A Classic Trip in Modern Times, Sal Annunziato "Own Trip"

If your XM Satellite radio is tuned into the same stations as mine; Classic Vinyl, Deep Tracks, 60's,70's,  and 80's rock, then Sal Annunziato's new CD " Own Trip" will sound immediately familiar to you. Like a fluffy  sweater on the first chilly day of fall, it will warm and comfort you, and most likely make you long to go back in time when musicians actually played instruments, on stage and in the studio. But make no mistake about it, this is no reunion tour. The sound and the lyrics are rooted firmly  in 2016, and if you wonder where the sense of community and togetherness generated by those classic songs disappeared to, you may just find the answers in the lyrics of the eight songs that comprise this record. It's modern themes behind  classic sound.

On my way to work each morning my radio station, WEHM

BIG HAT, NO CATTLE-Johnny Cash has left the building.

The artist performing in the following video does  not necessarily reflect the taste of the author.  Watch only as a frame of reference for the rest of the blog, I do not accept responsibility for any senses that may end up being offended. Trust me , mine were.

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    It's a sad truth that I am somewhat addicted to watching reality singing shows, specifically “The Voice” and “American Idol.” Last night’s Voice opened with an artist whom host Carson Daly described as the new face of country music, Thomas Rhett.   As I watched, I thought   that perhaps Merle Haggard had taken his own life three weeks ago when informed that the fresh face of country music looked more suited for the cover of GQ magazine than playing in a bar with sawdust on the floor, fronting a band with banjos and fiddles. Worse yet, at the end of the performance, Mr. Daly proclaimed that the future of country seems to be in good hands. I actually felt the anger rise up inside me at this innocuous throw away statement, that somehow Thomas Rhett was the heir apparent to legends like George Jones and Johnny Cash. In reality, his brand of teen pop with a twang more closely resembles boy bands and Justin Bieber. It was an insult to the authenticity and honesty of the music  the pioneers of country left behind. 
    My issue is not with the music or the genre itself. Artists are free to put out whatever type of music they desire. Obviously country as it exists today is hugely popular, an industry fueled by some of the most commercially successful artists in music. Just please stop calling it country, because as the song says “it ain’t”. Big hats, designer jeans, Gucci boots and 200 dollar haircuts ain’t country. If honoring your artists involves rolling out a red carpet, dressing them in tuxedos and gowns, and posing them like Hollywood stars and starlets heading for the Oscars, then damn it that ain’t country. It’s popular music with a twang, and that’s ok, but please don’t pretend that it has any connection to Butcher Hollow, Kentucky; it doesn’t. On that note, here is what I perceive to be the antidote to Thomas Rhett’s “T-Shirt"



While watching this video one of the things that stood out to me, other than the great music of course, was Waylon’s hat. I guess it could be described as a cowboy hat, but you can tell immediately that this isn’t the first time it’s been resting on Waylon’s head. The fact is, it looks like he may have slept, or even passed out  with it still on his head a time or two. Probably seems like I’m nitpicking here but the hats I see today are just too pristine, like they were taken down off a hat rack to convey an image, then put right back in place once the show was over.
  There is a sterility and a sameness to current country, it's just too clean, the recordings too perfect. Techno pop electronic music is not country but that's what it has become. The 2013 CMT awards closed with a performance by Florida Georgia Line, a duo who manages to straddle the line between pop and country. The line was crossed though when rapper Nelly joined them onstage for the closing performance. This shift in direction has led to some infighting between current artists who desire to keep the genre traditional, and a group who are looking to crossover and make noise on the pop charts as well. Apparently nine seasons as a mentor on The Voice and hanging out with Gwen Stefani has sucked all the Okie out of Blake Shelton. His shtick is to portray himself as a good ole country boy from Oklahoma, but all of his actions scream Hollywood.  When asked to comment on the growing feud he remarked that “Nobody wants to listen to their grandpa’s music. And I don’t care how many of these old farts around Nashville are going, ‘My God, that ain’t country!’ Well that’s because you don’t buy records anymore, jackass. The kids do”. Willie Nelson quickly responded by renaming his tour the “old farts and jackasses tour” The bottom line in 2016 is that there are a large group of pop artists residing in the country genre. There was a time here in Connecticut  if you turned your radio dial to 92.5 WWYZ, you knew immediately you were tuned to a country station. Now you’ll have to listen for a while, sort through the pop noise, and maybe at some point, George Jones or Alan Jackson will appear.


 

 As a child of the 60’s, the music I listened to was pure rock and roll, country artists were never part of the equation, unless it was country rock like The Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd.  The first person in my life who listened to country was my older brother, but the country he was listening to on the eight track player in his pickup truck bore little resemblance to the 2016 version. He was listening to “outlaw country” Waylon and Willie, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and David Allen Coe. If it wasn’t the outlaws then it was the standard bearers, legends like George Jones, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. At the time I was not mature enough to understand the honesty of the music or more importantly, the poetry of the lyrics. My stubbornly deaf ears couldn’t hear beyond what I perceived to be a shit kickin, hillbilly twang. Little did I know that 40 years later, I would be scanning  you tube searching for that hillbilly twang, searching for authentic country.
Today  too much money is  on the table for system bucking outlaws like David Allen Coe and Waylon Jennings to exist. It’s hard to protest against a system with a silver spoon planted firmly in your mouth. But thanks to these outlaws, it took longer for country music to soften into the pop rock pabulum that exists today than it would have without them.


As I got older some of the music from that eight track started to filter into my life. The first pure country album I recall purchasing was Johnny Cash Live at Folsom County Prison. In 1973 Leon Russell released an album titled Hank Wilson’s Back, a tribute to some of the bluegrass and country legends that had influenced him. Without realizing it at the time, it was my own introduction into the bluegrass music that I would come to love later in life.
But it was an obscure indie movie titled “Songcatcher” that opened up a whole new world of music that I had previously ignored. The movie, set in the early 1900’s, tells the story of a musicologist, who after being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, decides to visit her sister ,who runs a small school in Appalachia. There she discovers the music of the mountains, Irish and Scottish folk songs passed down from generation to generation, protected and hidden in the isolated hills. She ventures deep into the mountains in an effort to record and preserve the music, and her dealings with stubbornly protective mountain dwellers while trying to accomplish this, form the crux of the movie. The storyline is great, but it is the music of the mountains that makes this movie special.
The soundtrack featured established stars like Dolly Parton, Roseann Cash and Emmy Lou Harris, but also introduced  lesser known country and bluegrass artists like Gillian Welch and Iris Dement. What struck me most were the voices, something pure and deeply soulful, sounding like it could echo through mountains unamplified and still pierce your heart. I have been attracted to that kind of voice ever since, to me the sound that you hear from Bill Monroe, and Del McCoury, Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch, for my taste that is the true essence of country.  



The last concert I attended featured bluegrass legend Del McCoury and mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, a two-man acoustic show. It was 90 minutes of pure joy, the grizzled veterans of bluegrass and country, telling stories, playing classics, and Del McCoury’s incredible voice ringing through the acoustically perfect College Street Music Hall. It’s a voice straight out of the Songcatcher movie I mentioned earlier. It’s  Mayberry's own Ernest T. Bass, calling out to Andy Griffith across the holler, but set to music. I would have never imagined forty years after resisting the music my brother introduced me to, music I once regarded as “shitkickin hillbilly twang” that it would end up being the music that stirs my soul. There were no big hats, no designer jeans, and no young girls in the audience screaming and waving white tee shirts. The future of country was not in the house that night, but the heart and soul of its past was.

Postscript: This article was put together with a great deal of help from my older brother Fred, numerous conversations regarding his  love of Outlaw country, picking his brain for memories, and as we often do when talking, laughing hysterically. It helped  make this the most enjoyable of all the blogs I have written. At that time back in the mid 70’s when he was unsuccessfully  trying to convince me to like country, we were brothers but not necessarily friends. Today I am happy to say that not only is he my brother, but my best friend.

Hey that sounds like a beginning to a country song,  but old school style.

 

ONE AND DONE: THE WACKY WORLD OF ONE HIT WONDERS

Walk up to me on the street and ask me who had a top 20 hit with the song "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" and I’ll immediately spit out the name The Bubble Puppy. Try to stump me with "In the Year 2525".  Not a chance, Zager and Evans had a number one hit in 1969 with their apocalyptic tale of future doom and gloom. I don’t even have to think about it really, this information is stored forever in my brain, as if someone had plugged a 4 gigabyte memory stick of songs into my temple when I was a teenager. It could lead you to believe that if a giant bag of Cheese Doodles spilled open in front of us I could tell you how many were lying on the floor without having to count. Unfortunately, I don't possess that talent, nor am I an excellent driver, just for the record. I do seem to have a Rain Man-ish ability to remember songs, especially songs of the obscure one hit wonder variety. It’s easy for most people to remember hit songs by the iconic groups of that era, The Beatles, Kinks, Stones, and The Doors. All those bands went on to great success and multiple hits. Zager and Evans on the other hand most likely ended up headlining The Tiki Lounge in the Passaic New Jersey Holiday Inn by the time the 70’s ended. It would have been nice to be able to apply this savant like memory to some kind of academic success, but that wasn’t the case. For this reason, I am now using the brand spanking new updated Microsoft Word 2016 to write these blogs. Sure I can tell you in a second that it was The Electric Prunes who had a top 20 hit with the song "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" in 1966, but try to remember that singular subject needs singular possessive adjective.?. ugh!!. With all apologies to my favorite teacher and grammar guru Mrs. Marjorie Dempsey, sorry but that makes my head hurt. Tiki Lounge notwithstanding, In the Year 2525 is actually a very good song, combining some elements of the indie Tex Mex band Calexico, with Arthur Lee and Love's signature album Forever Changes. So why did this duo fizzle out after just one hit. Could be that their next release, a song called "Mr. Turnkey",  which tells the tale of a rapist who nails his own wrist to the jail wall as punishment for his crime (now there’s a cheerful little ditty) was not exactly the best career choice.

   

What is it about these songs that keep them firmly rooted in the recesses of my medulla? Is it the goofy names, the aforementioned Electric Prunes, The Strawberry Alarm Clock "Incense and Peppermint" The Lemon Pipers "Green Tambourine".  Apparently wandering the produce section of the grocery store provided great inspiration for band names in those days. Is there a world of difference between The Music Explosion's 1966 number two hit "Little Bit of Soul", and Tommy James and the Shondells number one song from the same year "Hanky Panky"? As standalone songs probably not, yet Tommy James went on to have a slew of top 20 hits while The Music Explosion, well, they blew up good.

Some of these flashes in the pan are easier to explain. No one expected The Singing Nun to hire a couple of roadies and head out on the tour bus after the success of her only hit "Dominique", which topped the Billboard charts in 1963. The Archies, who had a number one hit in 1969 with the song "Sugar Sugar" were not a band at all, just a group of studio musicians assembled by Don Kirshner of Midnight Special fame. Speaking of The Archies, they characterize another interesting aspect of the one hit wonder phenomena. They managed to record two additional songs that became top 40 hits, "Bang Shang-a Lang" and "Jingle Jangle", (I believe Dylan covered Jingle Jangle   on his epic double album Blonde on Blonde) which essentially amounted to remaking Sugar Sugar with minor tweaks to the hit making formula. In my book it’s still one hit, albeit  with three different titles. They were not the only group who employed this strategy in an effort to keep the ball rolling once a formula proved successful. The record holder for most hits derived from one song would be Gary Puckett and the Union Gap who managed to take the basic template behind their 1968 hit "Woman Woman" and parlay it into 5 top ten singles, never wandering too far away from the original hit.  They could have become the first group to sue themselves for copyright infringement.

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Similarly Tommy Roe was so thrilled to have a top ten hit in 1966 with the song "Sweet Pea" that he recorded it again and called it "Dizzy". 
   One of the more peculiar entries into the one hit wonder club is The Buoys 1971 hit "Timothy", written by Rupert Holmes, apparently after  consuming one too many of the Pina Coladas he sang about a few years later. Hidden behind an innocuously catchy folk rock melody, is the grisly tale of three boys trapped in a mine with no food. The lyrics suggest that when the boys are rescued a week later, their bellies are full, and poor little Timmy is nowhere to be found, surely the first and only top 40 hit about cannibalism. Cannibal and the Headhunters "Land of 1000 Dances" doesn't qualify

Trapped in a mine that had caved in

And everyone knows the only ones left

Were Joe and me and Tim

When they broke through to pull us free

The only ones left to tell the tale

Where on earth did you go?

Timothy, Timothy

God why don't I know?

Hungry as hell no food to eat

And Joe said that he would sell his soul

For just a piece of meat

Water enough to drink for two

And Joe said to me, 'I'll take a swig

And then there's some for you.'

Timothy, Timothy

Joe was looking at you

Timothy, Timothy

God, what did we do?

I must've blacked out just 'bout then

'Cause the very next thing that I could see

Was the light of the day again

My stomach was full as it could be

And nobody ever got around

To finding Timothy

Timothy, Timothy

Where on earth did you go?

Timothy, Timothy

God, why don't I know?

Rupert Holmes was 20 when he intentionally wrote these unsettling lyrics, in an effort to benefit from the publicity generated by radio stations banning the song. That part of the plan succeeded, as radio stations became aware of the subject matter they  removed Timothy from their playlists. Curiosity as to why of course led to a growth in the songs popularity, reaching a high of 17 on the Billboard charts. Unfortunately, this didn't translate into any future success for the carnivorous Buoys, apparently Hannibal Lecter plays well in the cinema but not so much in the music industry.

   

The advent of MTV in 1981 spawned a whole new era of one hit wonders, of the video variety. It's an extensive field that will need to be covered in a future blog. For now, my only comment on the subject is "Rico!! Suave!!"

 Finally, in the spirit of Rolling Stone Magazine, there must be a best and worst of the one hit wonders. What song stands out as special, and what song  leaves you scratching your head wondering who the hell liked this.? My personal favorite would be "Come On Eileen", released in 1982 by the British Band Dexys Midnight Runners. It was an early MTV hit as well, and reached a high of number seven on the US Billboard charts. It also placed third in a VH1 poll of the 100 greatest one hit wonders of all time. If I'm doing lists ,as I often will, Come on Eileen always manages to sneak into my top ten songs, based on its banjo and fiddle infused Irish tone, and the fact that it never fails to make me happy when I hear it. Surprisingly they weren't able to follow up on the success of the song and never charted again. Another British Band, Mungo Jerry hit it big in 1970 with a song called In the Summertime, which sold over 30 million copies worldwide. It was a number one hit in the UK and several other countries while reaching a high of number three on the US Billboard charts. Funky lyrics behind a New Orleans style zydeco shuffle; it was the perfect summer song, Beach Boys with a Cajun flavor. The band was never able to catch on in the US but was wildly popular in their  home country, with several top ten hits and a fan base rabid enough that the British press took a page from The Beatles and coined it Mungomania.

   
As far as the worst one hit wonder of all time, I was prepared to bestow the honor to Gilbert O'Sullivan  and his left-at-the-altar suicide lament, Alone Again Naturally which somehow managed to stay at number one for six consecutive weeks in 1972. I was shocked and dismayed however to discover that Gilbert struck gold again the very same year with an equally awful song titled Claire, which charted at number two on the Billboard 100.

Paul Anka's  She’s Having My Baby (my choice for the absolute worst song of all time with no close contenders) is eliminated as is Bobby Goldsboro's Honey,  based on the fact that they both had multiple top 40 songs. Terry Jack’s 1974 hit Seasons in the Sun,seemed like the next logical contender, but I discovered that it was adapted from an earlier Jacques Brel song with lyrics by Rod Mckuen.  Brel was a big influence on some of my own  musical heroes, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie , so its pedigree eliminated the song from contention despite the fact  that I would rather listen to someone drag their fingernails slowly down a blackboard than listen to the Terry Jacks version.

So, by default, but not because he hasn’t earned it, the title of absolute worst one hit wonder of all time goes to…. Drumroll please , Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson, AKA David Soul , one half of the famed TV police duo  Starsky and Hutch,  and singer of  the 1977 number one hit Don’t Give Up On Us Baby.

The song lasted one short week on top of the  Billboard 100 ,the fact that it made it there for even one week is perplexing.  To me it is the musical equivalent of the pivotal moment in the movie Love Story when Jenny tells Oliver that “love means never having to say you’re sorry”.

    When senility does set in, and at times it feels like it may be lurking just around the corner, I'm sure these songs will continue to rattle around in my brain. I can picture a scenario where a nursing home attendant walks into my room to ask me  what condition I'm in and me  blurting out "Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, 1968. Or maybe, just maybe, it will be as Napoleon XIV prophesied in 1966, one day I'll look up and, well, this will happen.


 
Okay well I have to go now, it's 4:56, 4 minutes to Wapner.

BEAVERS, TOADS, AND THE BIG BOSS MAN( A warm August night, 1978)

A warm August night with Bruce Springsteen

But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock’n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."

Jon Landau-The Real Paper May 22, 1974.

This quote, specifically the highlighted portion, is often credited with pushing a relatively unknown Bruce Springsteen into the limelight. The quote was part of an article written by Rolling Stone music critic Jon Landau after seeing a Springsteen performance at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge Mass. Landau had been writing for the magazine since its inception in 1967, and earlier in the article laments the loss of the passionate obsession for music that fueled his early years. 

To quote: "Today I listen to music with a certain measure of detachment. I’m a professional and I make my living commenting on it. There are months when I hate it, going through the routine just as a shoe salesman goes through his"

Seeing Springsteen perform changed all that for Landau, and in 1975 he replaced Mike Appel as Springsteen's manager, and co-producer on his third album, Born to Run.

With all due respect to Jon Landau, I'm sorry but Bruce Springsteen is my business. Nice article and all but he was a year late to the Springsteen dance. I had already discovered Bruce in June of 1973 when he and his E Street Band were the opening act for Chicago (the group not the play) at Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in New Haven. Admittedly my discovery wasn't as wide ranging or influential, consisting mainly of my close friends, but  I feel strongly that we were the seedlings that later blossomed into the "hard core group of east coast fanatics" that Time Magazine referenced in their 1975 cover story on Bruce.

In any event my own passion for "horn bands" had me seated in Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in June of 1973 for Chicago's performance, along with opening act, Bruce Springsteen. Typical for most opening acts, the crowd was disinterested at best, and later interviews revealed that Springsteen was most likely just as disinterested. He never wanted to play big arenas, the experience of touring with Chicago soured him to the point that even after the success of Born to Run in 1975, he refused to play big arena shows until 1978. The music coming from the stage that night certainly wasn't big arena ready but there was something intriguing that grabbed my interest. Jazzy piano and organ, a scruffy bearded white guy fronting the band, a football lineman sized black man alongside him playing saxophone, certainly not typical of most 1973 bands. Sounded a little like Van Morrison, a little like Dylan, but mostly like nothing I had ever heard before. I can't really say I was blown away, the distraction of a noisy crowd along with a faulty sound system made it difficult to fully enjoy the performance.

   The next day I was wandering the aisles of Cutler’s Records in New Haven, if a Bruce Springsteen album existed, this was the place to find it. The memory is still vivid 43 years later, getting that album in my hand, Greetings from Asbury Park, cleverly formatted to mimic a postcard from the shores of New Jersey. Inside, and on the back cover, every inch of available space covered with the sprawling stream of consciousness poetry that marked Springsteen's early writing style. Before listening to a note of music  I was immersed in the lyrics:

Eighth Avenue sailors in satin shirts whisper in the air
Some storefront incarnation of Maria, she's puttin' on me the stare
And Bronx's best apostle stands with his hand on his own hardware
Everything stops, you hear five quick shots, the cops come up for air
And now the whiz-bang gang from uptown, they're shootin' up the street
Whoa, that cat from the Bronx starts lettin' loose, but he gets blown right off his feet
Oh, and some kid comes blastin' round the corner, but a cop puts him right away
He lays on the street holding his leg screaming something in Spanish
Still breathing when I walked away
And somebody said, "Hey man, did you see that? His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud"
I wonder what the dude was sayin', or was he just lost in the flood?

The music behind the poetry made it clear that this was no Van Morrison or Dylan clone. The influences were there, but the music, a keyboard and sax driven blend of rhythm and blues, folk, and rock was uniquely Springsteen's, crafted in the bars and beaches along the Jersey Shore where Bruce had grown up.  Prior to Landau's article and up through the release of  Springsteen's second album in 1974, it felt like we were  members of an exclusive club who knew  something unique in the world of music was happening on the shores of Jersey. In today's market it might be labeled "indie Bruce”.

   The next time I saw Springsteen in concert, he was again the opening act, this time on a bill that included one hit wonders "The Chambers Brothers" (Time Has Come Today) and headliner Leslie West, whose claim to fame was lead guitarist in the short lived rock band Mountain (Mississippi Queen). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has yet to open their doors for either group.

     Landau's review followed the release of Springsteen's second, and in my opinion best album "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle" a collection of 7 songs that clearly defined Springsteen's style. He was not the next new "Dylan" as some articles had claimed; Dylan wasn't creating songs that were almost symphonic in nature and operatic vocally. In retrospect this was very sophisticated songwriting for someone who had yet to reach his 24th birthday. The critics loved him but the albums were hastily and poorly recorded, never attaining the kind of sales the quality of the music deserved.

   His fan base continued to expand mainly through his reputation as a live performer, word of mouth creating something of a legend around his shows culminating in Landau's glowing review.

Shockingly , slightly more than a year after that review, and two months after the release of his third album "Born to Run"  Springsteen was featured simultaneously on the covers of both Time and Newsweek October 27, 1975 editions. This would be the first time a rock star had been awarded both covers in the same week, a significant event in the pre internet world.

While the publicity surrounding the dual covers introduced Bruce to a wider audience, the fact that a relative unknown appeared on both covers in the same week created a negative backlash. The Time article written by Jay Cocks was written from a fan's perspective, a glowing narrative suggesting that Springsteen would be the next “distinctive voice of a generation" in rock. The Newsweek article, written by Maureen Orth, took a slightly different approach, suggesting   that Springsteen might be   an industry created hype, part  of the  "star maker machinery" mentioned  in Joni Mitchell's song Free Man in Paris.

   Unfortunately for Springsteen, a forced three year hiatus followed this   rush of publicity. Hungry for a record deal, Bruce naively signed a contract that gave his first manager Mike Appel rights to all his music, it took three years and an ugly court battle with Appel to finally have those rights restored.

     His fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town was released three years after Born to Run  in the spring on 1978. On August 25th of that year, Bruce and his E Street Band stormed back into the same Veteran's Memorial Coliseum where I had first seen them perform five years earlier. Bruce had finally relented to big arena shows, the demand for tickets too great to continue in smaller venues.  It was rumored that during sound checks Bruce would go sit in every corner of the arena to make sure the sound was clear. 

Any resemblance to the band I had seen five years earlier had vanished. The band that wasn't arena ready in 1973 rattled every corner of the coliseum with crystal clear adrenaline pumping, LOUD!!  Rock that at times threatened to literally levitate the building. The makeup of the band was basically the same other than personnel changes on drums and piano, but the tenor of the show was completely different. From the opening notes of Elvis Presley's Good Rockin Tonight, this was a full out rock and roll show, a band on a mission to dispel any  hype rumors that still  existed.  Further evidence that this would not be a typical night of music occurred when after 12 songs and 90 minutes, Bruce and the band put down their instruments to acknowledge the frenzied audience, usually the  prelude to  an encore. Instead Bruce stepped to the mic to inform us that the band would be taking a short break, then return to play another whole set. This was bar band stuff in an arena setting, and true to his word, we were treated to a second set plus encores covering two more hours and 13 additional songs. It was exhilarating, exhausting, emotionally draining, it was Landau's words from that 1974 article coming to life. It really was like hearing music for the very first time. We walked out into the warm summer night, ears ringing, voices hoarse from screaming "Bruuuuuuceeeeeeee", walking with the crowds of people exiting the arena who all had the same look of pure joy on their face.

Still on an adrenaline high from what we had just witnessed, and in full "future of rock and roll" mode we headed down the street to Toad’s Place, where Springsteen sound-alike Beaver Brown Band was playing.  There were rumors floating around the coliseum during the show that Bruce might join the band for a few songs, which seemed impossible given what we had just witnessed, but it was Saturday night, Beaver Brown put on a good show, and after 3 hours on a heart pumping thrill ride, sleep wasn't an option. 

Once inside Toad's I managed to work my way up to the front of the stage, never dreaming that Bruce would really show up. A few minutes later, a gawking crowd gathered in the window that stretched across the front of the club as a giant tour bus   pulled into view. The lights dimmed and just like that, a grinning from ear to ear Bruce Springsteen walked onstage, right in front of me. He looked like a man who was about to play his opening set of the night to an audience he needed to impress,  instead of  someone who had just poured his heart out on a stage in front of 20,000 people. He was joined by saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons and of course an equally grinning John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band.

If I reached up, I could have strummed Bruce's guitar for him as he and the band played a three-song set that included two  older rock standards, “Double Shot of My Baby's Love” by the Swinging Medallions, and  “You Can't Sit Down” by The Dovells, plus his own classic “Rosalita.” Even after his 3 hour energy draining show earlier that night, Bruce was playing and singing with the same fire and passion for the relatively small crowd  of maybe 300 people as he had  earlier in  front of 20,000. I was close enough to see the veins bulging in his neck as he played.

And a funny thing happened: suddenly, Bruce wasn't so iconic, or mythic. He was a guy in a bar with a band, playing his ass off, playing literally as if his life depended on this performance, right here on this night.

And I could see it up close that for Bruce, the crowd, the venue, or the people he was playing with didn't matter. All that mattered was the music,

What resonates now 40 years and 100 plus Springsteen concerts later is the knowledge that the true essence of Bruce Springsteen was revealed that night in 1978. Yes he has gone on to become one of the biggest stars of our generation, respected by the icons he idolized like McCartney and Jagger, while inspiring  hundreds of current musicians who list Bruce as an influence, Tom Morello, Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard and Marcus Mumford to name a few. 

In the hundreds of concerts I have attended, Bruce has never delivered anything less than he did that night in 1978.  If anything, as he has aged and perhaps sensing his mortality, Bruce seems intent on leaving a lasting memory everywhere he performs. The shows still log in at 3 hours plus, but now he seems focused on pleasing each audience in some kind of specific and meaningful way. Bruce played Auckland New Zealand in March of 2014, shortly after 16 year old native Lorde had a huge hit with the song Royals. He opened the show with an acoustic cover of her song to a stunned and ecstatic crowd.

Magical moments like this happen every night in every city, thrilling older fans and creating thousands of news ones, often children of the old timers who are anxious to share the magic of Bruce with their kids.

It's clear that if Bruce had failed to achieve the level of stardom he desperately sought, he would still be performing as he did that night, in a small club or bar, veins bulging in his neck, leaving it all on the stage in the name of music. In interviews he has always said that there was no fall back plan, he was not going to be installing aluminum siding.

Like his song from the 1980 album The River says "He's a rocker baby he's a rocker.

 Bruce has gone through several changes in personnel and style since 1973. Most long time Springsteen fans will say that the best version of Bruce is and always will be Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. For me, I prefer Bruce alone with his guitar and keyboards, as he appeared during the Ghost of Tom Joad tour in 1995, and again ten years later on the Devils and Dust tour.

But my absolute favorite version of Bruce is the 2006 Seeger Sessions Band Tour, an opinion that places me in a distinct minority among Bruce fans. In retrospect, this 17 member band, heavy on fiddle, banjo, accordion, stand-up bass and pedal steel guitar was a forerunner to the Americana music that groups like Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers made popular a few years later. 

 It's been a 40 plus year ride for Bruce and I, but that warm summer night in 1978, will always stand out as the highlight of the journey.

. 

BEAVERS, TOADS, AND THE BIG BOSS MAN( A warm August night, 1978)

A warm August night with Bruce Springsteen

But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock’n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."

Jon Landau-The Real Paper May 22, 1974.

This quote, specifically the highlighted portion, is credited with pushing a relatively unknown Bruce Springsteen into the limelight. The quote was part of an article written by Rolling Stone music critic Jon Landau after seeing a Springsteen performance at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge Mass. Landau had been writing for the magazine since its inception in 1967, and earlier in the article laments the loss of the passionate obsession for music that fueled his early years. 

To quote: "Today I listen to music with a certain measure of detachment. I’m a professional and I make my living commenting on it. There are months when I hate it, going through the routine just as a shoe salesman goes through his"

Seeing Springsteen perform changed all that for Landau, and in 1975 he replaced Mike Appel as Springsteen's manager, and co-producer on his third album, Born to Run.

With all due respect to Jon Landau, I'm sorry but Bruce Springsteen is my business. Nice article and all but he was a year late to the Springsteen dance. I had already discovered Bruce in June of 1973 when he and his E Street Band were the opening act for Chicago (the group not the play) at Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in New Haven. Admittedly my discovery wasn't as wide ranging or influential, consisting mainly of my close friends, but  I feel strongly that we were the seedlings that later blossomed into the "hard core group of east coast fanatics" that Time Magazine referenced in their 1975 cover story on Bruce.

In any event my own passion for "horn bands" had me seated in Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in June of 1973 for Chicago's performance, along with opening act, Bruce Springsteen. Typical for most opening acts, the crowd was disinterested at best, and later interviews revealed that Springsteen was most likely just as disinterested. He never wanted to play big arenas, the experience of touring with Chicago soured him to the point that even after the success of Born to Run in 1975, he refused to play big arena shows until 1978. The music coming from the stage that night certainly wasn't big arena ready but there was something intriguing that grabbed my interest. Jazzy piano and organ, a scruffy bearded white guy fronting the band, a football lineman sized black man alongside him playing saxophone, certainly not typical of most 1973 bands. Sounded a little like Van Morrison, a little like Dylan, but mostly like nothing I had ever heard before. I can't really say I was blown away, the distraction of a noisy crowd along with a faulty sound system made it difficult to fully enjoy the performance.

   The next day I was wandering the aisles of Cutler’s Records in New Haven, if a Bruce Springsteen album existed, this was the place to find it. The memory is still vivid 43 years later, getting that album in my hand, Greetings from Asbury Park, cleverly formatted to mimic a postcard from the shores of New Jersey. Inside, and on the back cover, every inch of available space covered with the sprawling stream of consciousness poetry that marked Springsteen's early writing style. Before listening to a note of music  I was immersed in the lyrics:

I was the king of the alley, Mama, I could talk some trash
I was the prince of the paupers, crowned downtown at the beggar's bash
I was the pimp's main prophet, I kept everything cool
Just a backstreet gambler with the luck to lose
And when the heat came down it was left on the ground
The devil appeared like Jesus through the steam in the street
Showin' me a hand I knew even the cops couldn't beat
I felt his hot breath on my neck as I dove into the heat
It's so hard to be a saint when you're just a boy out on the street

The music behind the poetry made it clear that this was no Van Morrison or Dylan clone. The influences were there, but the music, a keyboard and sax driven blend of rhythm and blues, folk, and rock was uniquely Springsteen's, crafted in the bars and beaches along the Jersey Shore where Bruce had grown up.  Prior to Landau's article and up through the release of  Springsteen's second album in 1974, it felt like we were  members of an exclusive club who knew  something unique in the world of music was happening on the shores of Jersey. In today's market it might be labeled "indie Bruce”.

   The next time I saw Springsteen in concert, he was again the opening act, this time on a bill that included one hit wonders "The Chambers Brothers" (Time Has Come Today) and headliner Leslie West, whose claim to fame was lead guitarist in the short lived rock band Mountain (Mississippi Queen). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has yet to open their doors for either group.

     Landau's review followed the release of Springsteen's second, and in my opinion best album "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle" a collection of 7 songs that clearly defined Springsteen's style. He was not the next new "Dylan" as some articles had claimed; Dylan wasn't creating songs that were almost symphonic in nature and operatic vocally. In retrospect this was very sophisticated songwriting for someone who had yet to reach his 24th birthday. The critics loved him but the albums were hastily and poorly recorded, never attaining the kind of sales the quality of the music deserved.

   His fan base continued to expand mainly through his reputation as a live performer, word of mouth creating something of a legend around his shows culminating in Landau's glowing review.

Shockingly , slightly more than a year after that review, and two months after the release of his third album "Born to Run"  Springsteen was featured simultaneously on the covers of both Time and Newsweek October 27, 1975 editions. This would be the first time a rock star had been awarded both covers in the same week, a significant event in the pre internet world.

While the publicity surrounding the dual covers introduced Bruce to a wider audience, the fact that a relative unknown appeared on both covers in the same week created a negative backlash. The Time article written by Jay Cocks was written from a fan's perspective, a glowing narrative suggesting that Springsteen would be the next “distinctive voice of a generation" in rock. The Newsweek article, written by Maureen Orth, took a slightly different approach, suggesting that Springsteen might be an industry created hype, part of the "star maker machinery"referenced in Joni Mitchell's song Free Man in Paris.

   Unfortunately for Springsteen, a forced three year hiatus followed this rush of publicity. Hungry for a record deal, Bruce had  naively signed a contract that gave his first manager Mike Appel rights to all his music, it took three years and an ugly court battle with Appel to finally have those rights restored.

     His fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town was released three years after "Born to Run" in the spring on 1978. On August 25th of that year, Bruce and his E Street Band stormed back into the same Veteran's Memorial Coliseum where I had first seen them perform five years earlier. Bruce had finally relented to big arena shows, the demand for tickets too great to continue in smaller venues.  It was rumored that during sound checks Bruce would go sit in every corner of the arena to make sure the sound was clear. 

Any similarity to the band I had seen five years earlier had vanished. The band that wasn't arena ready in 1973 rattled every corner of the coliseum with crystal clear adrenaline pumping, LOUD!!  rock that at times threatened to literally levitate the building. The makeup of the band was basically the same other than personnel changes on drums and piano, but the tenor of the show was completely different. From the opening notes of Elvis Presley's Good Rockin Tonight, this was a full out rock and roll show, a band on a mission to dispel any  hype rumors that still  existed.  Further evidence that this would not be a typical night of music occurred when after 12 songs and 90 minutes, Bruce and the band put down their instruments to acknowledge the frenzied audience, usually the  prelude to  an encore. Instead Bruce stepped to the mic to inform us that the band would be taking a short break, then return to play another whole set. This was bar band stuff in an arena setting, and true to his word, we were treated to a second set plus encores covering two more hours and 13 additional songs. It was exhilarating, exhausting, emotionally draining, it was Landau's words from that 1974 article coming to life. It really was like hearing music for the very first time. We walked out into the warm summer night, ears ringing, voices hoarse from screaming "Bruuuuuuceeeeeeee", walking with the crowds of people exiting the arena who all had the same look of pure joy on their face.

Still on an adrenaline high from what we had just witnessed, and in full "future of rock and roll" mode we headed down the street to Toad’s Place, where Springsteen sound-alike Beaver Brown Band was playing.  There were rumors floating around the coliseum during the show that Bruce might join the band for a few songs, which seemed impossible given what we had just witnessed, but it was Saturday night, Beaver Brown put on a good show, and after 3 hours on a heart pumping thrill ride, sleep wasn't an option. 

Once inside Toad's I managed to work my way up to the front of the stage, never dreaming that Bruce would really show up. A few minutes later, a gawking crowd gathered in the window that stretched across the front of the club as a giant tour bus   pulled into view. The lights dimmed and just like that, a grinning from ear to ear Bruce Springsteen walked onstage, right in front of me. He looked like a man who was about to play his opening set of the night to an audience he needed to impress,  instead of  someone who had just poured his heart out on a stage in front of 20,000 people. He was joined by saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons and of course an equally grinning John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band.

If I reached up, I could have strummed Bruce's guitar for him as he and the band played a three-song set that included two  older rock standards, “Double Shot of My Baby's Love” by the Swinging Medallions, and  “You Can't Sit Down” by The Dovells, plus his own classic “Rosalita.” Even after his 3 hour energy draining show earlier that night, Bruce was playing and singing with the same fire and passion for the relatively small crowd  of maybe 300 people as he had  earlier in  front of 20,000. I was close enough to see the veins bulging in his neck as he played.

And a funny thing happened: suddenly, Bruce wasn't so iconic, or mythic. He was a guy in a bar with a band, playing his ass off, playing literally as if his life depended on this performance, right here on this night.

And I could see it up close that for Bruce, the crowd, the venue, or the people he was playing with didn't matter. All that mattered was the music,

What resonates now 40 years and 100 plus Springsteen concerts later is the knowledge that the true essence of Bruce Springsteen was revealed that night in 1978. Yes he has gone on to become one of the biggest stars of our generation, respected by the icons he idolized like McCartney and Jagger, while inspiring  hundreds of current musicians who list Bruce as an influence, Tom Morello, Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard and Marcus Mumford to name a few. 

In the hundreds of concerts I have attended, Bruce has never delivered anything less than he did that night in 1978.  If anything, as he has aged and perhaps sensing his mortality, Bruce seems intent on leaving a lasting memory everywhere he performs. The shows still log in at 3 hours plus, but now he seems focused on pleasing each audience in some kind of specific and meaningful way. Bruce played Auckland New Zealand in March of 2014, shortly after 16 year old native Lorde had a huge hit with the song Royals. He opened the show with an acoustic cover of her song to a stunned and ecstatic crowd.

Magical moments like this happen every night in every city, thrilling older fans and creating thousands of news ones, often children of the old timers who are anxious to share the magic of Bruce with their kids.

It's clear that if Bruce had failed to achieve the level of stardom he desperately sought, he would still be performing as he did that night, in a small club or bar, veins bulging in his neck, leaving it all on the stage in the name of music. In interviews he has always said that there was no fall back plan, he was not going to be installing aluminum siding.

Like his song from the 1980 album The River says "He's a rocker baby he's a rocker.

 Bruce has gone through several changes in personnel and style since 1973. Most long time Springsteen fans will say that the best version of Bruce is and always will be Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. For me, I prefer Bruce alone with his guitar and keyboards, as he appeared during the Ghost of Tom Joad tour in 1995, and again ten years later on the Devils and Dust tour.

But my absolute favorite version of Bruce is the 2006 Seeger Sessions Band Tour, an opinion that places me in a distinct minority among Bruce fans. In retrospect, this 17 member band, heavy on fiddle, banjo, accordion, stand-up bass and pedal steel guitar was a forerunner to the Americana music that groups like Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers made popular a few years later. 

 It's been a 40 plus year ride for Bruce and I, but that warm summer night in 1978, will always stand out as the highlight of the journey.

. 

A Wop-Boppa Loo-Bop a Wop-Bam Boom ( And other great songs of protest)

It's hard to pinpoint the moment when the lyrics of a song became vital to my enjoyment of it. It certainly wasn't when Frankie Laine let Jezebel know that "yes, it was her." (That song is my first real memory of listening to a 45 record and I loved it.) It wasn't The Four Seasons revelation that　big girls in fact do cry, or Little Eva, echoing the words of Carole King in telling me that everyone was doing the locomotion. Listening to those 45's in my early teens, lyrics were part of the whole package, certainly not an essential element to my liking it. I enjoyed instrumentals equally: in fact, the all instrumental group The Ventures was one of my early favorite bands.

 

Eventually some bands began to deliver a message with the music: Buffalo Springfield's "For What's It Worth," The Byrds covering Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," Janis Ian's "Society's Child." I was surprised to discover that Janis was only 14 when she wrote this controversial-for-its-time song　about an interracial relationship. While I liked those songs, they didn't resonate beyond the visceral pleasure of listening. At 14 or 15, I didn't have an appreciation or understanding of the poetry,  it was still just a song. In fact, the first song that actually made me pay attention to the content of the lyric was Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction":

"The eastern world it is exploding, violence flaring, bullets loading.
You're old enough to kill, but not for voting, you don't believe in war
but what's that gun you’re toting?"
  

The early 60s were filled  with dire warnings about an impending nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Movies were shown in class of mushroom clouds exploding, behind the narrative that people living within a 100-mile radius of that cloud would be incinerated. Not exactly a rosy outlook for a 6th or 7th grader. In addition there were routine air raid drills, in which we were instructed to hide under our desks in case of an attack. While those desks were sturdily built, this didn't seem to be the most well-thought-out escape plan. Add all that together and it seemed like old Barry was onto something. (Later, research revealed that the song was written by P.F Sloan, who penned a number of early hits including Secret Agent Man for Johnny Rivers).

As the 60s progressed, artists began to direct their anger and emotion towards the escalating Vietnam War. While some of the songs took the form of patriotic anthems, such as Sgt. Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets," which went to number one in 1966, the majority of the songs were anti-war. Anti-government and protest songs were not exactly a new phenomenon in the mid-60s. Bob Dylan had written the song "Masters of War" in 1962, long before Vietnam had escalated into a nightly news event, while people like Woody Guthrie Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs had been documenting social issues for years.

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

Dylan, though, was still a relatively unknown folk singer in 1962, and artists like Seeger and Ochs had a niche audience at best. There is a world of difference between that and Country Joe McDonald　performing "Fixin’ to Die Rag" as a 350,000 person singalong at Woodstock.

.

Slowly songs of protest moved out from the fringes and into the mainstream, propelled mostly by the growing popularity and prolific production of Bob Dylan. Dylan rejected this "voice of a generation tag" and after 1970 rarely ventured into the folk protest song arena again. Prior to that, songs like "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," "Blowin’ in the Wind," "Chimes of Freedom," "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and "Times They Are a-Changin’" made it clear that Dylan had something to say about the country's condition, whether he owned up to it or not.

 




But Dylan moving away from that "voice of a generation" tag turned out to be not a bad thing, and in 1975 he released what many consider his signature album, Blood on the Tracks. It was a departure for Dylan both lyrically and musically, and put to rest the rumors that Dylan had somehow lost his creative mojo following his mysterious motorcycle accident in 1966. The album has been called "the truest account of a love affair ever put down on magnetic tape" but similarly to his disavowing  the voice of a generation tag ,  Dylan stated that he didn't write confessional songs and it was not autobiographical. In any event this wasn't "oh please stay with me, Diana" kind of love: the lyrical content was a little more weighty than that.

She lit a burner on the stove
And offered me a pipe
I thought you'd never say hello, she said
You look like the silent type
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
From me to you
Tangled up in blue


My personal favorite song on the album does not seem autobiographical at all, but the landscape Dylan creates with his words and  music is so cinematic that whenever I listen to "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," I can see the movie in my mind.　



I also think this album contains some of the best vocal work of Dylan's career. Whether you like the sound of his voice or not, and it certainly can be an acquired taste, no one used phrasing and the inflection in his voice to convey the emotion of his words better than Dylan


 *****
It will be impossible to document all the great poets and singer/songwriters who flourished during this era. Paul Simon, the poetic genius of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, as well as some of the newer artists struggling to be heard in a market that seems to favor flash over substance, at least commercially.


So I will close the circle by moving ahead to 1984. The Vietnam War had ended ten years earlier and it seemed like the whole of America wanted to forget the tragedy of it. Unfortunately that resulted in a disregard for the returning veterans. I think it's safe to say that no group of veterans has been more poorly treated　than those returning from Vietnam. In 1984, Bruce Springsteen released his most commercially successful album Born in the USA.  While Springsteen certainly had achieved a substantial level of fame prior to 1984, the Born in the USA album propelled him into the Michael Jackson mega-pop stratosphere category, which to be truthful didn't fit Bruce, or his long-time fans well.

The problem was that the masses who flocked to buy the record completely misconstrued the meaning of the title track, thinking of it as a patriotic anthem when in fact it was a scathing and angry indictment on the government’s treatment of Vietnam veterans. Conservative columnists like George Will and Bernard Goldberg heaped praise on Springsteen. Will even wrote a column about Bruce with the heading "Yankee Doodle Springsteen" and almost comically, President Ronald Reagan tried to buddy up to Springsteen at a campaign stop in New Jersey. To quote: "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."
To be fair, it's easy to feel a sense of patriotism when 80,000 fans in The Meadowlands are raising their fists and screaming "Born in the USA" along with the chorus as Bruce performs. But the truth is that the song was originally written as a folk/blues protest song, much in the manner of Bruce's heroes Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Hard to mistake this version as a patriotic anthem.





Apparently Reagan hadn't listened to this version.

So while music is and always will be the vehicle that drives the song, it's very often the lyrics that will make me smack my hand into my forehead and say,　"holy shit, that was incredible"　
It doesn't always have to be something weighty or deep that will make me do that: it often can be something as simple as clever wordplay that makes a lyric stand out.

Because so many artists that I love are not included in this article, I will close this blog with a few examples of that clever wordplay, in sort of a haiku compilation.

Aimee Mann "4th of July"

"Today's the fourth of July
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town I just think
What a waste of gunpowder and sky"

Leonard Cohen "Alexandra Leaving"

Suddenly the night has grown colder
The god of love preparing to depart
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine

Green Day "Basket Case"

Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything all at once
I am one of those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
I'm just stoned

and finally the great Gene Vincent "Be Bop A Lula"


Well be-bop-a-lula she's my baby,
Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe.
Be-bop-a-lula she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula she's my baby love,
My baby love, my baby love.