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Heaven Is a Playlist Music

Heaven Is a Playlist, Track 1: Little Richard, “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”

Hey, everybody: Today begins what I intend to be a long-running series on the songs I think about the most. They’re not necessarily my FAVORITE songs — that’s a different list. These are the songs I obsess over, the songs that have come to mean something to me beyond the notes and the words. They’re the songs that move me in ways I don’t fully understand — sometimes, when I listen to one of them, I’ll start crying for no apparent reason. But then, when it’s over, I’ll want to hear it again.

The title for the series is lifted from the great Rick Telander book “Heaven Is a Playground” about street basketball in New York City in the ’70s. Everybody has their own personal version of heaven. Mine would be one where I could listen to an endless loop of these songs.

I should say out front that I’m not a music scholar — the stories here are to the best of my knowledge through my research. Feel free to let me know with corrections or context. I’m also not going to put a lot of links in these pieces — I hope you read the story through, then maybe go check out some of the songs and artists I mention along the way. I’ve created a Spotify playlist to collect the songs as I write about them. Of course there’s only one song on there right now. But I plan to add many more.

*****

It’s 25 years ago, at least, and I’m driving through small-town South Carolina. Every weekend back then I’d go to the record store and come out with an armload of CDs. Some of them were the newest stuff I heard on the radio or saw on MTV. The rest was to fill out my musical education. Every time I went on a road trip, I’d throw a few in the car.

Part of the stack this time around was a Little Richard greatest-hits CD.

It was put out by Motown, even though he never recorded for Motown — they licensed it from one of his old labels that fell on hard times. I knew the first eight or nine tracks, the songs that just about everybody knows, the red blood cells of rock ‘n’ roll — “Lucille,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” “Long Tall Sally.”

The back half of the CD was songs I hadn’t heard, mostly for good reason. But then it got to track 13. I happened to be coming into a town just as the song started. I listened to most of it over the span of a couple of red lights. And it hit me so hard I pulled into the parking lot of a Family Dollar to catch my breath.

I later found out that the song — like all the tracks on the CD — had been part of recording sessions he did in 1964 and ’65. In the 15 years before that, Little Richard had failed as a blues singer; went back home to Macon, Georgia, to wash dishes for a living; gave music another shot and basically invented rock ‘n’ roll; quit at the height of stardom to sing gospel and become an evangelist; switched back to keep from being upstaged by Sam Cooke on a concert tour; headlined a different tour with the Beatles as his opening act; and disappeared from the charts so completely that he was re-recording his old hits, hoping somebody would remember. That’s six semicolons worth of switchbacks, and it’s still oversimplifying things. Anything anybody could write about Little Richard is oversimplifying things.

Artists borrow or steal or recycle all the time, but Little Richard was burgled more than most. The history of rock ‘n’ roll is built from his spare parts. Some of it is direct and specific: the guitar riff in “Oh, Pretty Woman” came from the bass line in “Lucille,” and the drum lick that opens Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” is lifted from “Keep a Knockin’.” Most of it is the vibe, the clothes, the hair, the sweat, the dance across the boundaries of gender and sex. Without Little Richard there’d be no Elton John, no Bowie, no Prince, not the way we know them.

The thing about Little Richard, as great as he was, is that he never let you forget he was giving a performance. The piano frills, the falsetto woooooo!-s, even his schtick when he did interviews, cracking a joke and waiting for the laugh and then glaring at the audience in mock outrage and hollering “Shut up!”

It was a fantastic act. But he never quite created that suspension of disbelief, that moment in a book or a movie or a song when it transmutes from entertainment to something that strikes bone, as deep and real as anything you can touch.

That’s hard to do in any art, and especially hard in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, which was mostly about sex and cars and dancing. The deeper, more adult emotions didn’t fit the music yet. The Beatles and Stones and Dylan were starting to change that, but in 1964, when Little Richard was trying to get back in the game, that depth belonged to country music, and especially soul music. Little Richard had never really been that type of singer.

One of his famous sayings was “I’m not conceited…” long pause … “I’m convinced.” It’s a great line, and he got a lot of mileage out of it. But it’s the kind of thing somebody says when they’re not convinced. Gay, straight, black, white, rock, gospel, funny, furious — Little Richard was a little bit of everything, as wide as the Nile. But when you spread that wide, it’s hard to go deep.

Sometime in early 1965, with all that life already behind him, he sat down in a studio in New York City to record “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me.”

*****

Good Lord, what a band on this record. The drummer was Bernard Purdie, who played with everybody from Aretha to Steely Dan, and invented a lick so widely copied they call it the Purdie Shuffle. The organist was Billy Preston, who later played with the Beatles and had five top-5 hits as a solo act. The guitar player was a young guy who at the time called himself Maurice James. Later he would go out on his own under his real name: Jimi Hendrix.

The songwriter, Don Covay, was also around. Covay had once been Richard’s chauffeur, and later built a modest career as an R&B singer, but his best work was as a songwriter — he wrote two of Aretha’s biggest hits, “Chain of Fools” and “See Saw.” “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got” is a straight-up Memphis ballad, something Otis Redding would’ve sung.

Hendrix kicks it off with a short guitar lick and the song eases in slowly, carried on a bed of horns. When the vocal comes in, if you didn’t know it was a Little Richard record, you might not guess it was him. He’s not rushing through the words, not shouting so loud he throws the mic into overdrive. He’s singing to a lover. He’s stretching out the words, begging for relief.

You ne-e-e-ever treat me kind

You par-r-r-r-ty all the time

You don’t mean me no good

I’d leave you if I only could

The target of his pleas isn’t much to look at, and doesn’t have any money. But this mean, ugly, broke lover has hooked Richard so deep that he sings down in the low end of his range, letting Covay float over the top in high harmony. It’s all beautifully put together. You can the couples slow-dancing to it in a sweaty club somewhere.

Then, a couple of verses in, Richard starts to preach. And all of a sudden Little Richard the entertainer is back.

Baby, baby, baby, I feel so all alone. Sometimes I just cry! I sigh! Sometimes I even moan!

He spins a tale about how his best friend comes to tell Richard something he needs to know about his lover, but Richard doesn’t understand what the friend is saying, he’s innocent, and pretty soon he’s going full Baptist on us. The Stax groove sure is pretty, and it’s fun to listen to Richard break into a sermon. But it feels like that the moment the song got too real, he pulled back.

This goes on for about a minute — an eternity on a pop record — but then he starts singing again, catches his breath, slows down. He understands now. His lover has cheated on him. He pleads let me beeeee, but you know he doesn’t mean it. A little more than three minutes in, Richard transitions from the verse to the chorus with one ad-libbed word:

Honey.

But he sings it:

HUHHHHHHHHHHHney!

It comes out coarse, like he’s ripping the notes from his throat, but there’s still a vibrato underneath, the barest hint of control. It’s the sound of a man barely hanging on.

I always want to romanticize these moments, make them more than they might really be. Maybe Little Richard was just a pure professional, steeped in black gospel, who was so good he could out-Otis Otis if he felt like it.

Or maybe it was the sound of a grown man reaching deep to share a truth he’d never shared. Maybe one he didn’t even know he had.

And the weird thing is, it wouldn’t hit as hard if it weren’t for the preaching right before it. It’s like Richard reminds you of who you thought he was before he shows you who he might really be, under the sweat and the makeup, somebody who kept trying to quit this earthly music for the glory of God, only to find the glory of God in this earthly music.

The song rolls into the outro and the temperature rises. Covay rides the high notes. Purdie steps in with drum fills. Hendrix places little two- or three-note licks in the open spaces. In the last 30 seconds, Billy Preston comes in with an organ line over the top of everything. And Little Richard, singing his ass off on the long fade, rushes just one line: I feel sometimes like I wanna die.

Right as he is proving his immortality.

*****

The song made it to no. 12 on the R&B charts — his last hit there of any size. On the pop charts, it never got higher than no. 92. There is some debate over who played what on the recording sessions, but most Jimi Hendrix scholars believe “I Don’t Know What You Got” is the only Little Richard record Hendrix ever played on. Not long after the recording, Little Richard fired Hendrix from his touring band. He was either late to too many gigs or took too much of Richard’s spotlight, depending on what version you believe.

Little Richard spent the rest of his life declaring, correctly, that he was the architect of rock ‘n’ roll, and complaining, correctly, that he was never appreciated enough. “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got” is so deep on his bench that I can’t find a clip of him playing it live. But it stopped me cold in that little town in South Carolina. And ever since then, a few times a year, something will remind me of it, and I’ll go spend a day or two with it all over again. When Little Richard died it was the first song I thought of, and since his death I’ve played it every day. And never just once.

I’ve spent my life paying attention to music — probably too much attention. Sometimes it’s just medicine — something to help me let off steam or move my feet or get past a heartbreak. But every so often, if I listen enough, I hear something that changes my life — that puts a name on a feeling I couldn’t describe, or sends a message to some far-off part of myself.

I write for a living, but music makes me feel more deeply than any other art. Part of the idea behind this series, for me, is trying to understand why. For now, most of it is still a mystery. I don’t know what it’s got, but it’s got me.

— TT

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Music

A Prince story

I went looking for the ticket stub today but couldn’t find it. I’ve kept the stubs from almost every concert and ballgame I’ve ever been to, but somehow this one slipped away. That’s OK. The memory holds.

We camped out all night for tickets. In the ’80s you had two options if you wanted tickets for a big concert. You called Ticketmaster the morning they went on sale and listened to a busy signal over and over for six hours. Or you stood in line all night at a ticket outlet. We stood in line because Prince was bringing his Purple Rain tour to the Omni in Atlanta and we had to be there.

So we took a place on the sidewalk outside a record store called Turtle’s in Athens, Ga., sometime on the evening of Nov. 30, 1984. I know the date because the Georgia-Georgia Tech football game was the next day. My friends Virgil and Perry, who went to Tech, were coming for the game anyway so they got there early to camp out for tickets. Our friends David and Andy joined us, even though they weren’t going to the show, because it sounded like fun and also because we had Jack Daniels.

Pretty soon the line went down the sidewalk and up the side of the parking lot and across the back side of the lot next to the street. It’s hard to stay up all night, even when you’re 20 years old. Andy and I amused ourselves by doing Scooby-Doo impressions. It’s possible we did this for hours, and possible that the people near us in line threatened to kill us if we didn’t stop. My memory is a little hazy on that part.

What I do remember is that Prince’s music was everywhere. Somebody had “Dirty Mind” on a boombox, and somebody else had “D.M.S.R.” blasting from a car, and everything from the “Purple Rain” soundtrack was all over the radio. It struck me how diverse the crowd was for a mostly white Southern college town. You could love Prince for the guitar licks and the funk grooves and the dirty lyrics and the perfect pop melodies. You could love him if you were straight or gay or something else. He erased every line in the sand and did it in platform shoes. He was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

If I remember right, the tickets went on sale at 10 in the morning. At 10:05 somebody with a bullhorn said the show was sold out. Only a few people at the front of the line had gotten seats. The rest of us moaned and cussed. All that time for nothing.

Then the bullhorn clicked on again.

“He’s adding more shows!”

Today I know they probably had more shows scheduled all along and just wanted to make sure people were in line to buy the tickets. But that morning, it felt like a miracle. After another half-hour or so we made it into the store and bought three seats for the fourth show of five. Our seats were behind the stage. We didn’t care. The show was five weeks away. I held that ticket close every day.

Sheila E. was the opener. Like Prince, she was gorgeous and she could really play. At the end they cut the lights and she did a percussion solo with neon drumsticks. She would have been an A-plus club show by herself. But then, after intermission, the lights went down again. It’s one of my favorite moments in the world, when you’re at a big show and all of a sudden it goes dark and you know the thing you’ve been waiting on for so long is about to happen.

Dearly beloved …

He opened with “Let’s Go Crazy” / “Delirious” / “1999” / “Little Red Corvette” — four homers to start off the game, parked in the upper deck. Nobody sat down after that. I’m not sure we breathed for the next two hours, except maybe for laughing along with “International Lover.” I can’t find a bootleg from that night — if you know of one, holler — but back then “Baby I’m a Star” was routinely going 15 to 30 minutes, with multiple solos and dances and whatnot. I remember never wanting it to stop. The band was so tight — one of the many things Prince did was bring the joy of a hot live band to a concert scene being taken over by synths and drum machines. He stood in the middle of it all, ripping guitar solos and screaming the high notes and dancing like James Brown crossed with a stripper. They hit the long breakdown to end it and walked off the stage and we all just stood there spent.

That was encore 1.

Encore 2 was “Purple Rain.”

The words of “Purple Rain” are about a breakup, but the music is gospel. They could play those chords in a Baptist church on Sunday and it would fit right in.  I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my life, and a couple that equaled that night, but I’ve never been to another show that was so much at once — so many different styles, so many brilliant ideas, so many connections that no one had made before Prince came along.

The music built to that last big solo, and we swayed in the purple light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Music

The Oxford American Georgia Music Issue (alternate universe version)

One of my favorite days every year is when the new Oxford American music issue comes in the mail. This is the magazine’s 17th annual music issue. At first, every music issue gathered music from around the South. For the past six years, each issue has focused on one Southern state. This year it’s Georgia. My home state.

As always, the CD that comes with the issue is fantastic — full of deep tracks by well-known artists, and revelations by musicians most of us have never heard of. The Georgia version ranges from James Brown and the Allman Brothers to ’70s folkie Alice Swoboda* and my new obsession, indie-pop singer Ruby the RabbitFoot (from my hometown of St. Simons Island!)

*Alice’s real last name was Harper but she switched her stage name after seeing a mention of the old Mets’ outfielder Ron Swoboda. This is my favorite factoid in quite some time.

But as I went through the tracks, my mind kept creating another CD — one with some of the other great Georgia musicians I’ve loved over the years.

So here’s a mythical Disc 2 that doesn’t repeat any of the artists from the Oxford American disc (with one necessary exception). That means I can’t use, among others, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, the Drive-By Truckers, Johnny Mercer, OutKast or R.E.M. (they show up on an Indigo Girls track). In the spirit of the OA collections, I’ve avoided the obvious choices from better-known artists, and tried to throw in a few folks you might not know about.

  1. Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Neither One of Us (Wants To Be the First To Say Goodbye)”

“Midnight Train To Georgia” bubbles underneath all Georgia music the same way “Georgia On My Mind” does, so let’s try Gladys’ greatest ballad instead. If you’ve ever loved and lost, you’ll be a mess by the time she hits the bridge. This song, “Midnight Train” and “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me” — the group’s three indisputable classics — were all written by Jim Weatherly, who was a quarterback on all-white Ole Miss football teams in the early ’60s. Life is weird and messy and wonderful.

2. Sea Level, “That’s Your Secret”

Sea Level is named for Chuck Leavell (C. Leavell — see what they did there?), who played piano with the Allman Brothers Band and now tours with the Rolling Stones. (He’s also an honorary ranger in the Forest Service.) This group is an offshoot of the Allmans with a little more jazz in the mix. My hometown FM station played this track a lot in the ’70s — the monster bass line by Lamar Williams came through even on my crappy Sears Roebuck stereo. Plus I always loved that this song namechecks Dusty Rhodes.

3. Mother’s Finest, “Somebody To Love” (live)

I plan to write a lot more about Mother’s Finest for a project I have in mind for down the road sometime. For now, just know that Mother’s Finest taught me — and a lot of other Southern boys and girls — that you could throw rock and soul and funk into a blender and make it sound great, and that there was something powerful in that blend beyond just the music. Grace Slick wishes she were as cool doing this song as Joyce Kennedy.

4. The Jody Grind, “Blue and Far”

They put out only two albums, but both are just about perfect — standards and pop nuggets and weird in-jokes, all built around the devastating voice of Kelly Hogan. There’s no better music for a Sunday night.

5. Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart, “This One’s Gonna Hurt You (For a Long, Long Time)”

Officially it’s Marty Stuart featuring Travis Tritt, but they split the singing 50-50 so I’m counting this one for Travis. He had some big hits but never made it quite as far as his voice deserved — he’s not George Jones but you can hear him get close now and then. All I know is I spent many a quarter playing this in jukeboxes all across the South when it came out.

6. Drivin’ N Cryin’, “Honeysuckle Blue”

Kevn Kinney, the lead singer, is an acquired taste — sort of a Southern-fried Geddy Lee. (I’ve never quite acquired that Geddy Lee taste.) Either way, the band has got every move in the book — folk to country to arena rock to their own blend of power pop, heavy on the guitars. Great, great live band.

7. Donkey, “Slick Night Out” (live)

The “Swingers” sound two years before “Swingers” came out. Donkey always had more of a melancholy undertow, though. These guys never picked up Heather Graham at the bar.

8. Arrested Development, “Mr. Wendal”

People bopped with the beat when it came out back in ’92, and for a lot of them it wasn’t until the 10th or 15th or 100th listen that the lyrics started to sink in.

9. The Heartfixers, “Greenwood Chainsaw Boogie”

Tinsley Ellis, the guitarist and singer, has gone on to a long solo career in the blues world, but I’ll remember him as the guy who used my bottle of Bud as a slide as he played while walking across our table at the Red Lion in Augusta one night. He kept the beer, too.

10. Cee-Lo Green, “Fuck You”

There should probably be some Goodie Mob in here, to show off that side of Cee-Lo, but the truth is that this video has 14 million views, and I was responsible for about a million of them the week it came out. (My friend Joe Posnanski was responsible for another million.)

11. Jack Logan, “New Used Car and a Plate of Bar B Q”

Jack Logan moved to Athens in the early ’90s and worked as a mechanic. In his off hours he wrote song after song. At some point a few prominent musicians (including R.E.M’s Peter Buck) heard some of the songs, and Logan eventually made a connection with a record-company exec. Logan sent him 500 songs. They narrowed it down to 42 that Logan released as a two-CD set called “Bulk.” I’ve played “Bulk” a lot over the years and always come back to this track. It’s still out there for a country singer who wants a #1 hit.

12. The Producers, “What She Does To Me”

These guys were the go-to band for festivals and frat parties when I was at UGA. The outfits are dated now, and nobody really runs around with a keyboard anymore, but this is still as beautiful a slice of power-pop as you’ll find. I can’t play it once without playing it twice.

13. Alan Jackson, “Country Boy”

Alan Jackson has had a zillion #1 country hits, he sells out arenas whenever he goes out on tour, he’s my mama’s favorite singer … and he’s still underrated. He’ll slide out of his lane and try something different more often than most country singers. Just two years after doing a straight-up gospel record, he put out this sly, sexy track. You sure look good, sittin’ in my right seat / Buckle up, and I’ll take you through the five speeds. Yeah buddy.

14. The B-52’s, “Rock Lobster”

I’ll take arguments for this as one of the top 10 singles of all time. It’s hilarious, it’s compulsively danceable, it rocks (that single-note solo at 2:22 in the video is a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll moment), and by God nobody had EVER heard anything like it. Or seen anything like it, either.

15. The Black Crowes, “Remedy”

The first two Black Crowes albums are guaranteed to make me feel better, especially turned up loud. They work better than Advil.

16. Brick, “Dazz”

Destined to be played at every grown ‘n’ sexy party from now to forever. And rightly so.

17. Atlanta Rhythm Section, “Georgia Rhythm”

There’s so much more great Georgia music out there — I left out a ton of hip-hop, a bunch of metal (MASTODON, people!), gospel, country, pretty much everything. I’m sure I’ll think of more songs the second I post this. Maybe there’s a Volume 3 down the road. Send suggestions. Either way, it makes sense to end here with the band I most identified with Georgia growing up. When I hear my home state in my head, I hear Ray Charles and Otis Redding first. But Ronnie Hammond comes in right behind them. Crank up that trusty Gibson, son.

Bonus track: James Brown, “Dooley’s Junkyard Dawgs”

Of course the Godfather is on the main Oxford American CD … but I’ll be damned if I’m putting together a compilation of Georgia music without this tribute to Vince Dooley’s great UGA football teams. The bass line alone is better than any other fight song in history.

Now then. When’s that North Carolina issue coming out?

 

 

 

 

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Music Uncategorized Video Writing

Wake up, make tea, write songs, repeat

Last night I used an iTunes card I got for my birthday (thanks, Katie and Elizabeth!) to watch the first half of the documentary on the Eagles. It’s really good. I like them a lot, but even if you don’t, it’s fascinating to see how music brought them together and fame broke them apart. My favorite moment was Glenn Frey talking about his early days in Los Angeles, when he and roommate JD Souther lived above Jackson Browne. None of them had made it yet — Browne’s place wasn’t even an official apartment, just a cubbyhole in a basement in Echo Park. But he already knew the secret to success — not just at writing, but pretty much anything else.

Here’s Frey:

We slept late in those days, except around 9 in the morning, I’d hear Jackson Browne’s teapot going off with the whistle in the distance, and then I’d hear him playing piano. I didn’t really know how to write songs. I knew I WANTED to write songs, but I didn’t know exactly … you just wait around for inspiration, you know, what was the deal?

I learned through Jackson’s ceiling and my floor exactly how to write songs. Because Jackson would get up and he’d play the first verse and first chorus, and he’d play it 20 times until he had it just the way he wanted, and then there’d be silence, and then I’d hear the teapot go off again. It’d be quiet for 10 or 20 minutes. Then I’d hear him start to play again, and there was a second verse, so then he’d work on the second verse — he’d play it 20 times — and then he’d go back to the top of the song and play the first verse, the first chorus and the second verse another 20 times, until he was really comfortable with it, and, you know, change a word here or there.

And I’m up there going, So that’s how you do it. Elbow grease. You know, time. Thought. Persistence.

After I wrote all that down, I remembered Bill Simmons wrote an opus on the documentary a few months back. It’s worth checking out, too.

Simmons is right, by the way: That’s a beautifully done scene — a little gem of storytelling. (It doesn’t hurt when Glenn Frey is your narrator.)

Anyway: Elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence. If you want to write, that’ll get you a long way there.

Categories
Charlotte Music

Richard Thompson / Loudon Wainwright III, Knight Theater in Charlotte, 4/19/10

The house lights were still up when Loudon Wainwright III walked onto the stage. So he could see that the 1,200-seat Knight Theater, beautiful as it is, was maybe two-thirds full. I wonder how many times he and Richard Thompson, separately and together, have played to theaters of quiet but devoted fans with empty seats in the back, all their talent not enough to fill the house. Talent doesn’t always sell tickets.

But God almighty, the talent.

Wainwright is 63 now, Thompson 61, and there’s no need to feel sorry for them — they’ve been able to do what they love and make a good living it for something like 40 years apiece. But you hear Wainwright crack open his family secrets and spill them on the floor, or you hear Thompson rev up a guitar break as powerful and precise as a Ferrari running through the gears, and you wonder why they’re not playing arenas.

And then you’re glad they’re not, because it would never be this quiet and you would never get this close.

Here’s Wainwright, in a rare moment at the piano, singing about how he notices his kids like to sing in the same key. Here’s him in “White Winos” singing about his mom liked her white wine, almost (but not quite) to the point where she would let loose her anger about his dad. Here’s him in “Unfriendly Skies” trashing an airport official named Susie who cracked his precious Martin D-28, then wouldn’t let it on the plane.  (He calls her Susie because he doesn’t want to get sued. Then, in the next line, he lets slip that her name is Angela.)

He’s funny, heartbreaking, weird — he does a little Michael Jordan thing with his tongue in between verses — and worth the money all by himself.

But then Richard Thompson came on.

He played his bagful of alternate-universe hits like “Crawl Back (Under My Stone)” and “I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight.” He absolutely killed a cover of Britney Spears’ “Oops… I Did It Again.” He filled every song with riffs and rolls and leads, always in service to the song, but at the same time proving that he’s one of the five best acoustic guitarists in the world.

And he played “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.”

If you know any Richard Thompson song, that’s probably the one — it’s on the setlists of a million folkies on open-mike nights, and iTunes shows me two dozen covers (I like the Mary Lou Lord version on “Live City Sounds,” recorded in a Boston subway station). It’s about a robber and the girl who loves him and the fine motorcycle they ride, and it’s tragic and epic and inspiring all tangled up in those six guitar strings and the way, at the end, that Thompson stretches out that last riiiiiiiiiiiiiide.

It was a performance strong enough for a million. About 800 of us got to see it. We went home lucky.

Categories
Bruce Music

The Springsteen Show

The thing I’ll remember most is the guy running around in circles.

Springsteen played Boston tonight, and when the house lights went up for “Born to Run” you could see this guy at the far end of the floor, where it wasn’t as crowded, and he was running in circles with his hands in the air like he had just won the Olympic mile. Half an hour later, when the house lights went up for the second time (more on that later), the same guy was still running, high-fiving people, his pants falling down. He probably dropped two waist sizes just running around in circles while Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band showed for the 9,000th time why they are the best live rock ‘n’ roll band there has ever been.

For the fanatics: He played “Adam Raised a Cain,” and “Seeds,” and “I’m Goin’ Down,” and “Johnny 99,” and — a first for me, I think — “Growin’ Up.”* Jay Weinberg (son of Max) filled in on drums for the last four songs of the main set. Clarence was awake for the entire show. Here’s the full details.

*In the spirit of objectivity, we should report that Springsteen also played “Outlaw Pete,” which by pretty much unanimous acclimation is the worst song he has ever written — when you lift the melody from a KISS song, you’re in trouble from the start.** “Outlaw Pete” gets the full production treatment — fog machines, special lighting, a black cowboy hat that Bruce dons dramatically. It doesn’t help. I’ve decided that this is some sort of bet Bruce has made with the band that they can get ANY song over in concert. Next tour: “Mandy.”

**He also played “Radio Nowhere,” a much better song, but I can’t forget that the first time Alix heard it she said “That sounds like ‘867-5309.’” I think Bruce might be listening to the ’80s station a little too much.

Tonight I finally figured out what it is with Bruce and carnivals. From the beginning, the imagery of the carnival and the circus has cut all through his music — from “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” to “Tunnel of Love” to “The Last Carnival,” his tribute to the late keyboard player Danny Federici, who loved to make the organ sound like a merry-go-round.

Of course Springsteen grew up on the Jersey shore and the boardwalk is in his blood. But there’s something else about it. The beautiful thing about a carnival is that it promises something you’ve never seen before. Buy a ticket and see the two-headed cow, watch the Great Mephisto catch a bullet in his teeth, close your eyes as the man throws knives at the beautiful lady spinning on the wheel. In our minds, we know the Great Mephisto has the bullet in his palm the whole time, and the two-headed cow was sewn together by a taxidermist. But we buy the ticket anyway because we long for that unique experience, that moment we can’t miss because it won’t ever come again.

I have just described every Bruce Springsteen show.

At this point it’s built in — the audience brings posters with song requests, and he stacks them up on stage and pulls a couple out. (“I’m Goin’ Down” and “Growin’ Up” were the choices tonight.) On this tour he’s added a Stump the Band segment where people request ANY song, by anybody, and the E Street Band figures it out. Tonight it was ZZ Top’s “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” — whoever made the poster helpfully put the lyrics on the back.

I was a music writer in Charlotte for a while, and I knew it was time to quit when I would see the same act come through town for the third or fourth time with the exact same show. Springsteen NEVER does that. He’s always ad-libbing the setlist, calling out solos for the other band members, sticking his guitar into the front row to let the crowd play the chords.

He’s the barker AND the freak show AND the trapeze act — everything polished and rehearsed and professional until he decides to make it raw and daring and personal, this show, right now, for nobody but you.

Tonight, for the fourth song of the encore, he played “American Land” — a song he often closes with. Just about the whole band grouped together at the front of the stage to jam. Big finish. Springsteen walked off toward the back of the stage, having played 25 songs in two and a half hours, having jumped on top of the piano and held a backbend for half a minute and skidded across the stage like a kid on a Slip ‘n’ Slide.

He got almost off the stage. He paused for a second. Then he asked for a fresh guitar.

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over!” he said, and the band kicked into “Rosalita” — “Rosalita”! — and the house lights came back up, and there was that guy still running in circles on the floor, the absolute picture of joy, and in all my life I’ve never seen anything like it.