, so thank goodness that after four years of steady decline one prodigal-son guitar badass has returned the fold to reignite the spark.
DOWNLOAD RECORDINGS Coming soon…
SET LISTS
November 17, 2009 1. Cat's In The Well (Bob on keyboard, Donnie Herron on violin) 2. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob on guitar) 3. Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on trumpet) 4. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on electric mandolin) 5. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Bob center stage on harp) 6. John Brown (Bob center stage on harp, Donnie on banjo) 7. Summer Days (Bob on keyboard) 8. Po' Boy (Bob on keyboard and harp) 9. Cold Irons Bound (Bob center stage on harp) 10. If You Ever Go To Houston (Bob on keyboard) 11. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on keyboard) 12. Ain't Talkin' (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on viola) 13. Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on keyboard) 14. Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bob center stage on harp) (encore) 15. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on keyboard) 16. Jolene (Bob on keyboard) 17. All Along The Watchtower (Bob on keyboard)
November 18, 2009 1. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Bob on keyboard) 2. It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob on guitar) 3. Man In The Long Black Coat (Bob on guitar) 4. It's All Good (Bob on keyboard) 5. Spirit On The Water (Bob on keyboard and harp) 6. High Water (For Charley Patton) (Bob center stage on harp, Donnie on banjo) 7. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) (Bob on keyboard) 8. Forgetful Heart (Bob center stage on harp, Donnie on violin) 9. Cold Irons Bound (Bob center stage on harp) 10. I Feel A Change Comin' On (Bob on keyboard) 11. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on keyboard) 12. Workingman's Blues #2 (Bob center stage on harp) 13. Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on keyboard) 14. Ballad Of A Thin Man (Bob center stage on harp) (encore) 15. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on keyboard) 16. Jolene (Bob on keyboard) 17. All Along The Watchtower (Bob on keyboard)
Normally the reviews on this site strive to be like a review you might read in a newspaper. Objective. Impartial. Unbiased. And, most of all, no first-person! This one’s going to break the mold. By virtue of necessity, it’s both a review of Friday night’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary show and a review of my personal experience at said show.
The reason for this break from form is that I got a free ticket through the marvelous 1iota.com, a site that gave away obstructed view seats behind the stage. Given that some regular seats in Madison Square Garden went for $2500, this was a hell of a deal. However, throughout the night both the sound and sightlines for those of us behind the stage were so shaky I can’t justify trying to give an “objective” view of the concert. I can, however, talk about experiencing a one-in-a-lifetime show from the cheap seats.
Though we were behind the stage, and behind a partition that blocked some of the performers from sight (generally just the drummers), distance-wise the 750 1iota ticket-holders were closer to the bands than many people who paid for tickets. As an added bonus, we got to watch the musicians hanging out backstage when they weren’t performing, hugging, chatting, giving interviews, waving to us. Having two stages on a rotating platform eliminated changeover time. A brilliant move for a show with a lot of artists. One artist finishes, the stage rotates, and the next is ready to go. Then the crew set up the other stage for the next one, out of sight of the audience (except for us, of course).
Tom Hanks introduced the proceedings, but as tended to happen whenever anyone spoke, we in the back could not understand a word he said. In fact, the sound was so crazy-muffled for many acts (Jeff Beck being an enjoyable exception) it took a while to recognize even the most familiar songs. Generally it seemed the larger the band, the harder it was to hear.
As he did the previous night (where Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Simon & Garfunkel and CSN headlined), Jerry Lee Lewis got the music going with “Great Balls of Fire.” As he did when I saw him at Farm Aid a year ago, the Killer killed it. He walks slower than he used to – he is 74 after all – but his fingers can still fly across the piano. And though a little rough around the edges, his voice still has the unmistakable rockabilly twang.
A Motown video montage led into Aretha Franklin taking the stage. With her enormous band, hers was the worst sound of the night, but from what we could tell it seemed like her voice was still excellent. The crowd who could hear certainly acted like it was. She brought out Annie Lennox of Eurythmics to duet on a blistering “Chain of Fools” and Lenny Kravitz for a sassy back-and-forth on “Think.” I look forward to viewing the video of this set more than any other, to see what I missed with the terrible sound.
Arriving with a three-piece band (including bass prodigy Tal Wilkenfeld), Jeff Beck provided a sound the backstage speakers could handle. His solos came through hot and pure, shredding out the proof that he was a worthy last-minute replacement for an ailing Eric Clapton. Not a singer himself, Beck stuck with instrumentals except with the guests came out. A heavily-bearded Sting first joined the Yardbird on stage, belting out “People Get Ready” with a vocal power unheard in his recent years with the reunited Police. The gospel cries coming out of this aging Brit shocked the crowd, many of whom declared it a highlight.
With Jimi Hendrix long gone, the only guitarist who could truly match the licks Beck was unleashing was the legendary Buddy Guy, who soon brought his axe out for a searing “Let Me Love You.” Guy’s underrated vocals almost stole the show from the dueling guitars though as he crooned and helped his way through the twelve-bar staple.
Guy was followed by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, the man with the biggest beard in rock and roll. After barreling through ZZ Top’s “Rough Boy” he led the crowd through “Foxy Lady” while a large image of Hendrix lit up a recently-descended screen behind the band. While this blocked the view completely for us 1iota.com fans, it only came down rarely, and we still had monitors to watch. Beck’s jazz-rock improvisation through “A Day in the Life” capped things off.
The only band that could top Beck’s distortion-blare was on next: Metallica. The legendary metal quartet alternated their own tracks like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Enter Sandman” with rolls as backing musicians. They roared through the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and “White Light/White Heat” with Lou Reed. The heroin-hipster valiantly kept up, delivering a better performance than his abysmal live reputation would have predicted. Nothing stunning, but Kirk Hammett’s guitar solos were worth even the most average delivery. Reed agreed, delivering a rare treat from the cranky punk: a smile.
James Hetfield introduced the next singer as “the crazy guy who epitomizes the rock and roll singer.” It couldn’t be anyone but Ozzy Osbourne. The reality star roamed the stage performing Black Sabbath classics “Iron Man” and “Paranoid,” yelling at a complacent audience to get on their feet and participate. No bats were eaten after Ozzy’s family-man makeover, but the mystique remained strong.
Finally came the most unexpected guest of the set: Ray Davies of the Kinks, “one of the original punks.” Metallica faithfully performed a loud and fast “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All Night,” resisting any urge to metal-fy these riff-heavy classics. Davies delivered a boho-cool performance, one hand in his pocket as he delivered some of the most famous lyrics in rock and roll. Which no one could hear anyway, as the crowd was yelling them even louder.
A Queen cover and “Enter Sandman” later, U2 took the stage. Things kicked off in high gear with “Vertigo,” and “Magnificent didn’t kill the momentum too badly. Any slow-song boredom was soon shed though when Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith came out to perform “Because the Night” (a Smith hit they co-wrote) for only the second time ever (video). Since this review is first-person personal anyway, I’ll say this was the best concert moment I have ever witnessed. As Bruce soloed and Patti sung the bridge, they butted heads in a mini-duel while Bono laughed behind them. As this once-in-a-lifetime performance rolled along (with Roy Bitten handling the piano part), many in the crowd hoped it would never end. So imagine the excitement when, for the only time the whole night, the band decided the first run-through had been too sloppy for TV. They had to do it again. Cue died-and-gone-to-heaven swooning.
Springsteen stuck around to duet with Bono on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” bringing some much-needed passion to this lite-FM staple. Hugs all around and the Boss has left the building!
“Mysterious Ways” led into a cover of the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love.” Except, oh wait, it was no longer a cover when the Peas themselves ran onstage. With this many mics the sound again turned questionable, but Will.I.Am dominated center stage while Fergie dirty-danced with the Edge. Quite a collaboration.
Will.I.Am moved over to the piano and Fergie strolled over to drummer Larry Mullin, Jr. while the lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” came up on the teleprompter. Those of us behind the stage gave a collective intake of breath. There was a rumor of course, but…no. It couldn’t be... Surely he wouldn’t… But yes, Sir Mick Jagger strolled onstage to applause like I’ve never heard. Perhaps the only man alive who Springsteen was an appropriate lead-in to (well, him and McCartney), Jagger belted out “Gimme Shelter” like it was Altamont all over again (video). Fergie took on Merry Clayton’s female part, belting out such fierce high notes I can’t have been the only one wondering if this was lip-synced. But her trills and scales seemed so spontaneous and idiosyncratic, perhaps Fergie is the most underrated vocalist in music. Either way though, she couldn't fake that stage presence. Fergie and Mick: best onstage chemistry I've ever seen. If those two ever tour together, go. Mick stuck around for U2’s treacle-fest “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.” Like Springsteen before him, Jagger brought new vitality to this alt-contemporary dirge in a duet with Bono, his face glowing with excitement. Jagger strutted offstage with the quartet, who returned sans-Stone for the entirely appropriate “A Beautiful Day.”
Five hours after we entered, the dazed crowd stumbled out into the streets, numb to everything we had just witnessed. Aretha, Sting, Ozzy, Lou Reed, Springsteen, Patti Smith, Bono, Mick Effing Jagger. Even now, it’s hard to wrap your mind around.
SET LIST
Jerry Lee Lewis: Great Balls of Fire
Aretha Franklin: Baby, I Love You Don’t Play That Song (You Lied) Make Them Hear You Chain of Fools (w/ Annie Lennox) New York, New York Think (w/ Lenny Kravitz) Respect
Jeff Beck: Drown in My Own Tears People Get Ready (w/ Sting) Freeway Boogie Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers Rock Me Baby (w/ Buddy Guy) Big Block Rice Pudding Rough Boy (w/ Billy Gibbons) Foxy Lady (w/ Billy Gibbons) A Day in the Life
Metallica: For Whom the Bell Tolls One Turn the Page Sweet Jane (w/ Lou Reed) White Light/White Heat (w/ Lou Reed) Iron Man (w/ Ozzy Osbourne) Paranoid (w/ Ozzy Osbourne) You Really Got Me (w/ Ray Davies) All Day and All of the Night (w/ Ray Davies) Stone Cold Crazy Enter Sandman
U2 : Vertigo Magnificent Because the Night #1 (w/ Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith) Because the Night #2 (w/ Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith) I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (w/ Bruce Springsteen) Mysterious Ways Where Is the Love (w/ Black Eyed Peas) Gimme Shelter (w/ Mick Jagger, Fergie, Will.I.Am) Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of (w/ Mick Jagger) Beautiful Day
Harps come up a lot when talking about rock and roll. In the mid-‘60s Bob Dylan brought the harp to the masses. The harp was soon adopted from everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Stevie Wonder. Currently, younger groups like Wilco to My Morning Jacket are bringing the harp mantle to a new generation. This isn’t surprising – pick a harp in the right key and there are no bum notes!
If you haven’t already figured it out, this is the mouth harp we’re talking about, the harmonica. When writing about rock music, the clarification hardly needs to be made. No rock band features an actual harp!
No rock band except Rey Fresco, that is. “Features” is the right word too, for this is no mere press-baiting novelty. This SoCal reggae-rock quartet performs the mean feat of putting harpist Xocoyotzin Moraza front and center. It wasn’t long into Rey Fresco’s funky set at Manhattan’s Living Room Tuesday night before you wondered why more bands don’t feature harps.
Part of the reason may be that harpists as skilled as Moraza are hard to come by. The all-wood 36-string instruments he plays come handmade from his father, with custom strings capable of handling Moraza’s flying fingers as they leap the instrument’s five octaves. Though when he plays chords it veers a little close to the steel drum, Moraza generally takes on the role most bands would give a lead guitarist.
With his unusual instrument it’s safe to say Moraza was the focus of much of the small crowd’s attention, but lead singer Roger Keiaho refused to let himself get upstaged. Keiaho’s soulful yelp pierced through the pretty melodies, giving the smooth vibes a set of balls solely lacking from most music that comes within ten feet of reggae. By the time the band closed with a cover of Compay Segundo’s “Chan Chan,” they had accomplished the most impressive feat at all: making the harp seem a perfectly normal rock instruments.
Austin’s Matt the Electrician stripped away the surfer-party vibe, his loner woodsman beard drawing instant attention as he quietly sang songs inspired by family members. “That was for my son,” he said after finishing “Animal Boy.” “All parents know that when you give one child something you have to give the other something of exactly equal value. So this one’s for my daughter.”
His daughter may have gotten the short shrift in the end – the first tune was longer –but hopefully she forgave pop. It’s not every dad who can open a set with two tunes played on a ukulele-banjo. Novelty Instrument Night at the Living Room came to a close when he picked up an acoustic guitar, his main axe, but his note-perfect whistling solos kept the unusual in the fore.
While Matt avoided the covers which have garnered him some recognition (he has an excellent new one of Journey’s “Faithfully”), his quirky originals about his cat and Japan kept the small crowd’s attention as he warbled and whistled his way through winsome songs. “Divided By” of his new Animal Boy sounded like a less-sarcastic Randy Newman and “Osaka in the Rain” made him seem an ideal candidate for Lost in Translation II. Matt’s career as an electrician may be behind him, but Matt the Musician is just picking up speed.
Robert Frank’s The Americans ushered in a new era for photography, focusing on the daily trials and triumphs of everyday people. He took 28,000 snapshots in his two-year trip across the United States in the mid-‘50s, selecting just 83 for the final book. Each shot invokes a uniquely American loneliness, whites and blacks separate in stature but equal in isolation. In the book’s introduction, Jack Kerouac wrote, “Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see?” Decades later, art buffs worldwide do see. In September, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition of original prints of all 83 photos, arranged in the same meticulously thought-out order just in the book. To help honor the occasion, Patti Smith and her daughter Jesse organized “A Salute to Robert Frank, Artist and Friend.”
Patti Smith first collaborated with Frank when he directed the video for her 1996 single “Summer Cannibals.” As the evening progressed she shared many amusing anecdotes about the quiet shuffling man. She described humbly showing him her own photographs and the elation she felt when he told her, “I see what you’re doing.” “When Robert says that,” she asked aloud, “Who the fuck cares what anyone else thinks?” Mostly though, her musings on Frank came through recitation and song. On the poetry side, Jesse Smith selected a broad spectrum of material from the well known (Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”) to the obscure (Patti Smith’s own “combe”). Throughout, the images of old-time America echoed the photos. The first onstage words, in fact, were Smith’s herself, coming from a personal notebook written in April 1971. Printed in the advertisements leading up to the show and the bulletin during, it framed the event around the point where Smith and Frank meet.
I keep trying to figure out what it means to be American. When I look in myself I see Abyssinia, nineteenth-century France, but I can’t recognize what makes me American. I think about Robert Frank’s photographs—broke down jukeboxes in Gallup, New Mexico, swaying hips and spurs, ponytails and syphilitic cowpokes, hash slingers, the glowing black tarp of US 285 and the Hoboken stars and stripes.
I think about a red, white and blue rag I wrap around my head. Maybe it’s nothing material; maybe it’s just being free.
Freedom is a waterfall, is pacing linoleum till dawn, the right to write the wrong words. And I done plenty of that...
Smith tackled her own American history with poems about her birthplace of Chicago (Carl Sandburg’s “Mag”) and her adopted home of New York (an excerpt from E.B. White’s “Here Is New York”). She never veered into the self-indulgent though, interspersing all her selections with messages from Robert, who had been forced to abandon his planned appearance. Before reading a section of William S. Burroughs’ The Western Lands, she commented that this was the piece Frank requested she read at the event. She shrugged her shoulders as she said it, saying she wasn’t sure why he chose it. The connections between the words and images didn’t need to be clear though; the feeling tied the two in a way specificity never could.
The songs Smith chose to perform veered away from her own material. She only performed four original songs (“Trampin’,” “Beneath the Southern Cross,” “Ghost Dance” and “People Have the Power”), instead imagining what Frank might have heard coming over the AM as he drove across the country in the mid-‘50s. She has never publicly performed before many of these songs before, and may never again.
The first cover came halfway through the evening with Smith’s take on “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” Originally written in 1934 for Roy Rogers’ band the Sons of the Pioneers, singer Kate Smith had a hit with the tune in the ‘50s. The tune evoked a wide-open America, the sort of James Dean lone-ranger imagery both terribly beautiful and terribly sad. “I’ll keep rolling along / Deep in my heart is a song,” Smith slowly sang. “Here on the range I belong / Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”
“The Wayward Wind” continued the home-on-the-range vibe. Gogi Grant had a number-one hit with the tune in 1956. As on most of the songs, Smith was accompanied by Jesse on piano, Michael Campbell on xylophone and her longtime compatriot Lenny Kaye on guitar. The latter two came together for a cowboy solo before Kaye took center stage (figuratively) on a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune.”
Patti sat cross-legged on the wooden stage while Kaye plucked the childlike folk melody with Jesse and Campbell accompanying. “High up above my eyes could clearly see / The Statue of Liberty / Sailing away to sea / And I dreamed I was crying,” he sang at the end of the song. Then, with a few nods of his head he masterfully segued into a bare-bones rhythm over which Smith projected Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus,” a poem about Lady Liberty herself.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
After the night’s only rock and roll moment (a “Power to the People” sing-along), Smith opened the encore by reading Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl.” “Holy! Holy! Holy!” she chanted. “The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!” As one “holy” built to another, the cascade of images ushered in the evening’s most powerful moment. Like a good rock singer, Smith built the poem to a shouted crescendo before winding it down with the one final line: “Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul! “
It would have been a powerful way to end the night, but Smith had one more cover to get out of her system. The foursome on stage took on the Everly Brothers with a grinning “Bye Bye Love.” If Frank did in fact hear that song as he drove across the country, he couldn’t have smiled wider than the crowd at the Met. He couldn’t have smiled wider than Patti Smith.
SET LIST Reading: notebook, April 1971 Reading: Events of ’55 and ’56 [Jesse Smith on piano] Song: “Trampin’” [Jesse on piano] Reading: “I Hear America Singing,” by Walt Whitman [Jesse on piano, Michael Campbell on xylophone] Reading: “A Blessing,” by James Wright Reading: “combe,” by Patti Smith [Jesse on piano, Campbell on xylophone] Song: “Beneath the Southern Cross” Reading: Excerpt from Here Is New York, by E.B. White Reading: Excerpt from The Western Lands, by William S. Burroughs Song: “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (Kate Smith cover) [Jesse on piano, Campbell on xylophone, Lenny Kaye on guitar] Recitation: “Mag,” by Carl Sandburg Song: “The Wayward Wind” (Gogi Grant cover) [Jesse on piano, Campbell on xylophone, Kaye on guitar] Song: “An American Tune” (Paul Simon cover) [Kaye on vocals and guitar, Jesse on piano, Campbell on xylophone] Reading: “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus Song: “Ghost Dance” [Jesse on piano, Campbell on guitar, Kaye on guitar] Song: “People Have the Power” [Jesse on piano, Campbell on guitar, Kaye on guitar] ------------------------ Reading: “Footnote to Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg Song: “Bye Bye Love” (Everly Brothers cover) [Jesse on piano, Campbell on guitar, Kaye on guitar]
The three B’s of the Jersey shore: beer, bowling and Bruce Springsteen.
Add in a fourth B – Brooklyn – and you’ve got the ingredients of Friday night’s Gaslight Anthem show. The up-and-coming punk revivalists played a packed set at the Brooklyn Bowl while lager flowed, pins tumbled, and hipsters said the hell with ironic distance, crowd surfing, fist pumping, and uninhibitedly yelling along.
Oregon’s Broadway Calls kicked things off with a fast-paced set that largely provided mood music for a crowd busy checking out the merch, watching the Yankees game and getting pleasantly buzzed. The Bowl is right next-door to the Brooklyn Brewery, so instead of cheap plastic cups of Bud Light, hearty pints of Brooklyn Lager circulated freely (often becoming broken glass covering the dance floor).
Jesse Malin of Queens pushed the throttle one gear higher, touring behind his 2008 covers album On Your Sleeve. Sadly, he ignored many of the disc’s best tracks, including Tom Waits and the Hold Steady tunes, instead focusing on his back catalogue of original material. The sideways paper-boy cap came off a bit pretty-boy Joe Strummer, but the Mick Jagger swagger of his step screamed rock and roll authenticity. A tight three-piece band pounded out the riffs behind him, culminating in the first Bruce reference of the night when he closed with “Broken Radio,” his 2007 Boss duet. You can catch the video here, but the slow-burn arrangement of the record pales next to the guitar attack it becomes live.
The angry woodsman gutter-punk of Murder By Death finally drew the majority of attendees to the stage as mutton-chopped Adam Turla yelped out his Johnny Cash baritone over songs about whiskey, low-down women, and the devil. The set focused largely on the quartet’s latest Red of Tooth and Claw, kicking off with the steel-driving “Ball & Chain” and rapping up forty-five minutes later with the Inglorious Basterds-approved “Comin’ Home.” Cellist Sarah Balliet added extra grit and grind on the low end.
“We are the last of the jukebox Romeos,” the Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon sang halfway through their set. I couldn’t put it any better. These four New Jersey boys wear their hearts and influences on their sleeves, singing the sort of unashamed rock and roll you didn’t think anyone made anymore. Within the set’s first three songs – “High Lonesome,” “Casanova, Baby!” and “Old White Lincoln” – they’d already quoted Springsteen four times, Tom Waits twice, with some Wilson Pickett, Gary “U.S.” Bonds and Tom Petty in for good measure.
The music came just as unabashedly referential as the lyrics, focusing largely on material from the band’s 2008 break-through The ’59 Sound. With no time for slow songs, Fallon led the boys through one high-energy basher after the next, hitting crowd favorites like “Great Expectations,” “The Backseat” and the title track with the passion of a band with a lot to prove. This is what it must have felt like seeing an early ‘70s Springsteen show at the Stone Pony.
A generous helping of covers kept the throw-back vibe running strong, with everything from Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” weaving in and out of the originals. Whether shouting out Gainesville buddies’ Hot Water Music with a “Trusty Chords” cover or remembering a favorite childhood soundtrack with Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust,” these rockers used the old songs to claim their place up there with the legends. It won’t be long before these bands start covering their songs.
A New Yorker might well wonder how this would go over with a Williamsburg crowd. Brooklyn has the reputation of a bunch of cooler-than-thou hipsters standing around at concerts, arms folded, trying to out-scene each other. The Gaslight Anthem weren’t having any of that. Circle pits moshed, bottles smashed, and fights broke out on the packed floor while a crowd seemingly starved of good rock and roll tried to out-yell each other.
The show did have one heckler, but Fallon shut him down with curt humor. “You like pizza?” he exclaimed in response to some inane shout. “I like pizza too! We should hang out all the time!!!” Needless to say, he was promptly accused of being gay from said audience member, which just provided more fodder for him. “I don’t see that as an insult,” Fallon protested. “Hey Alex,” he called to his bassist, “you’re looking handsome tonight! Apparently I’m gay. So…whaddya say? Interested?” More than just the girls there would have taken him up on the offer.
Almost two hours after they began, the Southside Johnny-aping “Say I Won’t (Recognize)” closed things out in epic fashion. Again, Fallon summed up the mood better than any reviewer could. “We’re having a party,” he sang. “Everybody’s swinging. Tonight won’t you come down out of your tower, don’t make me dance alone!”
He needn’t have worried.
SET LIST High Lonesome Casanova, Baby! Old White Lincoln Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Wherefore Are Though, Elvis? The ’59 Sound Film Noir We Came to Dance Miles Davis & The Cool The Patient Ferris Wheel Stand By Me (Ben E. King cover) / I’da Called You Woody, Joe Angry Johnny and the Radio / Straight to Hell (The Clash cover) Great Expectations State of Love and Trust (Pearl Jam cover) The Backseat * * * Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts Trusty Chords (Hot Water Music cover) Meet Me By the River's Edge Say I Won’t (Recognize)
“Bring on your wrecking ball,” Bruce Springsteen sang at the beginning of his Friday concert. He wasn’t being metaphoric; when they raze Giants Stadium in January, one imagines there will be quite a few wrecking balls on the scene.
To commemorate its demise, Springsteen brought the E Street Band for five final concerts. “Now my home is here in the Meadowlands,” he sang to rapturous applause in opener “Wrecking Ball,” “where mosquitoes grow big as airplanes / Here where the blood is spilled / The arena’s filled / And Giants play the game.”
Springsteen composed the song especially for these performances, but just as “Working on a Dream” survived debuting last fall for the Obama campaign, it’s hard to imagine this is the last time we will hear this one. The rare topical song with broader appeal, a few lyric revisions are all that stand in the way of it becoming a barn-storming E Street regular. Springsteen started singing alone on stage, a single spotlight silhouetting his electric guitar, when the chorus hit the band blasted in as if it were a Darkness on the Edge of Town classic. With the “woah-woah-woah” sing-alongs and holler-til-your-throat-breaks chorus, this reviewer was reminded of “Badlands,” not coincidentally the night’s second tune.
Giants Stadium may have as much importance in music history as the Newark Airport, but for Springsteen it looms large. E Street has run through the concrete behemoth dozens of times since 1985, most recently at a sold-out ten-night stand in 2003 and a quickie three-nighter last summer. Plus the guy lives about twenty minutes from East Rutherford, so affection by proximity helps connect him with thousands of Jersey fans.
Though the bizarre rumors circling the crowd before showtime (appearances by Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton proved popular) came to nothing, the E Street Band found a more fitting way to celebrate and remember: by playing Born in the U.S.A., the album that started it all, from beginning to end. Though this multi-multi-platinum disc shows its age more than some other Springsteen classics, the cheeseball sound of “Glory Days” and “Dancing in the Dark” got 50,000 rocking like it was 1985 all over again, dated synth sounds be damned.
It helps that the songs themselves haven’t aged a bit. As always, “No Surrender” gets fists pounding, “I’m On Fire” gets couples snuggling, and “Bobby Jean” gets tears streaming. Guitar wiz Nils Lofgren unleashed a whirling dervish of a solo on “Cover Me” and Clarence Clemons defied his age (67) by blowing album-perfect sax solos throughout. The album’ only real live rarity, “Downbound Train,” delivered the real emotional wallop though when fans sang every word as if the pain of tough circumstances and arbitrary layoffs were not soon forgotten. Try as they might though, the audience rarely succeeded in outperforming the band. The absence of recently deceased organist Dan Federici hung over the proceedings (Springsteen dedicated “My Hometown” to his memory) but off-the-bench replacement Charlie Giordano handled every boardwalk swirl and accordion flourish with deft ease.
The rest of the band have lived on E Street far longer than Giordano though, and they showed their collective comfort with off-the-cuff performances like a second-time-ever take on the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” to satisfy an impromptu fan request. Returning to the fold after recent absences was Springsteen’s wife Patti Scialfa, performing an intimate duet with Springsteen on romantic endurance song “Tougher Than the Rest.”
Also keeping it in the family was Jay Weinberg, son of Max, manning the drum kit for “Born to Run.” It was a relatively easy night for Jay – this summer he has frequently taken over the whole show when his dad’s Tonight Show obligations kept him away.
Even E Street offspring couldn’t keep pace with Bruce though, who tore through the three-and-a-half-hour set with the energy of a hungry twenty-something determined to prove himself to his family, his home and the world. After a lengthy meander through the crowd during “Hungry Heart,” he decided the quickest way back to the stage was on top of the fans. This sixty-year old crowd-surfed his way stageward, gesturing the band to keep playing as he made his airborne journey. The only face to rival his joy the entire night was the middle aged man holding the “Bald men can dance too” sign when Springsteen brought him onstage to jitterbug (and dirty dance) during “Dancing in the Dark.”
“You’re only how old you feel,” the saying goes. Problem is, most of us feel pretty much like our age. Springsteen doesn’t just defy age though, he beats it into submission with a guitar windmill, knee slide, and mic-stand dangle. When he bounced around singing the “You Sexy Thing” lyrics to concert staple “Raise Your Hand,” he grinned like a teenage prankster getting away with a good one. When he tore into “Kitty’s Back” intro, he wailed on his guitar like it was the only thing holding him back from the boring-old-guy ledge.
Still, after three-plus hours even the most hopped-up warhorse needs to wind down. The new Celtic-punk “American Land” brought the band to the stage lip for intros and bows, but Bruce decided they had time for one more and launched into the Tom Waits song “Jersey Girl.” While setlist-watchers at home questioned closing Giants Stadium with a slow song, everyone in attendance sung along with such passion it made “Born to Run” look like a bathroom break. Waits wrote the song about his own wife Kathleen Brenner, but Friday night the girl in question was the stadium itself, given one last grateful pat on the back before New Jersey headed off into the just-started drizzle.
SET LIST: Wrecking Ball Badlands Spirit in the Night Outlaw Pete Hungry Heart Working on a Dream Born in the U.S.A. Cover Me Darlington County Working on the Highway Downbound Train I'm on Fire No Surrender Bobby Jean I'm Goin' Down Glory Days Dancing in the Dark My Hometown Tougher Than the Rest The Promised Land Last to Die Long Walk Home The Rising Born to Run * * * Raise Your Hand The Last Time Waitin' on a Sunny Day Seven Nights to Rock Kitty's Back American Land Jersey Girl
Let’s get one thing clear: despite what the Larger Than Life…In 3D filmmakers would have you believe, 3D concert films do not make it “as if you were there.” Thank goodness. Anyone looking for the “as if you were there” experience might be better off watching this movie from a couple hundred feet away with strangers yelling in your ear, spilling beer down the back of your shirt and elbowing you in the eye as they crowd-surf over you. Any regular concert-goer knows that “as if you were there” is hardly a selling point for a movie.
The music sounds just about as anyone familiar with the bands would expect it to (jam-rock, jam-blues and gypsy-punk, respectively), but the 3D technology helps bring out the little moments that make live shows so entrancing. When you watch Ben Harper fiddle with his guitar feedback to end his Mile High Music Festival set, his furrowed brow and piercing stare bring out the concentration pouring into the minute sonic fluctuations. When you see Dave Matthews lazily flopping around the stage during “Funny the Way It Is,” it’s like the frat-rock hippie is noodle-dancing right in your lap (whether you want Dave Matthews noodle-dancing in your lap is another matter entirely).
To be fair, this technology is far from perfect. While mid-range shots looked beautiful, anything with a significant depth of field causes stomachs to turn over. It was hard not to flinch every time an errant beach ball flashed across the screen, but worse still was the random stage equipment which would pop up looking hundreds of yards in front of the rest of the action. If anything, this technology works too well; when Gogol Bordello hypeman Pedro Erazo points at a camera during “Start Wearing Purple,” it’s a wonder no one in the audience lost an eye. Real life isn’t that 3D.
