The Boss Closes out Jazz Fest

[cwnorman]

It felt really great to have a little normalcy down there this past weekend. There was a lot of love at the fest!

It was my first time to catch the boss and lets just say he had NOLA working for him. What a tight band and such an amazing performance. So much presence and emotion on that stage. Been going to the fest for a long time and the encore of "My City of Ruins/Buffalo Gals/You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)/When the Saints Go Marching In" is the most powerful thing I have ever seen at the fairgrounds. I strongly suggest everyone catching the tour if it comes close to your hometown. Here's a write up from the Times Picayune

 

Spera's Spin

Music writer Keith Spera's views and reviews of the 'fest

Monday, May 01, 2006

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

 

 

As Bruce Springsteen led his sprawling Seeger Sessions Band onto the Acura Stage on Sunday, he confessed to a hint of trepidation.

 

"It's our first gig," he said. "Let's hope it goes well."

 

Moments later, he encountered a "technical problem" with his pants. Grinning, the embarrassed Boss turned his back to the vast audience and made the necessary adjustments. "It's not just a new band," he later explained, "but a new belt."

 

That was his first, and final, glitch. For two hours, Springsteen and his glorious Seeger Sessions ensemble -- six horns, a banjo, accordion, pedal steel, fiddles, piano -- rendered vintage folk and protest songs stirringly alive and relevant in a tour de force performance. Like few others in popular music could, he crafted a show that spoke eloquently to the city's struggles, both welcome distraction and poignant reminder.

 

The opening "O Mary Don't You Weep" set the tone. Springsteen led, then the full ensemble swung in behind him. A muted trumpet, a trombone and a saloon piano all took solos. Springsteen, as usual, heaved himself into the material at hand. The gravel in his voice stamped a ragged glory on "John Henry" over banjos and accordion. "Old Dan Tucker" and "Open All Night" were each a hoot. Big horn swells lit up a gritty "Jesse James."

 

The best folk songs transcend time. In the old Irish anti-war ballad "Mrs. McGrath," a cannonball claims her son's "two fine legs"; it could just as easily have been an improvised explosive device.

 

Certain lyrics resonated more directly for locals: "There'll be better times by and by." "God gave Noah a rainbow sign, no more water, but fire next time." "The bank holds my mortgage and they want to take my house away." "The only thing we did right was the day we started to fight." And it was easy to imagine "Louisiana" swapped into the lyrics to "My Oklahoma Home," which was "blown away" in a natural disaster.

 

In his most overtly political statement, Springsteen recalled his visit the previous afternoon to the 9th Ward. "I saw some sights I never thought I'd see in an American city," he said. "The criminal ineptitude makes you furious." In response, he adapted Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" with new lyrics dedicated to "President Bystander": "My old school pals had some high times there/What happened to you folks is too bad," he sang, mocking President Bush's comments in the early days after Hurricane Katrina.

 

The set's watershed moment, literally, was "My City of Ruins." Originally written for his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, N.J., on Sunday he dedicated it to New Orleans. To a hushed audience, Springsteen closed his eyes and began: "There's a blood red circle on the cold dark ground, and the rain is falling down/The church door's blown open, I can hear the organ's sound, but the congregation's gone . . . the boarded-up windows, the hustlers and the thieves, while my brother's down on his knees . . . now tell me how do I began again? My city of ruins. . ." And then the refrain: "Come on, rise up! Rise up!" Thousands lifted their hands to the sky. I wept, my wife wept. And we were not alone.

 

Just as quickly, Springsteen kicked back into good-time gear with "Buffalo Gals" and a zydeco rubboard and accordion reimagining of "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)," from his 1980 album, "The River." A tuba, improbably enough, was the final instrument onstage before the encore at a Springsteen show.

 

Then he presented one last gift. A hundred bands in New Orleans, Springsteen said, could play this last song better than he. But he had come across two lesser-known verses that he thought might be appropriate. With that, he unspooled "When the Saints Go Marching In," not as a boisterous, high-kicking second-line, but as an acoustic prayer, delivered in a desperate hour. Face clenched, he sought the promised land: "Now some say this world of trouble is the only world we'll ever see/But I'm waiting for that moment when the new world is revealed."

 

No other artist could have spoken to, and for, the city of New Orleans at this most important of Jazzfests more purposefully, more passionately and more effectively than Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band.

[Albert Tatlock]

I have been indifferent to BS for a while, but it's good to hear that this recent transformation is capable of delivering meaningful and emotional performances. Was this in a big arena venue or something more condusive?

[cwnorman]

I have been indifferent to BS for a while, but it's good to hear that this recent transformation is capable of delivering meaningful and emotional performances. Was this in a big arena venue or something more condusive?

 

I've always been a fan of Bruces, but seeing this performance live definitely endeared him on another level. Arena question is a lttle hard to answer. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

(Jazz fest) is a 7 day festival located at the NOLA Downs Fairgrounds. There are 10 Stages, and Bruce played on the main stage. Its an outdoor festival but the sound is amazing. Here's a good article from the NY times. I've got a couple of pics already downloaded but can't figure out how to paste them here. Just on my computer, no url?

 

 

 

Critic's Notebook

At Jazzfest in New Orleans, the Party Must Go On

By JON PARELES

NEW ORLEANS, May 1

[Albert Tatlock]

I've got a couple of pics already downloaded but can't figure out how to paste them here. Just on my computer, no url?

If the pictures are just on your hard drive, AND you are a paid up gold member, then you should have an option to add 'File Attachments' that will upload pictures onto VC - showing them as a thumbnail in the post that can be clicked on to display full size. Otherwise you'll have to go down the route of getting them hosted somewhere on the web and then linking to them.

[Analogman]

A tuba, improbably enough, was the final instrument onstage before the encore at a Springsteen show.

 

 

Guess this guy never heard Wild Billy's Circus Story.

[tugmoose]

Guess this guy never heard Wild Billy's Circus Story.

Worst BS song EVER!

[cwnorman]

If the pictures are just on your hard drive, AND you are a paid up gold member, then you should have an option to add 'File Attachments' that will upload pictures onto VC - showing them as a thumbnail in the post that can be clicked on to display full size. Otherwise you'll have to go down the route of getting them hosted somewhere on the web and then linking to them.

 

I'm paid in full...will get to it tomorrow. Thanks!

[Analogman]

Worst BS song EVER!

 

 

Oh really

[awatt]

Oh really

 

Sorry, but this is vintage BS. As I've said, was big into the Boss in the early years--saw him in 78, at his peak on Darkness, as well as in 80 and 84. First 6 or so albums were classics, but less interested since then. I hear a lot of Bruce in UT and wonder how much Jay and Jeff were going after The River sound.

 

Only heard bits and pieces of BS as Seeger, but show looks like the Boss is inspired once again (national trauma, politics, traditional folk music can do it!). But, I'm so AWATT that this seems like trying his hand at something Mermaid-ish, so a bit derivative....

 

[Analogman]

Uh I agree.

 

Wild Billy's Circus Story is on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle of course.

[awatt]

Uh I agree.

 

Wild Billy's Circus Story is on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle of course.

 

Kitty's Back was always my favorite from that era. But those days are long gone, and so is that Bruce.

 

I've seen the future of rock and roll, and it's AWATT.

 

[Analogman]

Dam straight - I prefer Greeting from. . . - particularly Lost in The Flood.

[mpolak21]

Dam straight - I prefer Greeting from. . . - particularly Lost in The Flood.

 

Yeah I am not sure he ever topped that and The Wild The Innocent, The E Street Shuffle. Some of the Seeger sessions sound pretty interesting though.

 

--Mike

[Albert Tatlock]

Bruce Springsteen - Manchester Arena

 

Dave Simpson, Monday May 8, 2006, The Guardian

 

Three years ago, when the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the current American president, they were booed off stage and all but chased out of the country. Now, as George Bush's popularity crashes, Dubya-baiting has become American pop's latest sport. Along with other heavyweights like Neil Young and Madonna, Bruce Springsteen is making up for lost time.

The American workers' musical champion's new album, The Seeger Sessions, features songs popularised by the 1960's protest singer Pete Seeger and is the most political album of Springsteen's career.

 

Following similar sentiments expressed at last week's New Orlean's Jazz Festival, Springsteen kicked off his European tour in Manchester last night railing against Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. The subsequent soul song How Can A Man Stand Such Times and Live? featured new words composed specially for Dubya: "He took a look around and gave a pep talk/Said 'I'll be right here' then he took a little walk..."

It was met with what sounded like boos, but was actually thousands of people cheering "Broooooce". It was always going to be a raucous evening once The Boss kicked over his chair and shrieked, as someone clambered up during Old Man Tucker, "the stage has been rushed during a 150-year-old folk song!"

 

In black waistcoat and holding his guitar like a heavy machine gun, there were elements of Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash to the man as he tore into negro spirituals, songs about premature burials, and workers crushed by the system. His choking voice sounded like he's spent a previous life in a coalmine, not rocking stadiums. For added authenticity a 17-piece band - including his wife, Patti Scialfa, and various pianos, fiddles, hollering, big horns and strange hats - gave the arena the unlikely, intimate atmosphere of a wild 19th century boozer.

 

Springsteen's past ventures into protest music have been problematic. Many Americans bizarrely took lines like "Go Kill The Yellow Man" in his 1984 Vietnam song Born In The USA as advocating overseas military jollies.

 

Last night he, perhaps sensibly, let ancient songs speak for themselves, although the Irish-tinged anti-war Mrs McGrath was spat out with such barely intelligible fury he sounded like he'd suddenly turned into The Pogues' Shane MacGowan.

 

The civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome became a hymn for modern struggles. But mostly, this was Springsteen in defiance but unusually playful mood.

 

He invited a disastrous sing-song during a medley of his own Cadillac Ranch and Elvis Presley's Mystery Train and howled: "That's miserable, we need some professionalism here!" It's ironic that a man once hailed as "rock 'n roll's future" is turning to aged songs for new direction, but he seems revitalised.

 

Making protest fun? Maybe some of our hapless politicians could learn a thing or two from that.