Let me start with the stories.

So began Bruce’s eulogy to Phantom Dan Federici, a funeral on the Jersey Shore, back in the old stomping grounds for this band of brothers, this cast of characters.

Back in the days of miracles…

If you haven’t read it, stop now, and go to brucespringsteen.net so you can. It will do your heart wonderfully good. It will remind you that first and foremost, this is a group of friends, of buddies, an improbable grouping of individuals. Up until we lost Danny, the entire band was still alive. I think Bruce said something like “We had all our guys.” No one OD’d, no one’s ego was so large that they wouldn’t agree to come back, and no one was such an asshole that no one else wanted them around. (I’m looking at you, Small Faces.) You could be cynical and say that it was for the money, but I am not willing to do that.

But this is about Danny, and this is about “The Last Carnival,” the best thing on Working For A Dream, and the only reason I excuse the existence of this particular collection of recorded music. “The Last Carnival” is heart-swelling and transcendent, it is a dirge, it is a hymn, it is a tribute. It is constructed with craft, echoing back to “Wild Billy” in an artful, delicate manner – it’s echoes and whispers, it’s the cast of characters in a dreamscape, colors muted through a fog.

It’s a song for a friend. It’s heartbreaking. It’s simply lovely. The voices at the end, keening acapella, like the old days of E Street when everyone sang, as though the whole band was crying out for their lost brother. With Danny’s son playing accordion on the track — if you’re not affected by this, you’re just not human. And I don’t know how I’ll stand through one performance of it live without bursting into tears in front of God and everybody.

I am touched and I am humbled by “The Last Carnival”. I am eavesdropping on private grief. I am being included in the mourner’s rites. And for that I am grateful.

–
I want to talk about “The Wrestler” next, so not understanding why it is tacked to the end of this collection of material like a poor distant cousin twice removed. I occasionally read the various swipes against Bruce in various locales, and most of them are along the lines of “he’s rich so how can he sing about poor people” and I go back to Greil Marcus’ theories about how we as a music listening community stopped valuing the ability to tell a story when the Laurel Canyon types started writing songs in the 70′s. If it wasn’t true, if it didn’t happen *to you*, it had no worth. The ability of the artist to put themselves into character and see things from the perspective of someone else’s shoes wasn’t skill, it was viewed as artifice.

I cannot think of a more limited, shallow, limiting viewpoint of art.

“The Wrestler” is Bruce doing what he does best – putting on that other guy’s suit and walking around in it for a while. It’s simple and powerful. It should have been nominated for an Oscar. I mean, bravo.

–
Did you know there is a set of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band Matryoshka dolls? Those are those Russian wooden nesting dolls, and someone made an E Street Band set (Chris Phillips, Backstreets majordomo owns one of these, which makes total sense, and is how I know of their existence). Anyway, Chris was making a joke about it one day, and someone was asking what the order was, from big to small, and then someone made a joke about how one of them needed to be the bullet mic.

I was – and remain – a huge fan of the bullet mic’s introduction into the Springsteen arsenal. I loved, loved, LOVED the re-interpretation of “Reason To Believe” on the Devils & Dust tour, and thought the E-Street-ization of that arrangement on the Magic tour was awesome (even with the “La Grange” segue, which was a little bit of a gimme, a little on the cheap applause side, but compared to “American Land” I gave it a pass a long time ago).

So, I get it. Bruce digs the bullet mic. He probably likes being able to put down the guitar and still have something to do, it’s physical in a different way, okay, cool. So I don’t mind “Good Eye,” because it was clearly written as the replacement for “Reason to Believe” in the set next tour.

But that’s about it.

–

So now this is where you ask me about the rest of the album, and you will tell me that oh, it’s NOT as bad as all that, and really, it’ll grow on you, and it’s not nearly as bad as anyone says. And I say to you: vaya con dios. Really. Because if you enjoy it, who am I to tell you that you’re foolish to do so?

I worry about what these songs will do to the live set. I worry that they will tank the set and then he will drop them and then it will be just like he didn’t release an album to tour behind. I think, the Rolling Stones did multiple legs of a tour behind one very bad album, the Magic tour just could have kept going, and no one would have really noticed or said anything, would they?

I will keep trying to find something in the rest of the songs, but I am already trying to figure out how, exactly, Bruce is comparing “Outlaw Pete” to “Jungleland” (oh yes he did, i heard him, in his own words, say that). And I get the homage to Brian Wilson but he already did it first and best on Magic. Maybe I will come back here in a few months and tell you that I was wrong, that I was hasty, that I misjudged.

Far more likely, however, I am going to come here and rant about how “Cowboy Pete” is stealing TEN MINUTES in the live show in which we could have two songs. (Yes, I get it, Morricone tribute, yes, I hear it, but I don’t understand why Outlaw Pete can’t hear Bruce. I’ll stop now.)

I understand that people will need to convince themselves that they like it more than they do, because it is likely the last E Street album as we know it, because it is a Bruce album, because they won’t know what to do if they don’t. And of course, there is the chance that people genuinely do like it, and I’ll be the last person to tell them that they’re wrong.

See you on the road.
–
p.s. If you haven’t already seen it, I have some thoughts on the Super Bowl in Joe Posnanski’s column on SportsIllustrated.com.

Pitchers and catchers report, and the Gutter Twins start their tour right downtown.

a. whigs circa 2007.

Citybeat (Cincinnati local) has the scoop on the Rhino retrospective.

I’m not itching for the band to get back together. Some day, someone will have kids that need to get through college and that’s probably about when people will want to do that again. And I’d like to live through it one more time. But, if not, c’est la vie.

In related news, 33 1/3 promises results end of the month. 20 books out of almost 500 proposals. Hey, it could happen.

Watch this interview for all-time Classic Neil.

And you can stream the entire album in reasonable quality on neilyoung.com.

I know the Faces are supposed to be a guy’s band, the lad’s lads, and, furthermore, thoroughly British enough to even confound the most ardent of Anglophiles.

But sweet holy jesus does any of that really fucking MATTER when you have the intro to “Stay With Me,” LIVE, dear lord almighty, LIVE, cranked through headphones somewhere very very far past 11? WIth all the raunchy popcorn crunch that is the entire reason you love the Faces? Ronnie Wood’s notes tumbling like dustbins down the stairs, aural somersaults, the notes guaranteed to have me stop whatever I was doing and run into the middle of the room wanting to play guitar or dance around or just stand there and FEEL it for as long as it lasted?

OH MY GOD. I cannot stop listening to this. The drum breaks at the end were entirely the reason I was so fucking excited when Kenney Jones joined the Who, even though of course he never got to show any kind of mettle even remotely similar to this when he was with them. (And, of course, we aren’t even going to discuss Rod Stewart’s solo career because that would rate a fucking book about the size of a James Michener novel, and, ya know — horse.dead.beaten anyway.)

This is the sound that made me love the Black Crowes even though I always felt slightly — wrong — doing so. I know it was faux Faces but for just a second or two of live crunchy guitar debris in my ears I would have done just about anything.

It feels utterly and completely pointless to write anything about the Faces when Nick Hornby covered it just about as well as it could ever be covered when he did those readings with Marah last year. It wasn’t some kind of grand treatise on the band or some monumental definition, but it was honest and true and made my heart ache just a little because I couldn’t relate to the band the same way because, Anglophile at age 10 or not, I wasn’t born and raised in Britain in the 60′s or 70′s.

But when I discovered them at the age of 10 or 11 when I started opening the Pandora’s Box that was all connected to the Beatles/Who/Stones trinity, I loved them. I loved them because they could be big and bold and brash and achingly heartfelt at the same time, bluesy and raunchy, Rod Stewart’s voice soaked in whiskey and coated in gravel, Ian McLagen making me think that all rock and roll piano players would be like that, Ronnie Wood being, well, Ronnie Wood, and Ronnie Lane’s elegantly solid thundering bassline under it all. I didn’t understand it but unlike everything else I was discovering at the time, I didn’t need to. I just needed to feel it.

So tonight, at about 1:30 a.m., I threw the headphones on and the cd in the tray for just a second, for what should have been one playing of a live version of “Stay With Me,” and suddenly it was like a time machine taking me back.

And I’ve only listened to one song off the damn thing so far.

(Personal to the people in 3R. I’m *really* sorry. I thought I’d switched the speakers off.)

Another fall leads into winter, and I am in a different place and Dulli gifts us with what should have been (or more likely, what might have been), Amber Headlights. So much different in mood and feeling and color than Blackberry Belle, and obviously so: these were the recordings-in-progress as the truly-post-Whigs Dulli began to “fly without a net” (his words). All of this would be quietly shelved following the death of his close friend, Ted Demme.

To be fair, you have to evaluate this record for what it is, no more, no less: admittedly unfinished, a polaroid, a slice in time, not a finished product for mass release (although it is, gratifyingly, finding success outside of the major label mainstream). The songs are classic Dulli, some might have been Whigs songs or were originally written with the Whigs in mind. And even though this did not go through the rigorous process that An Album would have, as a document it is fascinating and infuriating — Dulli can write riffs and evoke a story arc in a melody line without seeming to break a sweat, maybe the necktie will be a little askew and the cigarette burned down to the filter. There’s no question that songs like “So Tight” or “Cigarettes” are Classic Dulli, “Early Today” has one of those guitar lines that sound like a heart unrending, “Golden Boy” should be on your summer driving soundtrack, “Get The Wheel” is likely the predecesor to the astonishing “Teenage Wristband” — and the superlatives could continue. All of this, for a release of unfinished demos that’s better than most people’s completed albums.

Where Blackberry Belle was elegie and eulogy, Amber Headlights is the Garden of Eden before the fall. Selfishly I am glad these saw the light of day and even more selfishly I hope this is not the final destination for these tracks and they make their way into the live Twilight Singers show, where that truly unique grouping of musicians can help the songs take on a life of their own outside the studio, and in the process, extend unintentional catharsis or elation or even just a moment to get down to everyone in the room.

Order Amber Headlights here

However, what I have no answer to is the eagerly-anticipated Cold Roses. Finally! After the perversion of Love Is Hell (where are those New Orleans sessions, damn you), chopping it up into bits and then releasing the whole shebang six months later (forcing us to buy the damn thing two or three times, especially if you wanted that beautiful 10″ vinyl edition), Lost Highway is going to let Ryan release what he wants, how he wants it. Finally! We will be able to feast upon Ryan Adams’ True Creative Genius.

What we got, instead, is an unfocused, meandering double album that seems just the tiniest bit self-indulgent. It would be easier for me, I think, if I could just say “I fucking hate this record, it’s the worst thing he’s ever done, it SUCKS!” But I can’t. Cold Roses doesn’t even piss me off; it’s just — blah. Which is, I think, probably the worst crime an artist can commit. Not bad, not mediocre, not disgusting, but to be so bland as to not cause any reaction of note, any emotion, nothing. Probably the biggest crime an artist can ever commit is to be boring.

I will go on record as saying that I fucking hate the Grateful Dead. Hate them. I have incredible respect for them as artists and musicians and for what they brought to the culture, but oh my god I hate their music with a blind raging passion. It’s not even a punk rock thing, I just don’t like them, period. This probably goes a long way towards why I don’t care much for anything on Cold Roses (there are dancing bears on the inside in case you didn’t get it), but it’s not all of it, because people I know who worship the Dead aren’t turned on by it either.

Even with all of this, I still eagerly purchased a ticket go to see Ryan live, out somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey — only for Ryan Adams would I do this, I’m not even going back to this club to see the Dolls in August — and the live show was even more depressing. Maybe it was the venue, maybe it was the fact that the best vantage point when I arrived at 7:45 (doors at 7:30, it’s not like I showed up at 10) was standing at a bar, with the accompanying noise and traffic. Maybe it was the bimbos standing to my right who felt the need to shriek “WOO! RYAN! YEAH!” every time there was anything resembling silence.

Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t very compelling.

I hate to the person at a concert who waits for old, familiar material, but while the new songs were certainly warmer and livelier in person, they still could not hold my interest. And the old songs were completely taken apart and reinvented — legitimate, to be sure, and important always, but they felt artificial and forced: Let’s take it apart just because we can. And, again, while that’s a perfectly valid reason to do so, the new interpretations didn’t reveal anything new inside the familiar. Even if an artist takes a song apart because they are sick to death of playing it, there is usually some kind of perverse energy going on there: “Okay, let’s show you what I can do with this!” “New York, New York” as a punk polka with an accordion I would have had a grudging respect for. The slow, lumbering lilt he put to the song was trying hard to be all Nashville Skyline, but it definitely didn’t succeed.

Maybe he’s doing this on purpose. Maybe he wants to weed out those fans that aren’t truly committed to it all, who will put up with and worship everything he does. Maybe I’m just showing my true colors. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m a fan who is simply disappointed with Cold Roses, is willing to say so, and who hopes for more with the next release.

Links:
This Is It: Ryan Adams’ latest
7-4-03, Battery Park
Sara doesn’t like Cold Roses either

Up until this missive was finished, I had deliberately avoided reading what anybody wrote about the record, not Amy, not SFJ, not even Pareles in the Times (who I won’t link because it will already cost you money to read it, but he did think it was the second coming), not even my editor at Backstreets. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want someone to tell me what I thought about the album as I didn’t want my own sinking feelings about the record affirmed, or conversely, I didn’t want to have someone tell me that this record was amazing (#1 in the US and the UK? That must’ve cost Sony a pretty penny) and have me wonder if perhaps I just don’t get Bruce any more, maybe I am not really part of his core audience so no wonder the record doesn’t speak to me.

Or maybe, just maybe, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Which is where it usually lurks.

Devils & Dust is not a bad record. It’s just not a great record, and Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Control Freak Extraordinaire, only releases Great Records. If he released a record every year and a half I could accept it in the same kind of context as, say, a Polaroid snapshot, and let it be just that, but he doesn’t work that way, and the fact that this came out as quickly as it did is somewhat mindboggling. But then you have to add to the mix the fact that I know probably too much, I know how old some of these songs are, and then I start to worry that maybe the reason that “Long Time Coming,” “All The Way Home” and “The Hitter” show up on here is not that they fit thematically (“Long Time Coming” does, and yes, you can stretch it and say “The Hitter” does as well [and, only because of the first two lines, only the device he uses to tell the narrative makes it fit thematically] , but it is a stretch), but that he didn’t have anything better so he dusted off songs out of the closet. This is of course a time-honored tradition and would be fine if (again, “Long Time Coming” excepted I think – I think) they were such memorable gems that it was only with great reluctance they were warehoused.

And then the boyfriend will remind me of the genesis of The Rising, and how Bruce didn’t have much, and that it was only when Brendan O’Brien pushed him to sit down and write that we got a whole album. I do find it funny how many people hated The Rising but seem to love Devils & Dust; The Rising was a great record with some exceptional songs. Devils & Dust is, at best, a good record with some shining moments. I hated The Rising when I first heard it, but then ended up with four copies (work, car, home, extra); even now, I’m not tired of the songs. I can’t say that Devils & Dust has similarly inspired me, and trust me, it’s not that I don’t want to like it. I desperately want a great, relevant, inspiring Springsteen record to have on repeat in the iPod for the next year. Instead, when I want relevant and inspiring, I’m turning to the new Sleater-Kinney record instead–which is probably not a fair comparison, but then again, why the hell not?

I made the point in my Storytellers review that if you have to explain a song in order for the audience to understand it, then something is wrong with the song, because the song should be enough. Sasha makes the same point about “Silver Palomino,” and I’ll make the same point again, here, about “Matamoros Banks” (and also “Reno,” but “Reno” gets its own paragraph, don’t you worry, so just hang on). I like that Bruce sees “Matamoros Banks” as the sequel (or rather, companion piece, I think) to “Across The Border” but he shouldn’t have to draw the line for me, and the songwriting — the *storytelling* — should be strong enough that you don’t have to explain to me that you are switching perspectives (another problem with “Reno,” once again, wait). And the fact that he feels the need to explain things, both in concert and in the liner notes, makes the songs feel half-baked, not ready for prime time. Springsteen is, goddammit, a strong enough storyteller in 150 words — hell, in one fucking line — that he doesn’t need to tell us what the song means. And while the man is reknown for the stories he would tell in concert, they were always apart from the song, a compliment, a tangent, sparking off the theme of the song, not long treatises on what the song was about.

“Reno”. I get very, very concerned when anyone tries to tell an artist when they have gone too far, or what they are and aren’t “allowed” to do. You don’t like “Reno”? Skip it. Make your own mix (as some pretentious blowhard who wrote to Backstreets this month did). But musicians are not jukeboxes and you don’t have to agree or like everything that they do, and you get to vote by not buying their records or not going to their shows. Period. My argument on “Reno” is that Bruce wanted to very drastically contrast two periods in the character’s life, how he can descend from glory into despondency, and he wanted the difference between the two worlds to be utterly different. My problem isn’t the language or the technique, my problem is that it just isn’t done very well, and not because it uses language some people find objectionable (I swear to god if I ever hear any of you swearing at a baseball game I will report you to the hypocrite police, if there was such a thing, and there should be). That’s all. The transitions aren’t sharp enough and the middle passage isn’t clear enough to me (without his explanation, anyway) and that, to me, is what makes “Reno” fail. Not the questionable language.

(Sidebar: The Starbucks thing was asinine, not because they banned him, and not because Bruce’s management wanted to sell the record there — it’s not the worst marketing idea in the world — but because Starbucks actually believes that the Starbucks brand has more meaning and value to people than Bruce Springsteen as a brand does. How completely idiotic.)

I like “Leah”. I like “Maria’s Bed.” I am not sure that both of them needed to be on the record, and I’d argue that there are songs on “Tracks” that got left off of other albums that are stronger than both of these numbers combined. “Long Time Coming” is beautiful and moving and hurrah that it emerged from the vaults and it fits beautifully with the theme, intentional or unintentional, of parenting and children, that shadows the album. “Black Cowboys” feels like a Jonathan Lethem short story (and is probably my favorite new song). I have made my peace with “Devils & Dust” as a song, and out of the new material (again, stress on new) on the record, it’s probably the best song, but I don’t know what that means. I also don’t know how much I’m colored by my exposure to all the interviews where he talks about the song, or if hearing it live (without the freaking Nashville Strings and other production elements that sanitize it too much to my liking) has changed me. I can’t tell at this point.

Now, having said all of this, I need to make the point that I think the live show supporting Devils & Dust is anything but predictable or boring and is in fact incredibly reactionary. It pissed Amy off — hell, it’s pissing off a lot of people, including big, long-time fans. For a solo acoustic tour to have this affect is utterly remarkable. I do have to wonder how long the surprises are going to continue; Boston felt somewhat formulaic after the string of surprises that have been rolled out this tour (and even “Real World” felt just the tiniest bit rote; I know I am spoiled, being one of the few thousand people on the planet who have heard it played live not once but twice, but still). I like the fact that he is approaching songs from different perspectives, even if they don’t last or I don’t like them — okay, so there’s nothing I don’t like (I am somewhat tired of this version of “The Promised Land” although it doesn’t count because it’s not the standard version, but it is the standard non-standard version, if that makes sense). I like that he is not rolling out “Thunder Road” and “Born To Run” and “I’m On Fire” gets played on a freaking banjo. I love the honky-tonk version of “Ramrod” so much I would like it to stay that way forever. And I am a rabid maniac for what’s been done to “Reason To Believe,” although I realize I am in the minority here (okay, I seem to be the only one who is enthralled by it, actually). My only lament is I wish Bruce could have brought the same spirit of experimentation and reinvention that is clearly present on this tour, to the recording of Devils & Dust. Everyone would probably still be pissed off — long time fans who want Bruce to stay the same forever, newer fans who missed it the first time so they don’t want him to ever change — but we’d have an album to remember.

Oh well. There’s always the next one. You know, the one he’s going to make with Social Distortion as his backing band. Or with the same kind of band that Dylan has, with a white-hot guitar player that will actually challenge the Guitar Slinger of Central New Jersey.

(Yeah, right. In my dreams.)

(Wait. “Real World,” solo piano, repeatedly. That did happen, right?)

(Maybe my dreams aren’t that crazy after all.)

Links:
My 4/22/05 Asbury Park Rehearsal Show review
My Storytellers review
Other writing on Bruce

He makes the excellent observation that 1) we will be deaf from all the cries of “blasphemy” but that 2) even if JT and Jerry and Arthur were still around, it would hardly be 1975 at the Mercer Arts Center anyway.

Frankly, David Jo and Syl are entitled to make hay while the sun shines as long as people are willing to go see them. And the best thing is, so far, they haven’t sucked, and David is embracing his Doll-ness like never before. You know what? Right fucking on.

I am pleased to report that Heartless Bastards’ debut album, Stairs and Elevators, sounds nothing like they do on the Kimbrough tribute. But you know what? It’s a million times better. It’s the first album from a new band in a long time that made me stop what I was doing and LISTEN to it, the first album I was blown away over, the first album that I had to take the time and get to know it. I loaded it on my iPod and during the first few days, time and time again, a song from this record would come up in the random shuffle and I’d have to stop what I was doing to check the display on the iPod – “What IS this? Man, it’s good.” Oh. Stairs and Elevators. Should’ve figured.

You’re going to struggle to figure out who Wennerstrom’s voice reminds you of – I know I did. I went through everything I could think of – Ann Wilson? Annie Golden? Lucinda? It was driving me insane until I hit the third track, “New Resolution”. Maybe it was the fact that the intro bass line seems to be a boy howdy tribute borrowed from “Blitzkreig Bop,” but this was the song that the penny fell into place:

She’s a female Joey Ramone.

Honestly, that’s the best description I could give you, and I only want to try so hard to explain it to you because her voice is so unique and tremendous, a soulful, vulnerable warble, a heartfelt croon. And it only gets stronger with the next song, “My Maker.” Realize that I consider this to be like one of the greatest compliments I could give anyone, because it’s not just that she’s channeling Joey (I’m entirely certain it’s not intentional, but I could be wrong) Wennerstrom’s own brand of emotion and grace is permeates the entire record, every corner, every note. It has soul, it has guts, it SAYS something. She’s not whining or pleading, there’s a calm grace and power. This isn’t much of a surprise, coming from someone whose web site statement reads: “My name is Erika Wennerstrom. I’m 27 years old and from Dayton, Ohio. I’ve wanted to be a songwriter and performer since I was born….I just want to keep on moving and do my best not to look back.”

The music. It’s another three piece, but so complete, robust, satisfying. It’s not minimal as much as essential. Erika on guitar, Mike Lampling on Bass and Kevin Vaughn, and it’s bigger than it should be. This rhythm section is both fluid AND solid, I mean, like Entwistle-Moon solid; listen carefully to the drum fills rolling behind “My Maker” if you don’t believe me, and “The Will” and “Pass and Fail” could be Isle of Wight-era Who.

The songs don’t fit into any neat little category, they rock, there’s retro (without being such a carbon copy you wonder why they even bother). I could totally expect to have walked into CBGB in 1985 and seen this band onstage, but they don’t sound dated. In fact, quite the contrary: they sound fresh, original, inspired. You could even dance to them (okay, that drunk couple who think they can dance really well, but can’t, will get up in front of this band and dance to something like “Pass and Fail” for sure).

If for some reason you didn’t plunk down the cash to buy the Kimbrough tribute (and why not? It has two songs by the new Stooges!) “Done Got Old” is on here too, and sounds even better in context with the band’s music book-ending it. It reveals itself to be the standout track that it absolutely is.

“Piano Song” is the only track to have, well, a piano, and this is thrilling. I wish there were more. It’s just Wennerstrom and the keyboard and here you can actually hear every detail of that vodka-soaked, world-wise instrument. “Lazy” wraps it all up, crystallizes it, the voice, the crunge-worthy guitar, the stop-and-start precision of the rhythm section, in my minds’ eye I see the drummer twirling his sticks above his head with a Moon-ish grin on his face. It also wouldn’t have been out of place on Paranoid (and owes perhaps just a little to it).

Stairs and Elevators will be on my top ten of 2005, hands down. Hell, It already is.