Caryn Rose

So being able to step through doors and into a studio and see the recombined Afghan Whigs standing there was like walking through the doors of the Emerald City. Everyone looks good; everyone looks well. You would recognize them if you saw them walking down the street, even if the heads are now salt-and-pepper; they would just look like you and your friends. The energy was clear and palpable; these are people who are connected to each other. This isn’t a big payday (although I’m sure it’s not small, and they’re more than entitled to it), so I wasn’t worried that they’d get together if they didn’t genuinely want to be there, but the tangible proof was heartwarming to see.

Dave Rosser, Cully and Rick (Nelson) were all there as well, along with two other string players, which I was not expecting. I will be honest that I was a tiny bit sad that the Roots were nowhere in evidence because this just seems like a match made in heaven; this was removed a few minutes later when ?uestlove strolled in, afro tamed by cornrows, red hoodie on. He shook hands with everyone individually, with especially recognition (it seemed) from Rosser and Dulli. Everyone except David Rosser was bundled up because it was freezing in that studio. Greg had a sweater on, everyone else had a jacket or long sleeves of some sort.

I sat through the thrilling experience that was checking the input for each instrument (I didn’t care if I had to sit through them tuning the drums) and then they did their first take of “See And Don’t See,” which I more or less expected. I love the cover and it makes so much sense but live it is, as usual with AW, another animal all together, and with the addition of ?uestlove on drums (Cully playing percussion), it killed. Greg is not playing guitar, and I love that he knows when to not fucking play guitar, he is confident enough as a frontman to not need the crutch when it’s not necessary.

They ran through it once, and then Greg and ?uestlove talked about what he wanted him to do. They ran through it again and Greg stopped it to give more direction to ?uestlove about what kind of rhythm he wanted. Of course he got it in half a second, Greg nodding and moving to the beat. There was a third runthrough, and a final discussion of cues, where to come in on the song, before Greg suggesting they take it one more time through the passage in question.

I love this stuff. I love watching band leaders lead their bands. I dig being a fly on the wall in the artistic process. You never get to see this kind of stuff, and the process, the interaction, the putting things together fascinates me. I care about process and the unspoken and the intangible. I could have watched them run through one song 15 times and never gotten bored.

During the runthroughs, they started to have a producer sit at the desk and do what will be Jimmy’s introduction, which used the phrase “beloved rock band”. I was touched by that because it is so true, truer than other possible descriptors, and more important than most of them.

Rick McCollum is someone I haven’t seen in over 10 years, and I would say something like “it was good to see him” but you know, I don’t know him. But I have missed seeing him play guitar and he didn’t have a huge role in “See and Don’t See.” I know, we are all older and I don’t expect him to be the fluid, shimmying Rick of days gone by but it is there, as I would discover when they moved on to the next song. I knew there were going to be two songs because when I arrived, Greg was playing with the guitar I refer to as “Big Black” (yes, that’s a Neil Young reference); it disappeared before they started playing and I hoped it would return. During the runthroughs of “See and Don’t See” there was the occasional reference to “the rock song” and I was hoping that meant what I hoped it meant.

Sure enough, once the Fallon crew had indicated they were good with the take and ?uestlove felt comfortable and departed, Greg’s guitar arrived. I couldn’t even begin to guess what the other song was going to be, no idea where they would start, what would be the first song of Afghan Whigs Opening Day 2012, and without the smallest musical cue they careened straight into “I’m Her Slave,” like they had never stopped playing it, like they had been playing it regularly over the past 10 years. I was listening to some older Whigs shows after the past few weeks and last night especially, wondering and worrying if it would be like I remembered, if it would be real and true enough to be more than nostalgia, if it would stand on its own merit enough. I should know better than to doubt Greg Dulli, because the band roared forward in fifth gear, no holds barred, a finely tuned machine and the tour hasn’t even started yet.

That sound, that guitar wall, as usual it roared straight into my chest and made me catch my breath. It was old but it was new and fresh and loud and magnificent. I remembered to start breathing at one point. I was glad to be far enough away and hiding behind the lights.

And lest you think it was all drama, the other Whigs-ian element that I wondered about, between takes and during one small break the guys were laughing and jamming: the O’Jays (“For The Love Of Money”), Lynyrd Skynyrd (“That Smell,) and – led by Curley, natch – Led Zeppelin (“Ten Years Gone”). I am not exactly expecting Greg to start referencing Madonna lyrics during “Turn On The Water” as in ye olden days but If they were a hits-playing machine and played it straight they wouldn’t be the Afghan Whigs.

Tomorrow, Bowery Ballroom, the main event.

If you liked “beloved rock band” aka the Afghan Whigs return on Jimmy Fallon you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I know better, really, I do know better than to fall for amateurs who insist that, say, U2 are playing at CBGB on a Tuesday night in the 1am slot because they looked up every single band on the bill and have never heard of Hoover Monkeys before and they know U2 are in town rehearsing and Larry Mullen once played in a band where the lead singer once said he liked monkeys and if you can’t see HOW CLEAR IT IS then you don’t deserve to see them.

I have had these conversations a lot over the years. I believe in the lottery aspect of the secret club gig or the unannounced appearance, that if you happen to be there because you want to see the act booked on the bill and lo and behold someone else shows up and plays then that is the serendipity of rock and roll. Or if you figure it out, like Gary and the Boners at CBGB, then, hey, good luck to you. This is why I never saw Springsteen play with Cats on a Smooth Surface in the 80s, because everyone overlooked the fact that Cats sucked complete and total ass and I could never bring myself to borrow my roommate’s car to drive down to Asbury on a Sunday night and sit with 500 people who were staring at the door instead of the band all night.

So when my friend Matthew, who just moved to NYC, sent a note pointing out that Bernard Fowler, who has sung background vox for the Stones on tour, was playing a gig the Friday night before Jagger’s SNL appearance, with half of Living Color (who, of course, were discovered by Jagger and who opened for the Stones), along with Alexandra Richards (yes relation) DJ’ing, I did what any self-respecting New York rock fan would do and sniffed at it. I like Matthew and find his common sense to be unimpeachable, so I did not say anything, I just nodded and thought, that’s all well and good but there’s no way I would go to some random club in the heart of Bridge & Tunnel Greenwich Village on a Friday night on a rock and roll snipe hunt.

Two days later, I bought tickets.

I will confess that I was motivated mostly by the thought that the people who just moved to New York might see a Stones club show or Mick Jagger club appearance while I sat home on a Friday night and caught up on The Killing.

I had no intention of waiting on line to get into this venue, so I made sure we arrived after the 8 p.m. posted door time. It didn’t matter, there was a line of gray heads wearing Stones tongue-emblazoned attire of every possible vintage (including this shirt, which was completely unnecessary, as well as likely unlicensed). Everybody around us knew each other, from what I knew were likely to be various associations with Stones fan forums like SHIDOOBEE WITH STONES DOUG, Sticky Fingers Journal, It’s Only Rock And Roll, and lest you think I am mocking them too harshly, my own alma mater, Undercover, The Rolling Stones Mailing List.

For most of these people, who don’t listen to much music besides the Stones, this was an excuse to hang out with each other and see each other outside of tour time. The adage “they don’t get out very much” can be very, very true with some of these people. It is why I always considered myself a tourist and could only deal with the snarky fandom of the people on Undercover, who were well versed in making fun of themselves and the Stones and had both perspective and a sense of humor. Even then, there are limits of how much I can discuss a band. (Seriously, I can’t even deal with most Springsteen fans for this reason.)

The venue did not start letting people in until 9 p.m., one hour after posted door time and half an hour after the show was supposed to start. The club was only able to admit two people at a time, insisting that each entrant step up to a table in a particular fashion. This was not helped by the insistence that there was “ONE LINE FOR EVERYBODY” only to continually let people cut ahead of the people waiting in the line with alarming frequency.

Now, I thought that the reason they only allowed 2 people at a time was that this was a tiny club with a narrow entrance hall and of course, NYFD fire safety rules. Once I actually got inside, I realized it was just ineptitude. You could have driven a six-team of oxen through the entrance. Sullivan Hall was one of the biggest Village clubs I have been in since the demise of the Bottom Line. This was not Folk City or Kenny’s Castaways or Bitter End dimensions.

The club, formerly known as the Lion’s Den, usually has reggae cover bands or other cover bands or bands like Bonerama, who I was later informed was a premiere New Orleans funk act. This may be true, but everyone had the same reaction to their poster in the front window that I did, which was to inquire if the band was named by a bunch of 12-year-olds. (They were playing on the same bill as Mingo Fishtrap. When Matthew read the poster, I originally thought he was making that up.)

I am not proud. The first thing I did when I got into the club was ascertain if there was any kind of back entrance. (There was.) Then I noted that Alexandra Richards did look like both parents. She was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan TITTIES AND BEER and after half an hour of DJ’ing I noted that she was definitely her father’s daughter, but that unfortunately the level of artistry presented during her DJ set could have been achieved by stealing a couple of her dad’s iTunes playlists. I also didn’t ever consider “Folsom Prison Blues” to be a dance number and noted that playing the original version of “Harlem Shuffle” 5 minutes before it was obvious that the headliner was taking the stage was just legit trolling the crowd in real life.

We were in the back, and had to keep moving back. We had to keep moving back because people were actually crowding up at the front of the stage. I do not know why this surprised me. I also wanted to be in the back so I could see if there was any, you know, movement anywhere. If I was going to be on a snipe hunt I wanted to see the snipe walk into the venue so I could be prepared. Let’s not pretend that anyone in the room actually wanted to be surprised.

At one point we amused ourselves by watching Justin Verlander blow his no-hitter (not that blowing the no-hitter was amusing, just that watching baseball was better than watching everyone posing for photos together as though this was some kind of momentous event). I was the only one with signal so I held my phone up so the group could watch. This wouldn’t really be remarkable except that we were in the biggest crowd of flip phones that I have seen the past few years. The advantage of this was that your view wasn’t blocked all night by someone filming. They would take a shot of what would turn out to be a big white blur and put the phone down.

I won’t lie; the Wimbish/Calhoun rhythm section is formidable. However, the material it was supporting was less so. The highlight of the set was the original number about the environment, with the key phrase being “When will they learn/you can’t eat money.” The other original material suffered in similar fashion; the lyrics were just agonizingly bad.

The set was unremarkable, to be honest, but I don’t know why I expected it to be remarkable in some fashion. I also do not know why I did not convince my boyfriend that we should leave right about the time they started playing “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” Blessedly they played a shorter version than the Stones have ever played live, but watching the people down front jumping up and down in ecstasy was making me sadder by the minute.

As we left the club, they handed us fliers for upcoming shows at the Highline Ballroom featuring various other tangentially connected Stones people as well as one for Ray Manzarek’s band and a Jimi Hendrix tribute. If nothing else, they’re not stupid.

I just hoped no one saw me walk out of the club.

If you liked THE HUNTING OF THE (ROLLING STONES) SNIPE. you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

Tonight’s Gaslight Anthem show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg was, at least in my mind, going to be an album preview, a taste of the new music to come. Alas, this was not to be. After the opening half dozen oldies but goodies, I was ready for the band to dive into the new material. Instead, we only got two new songs, the single ’45′ and “Biloxi Parish,’ which had already made its way into the intertubes by virtue of having been performed live once in Australia. I kept waiting… and waiting… and waiting… before it became obvious that this was going to be just a TGA small club show. That threw things off a bit for me emotionally, the anticipation of “Okay, will the NEXT song be a new one?” having to be replaced with “okay so I’m just going to jump around to everything I already know.” Which is not bad, by any means, just not what anyone thought it was going to be.

The energy throttled up and down tonight, from goosebumps at entry (helped along by blaring “Sabotage” over the PA, which received the appropriate response) to a few lulls at odd and unexpected points, slow songs barreling down the track while some of the rockers teetered on the brink. The entrance into “Great Expectations” was the band and audience on full throttle, with an intensity that surprised everyone, I think. “The Patient Ferris Wheel” was another off-the-charts moment, feeling more like the end of the set than the middle. It was loud and ecstatic and wonderful, but we didn’t exactly break any new ground here and that’s what I was hoping for tonight.

Brian’s voice didn’t seem at its strongest–the high notes on ’45′ were definitely missing–but the energy from the crowd made up for it, as usual. I opted for my side stage spot on the risers instead of heading straight for the front, because I am an old cranky punk lady and do not have the patience for amateur crowd surfers– but was almost sorry at that decision because it was reasonably chill; bouncy and energetic with a small circle pit about a half a dozen people back. It wasn’t perfect and it felt like we weren’t working at it, the new songs not really being new in the true sense of the word, but it was still everything you love about this band, in the kind of place they will very likely not be playing for very much longer.

The very things that make me crazy about The Gaslight Anthem are the exact same reasons I did not trust Brian Fallon or TGA at first: it seems too perfect, my interests too aligned, the influences too close. It took the personal endorsement of several young punks who assured me that they had their bona fides before I relented. Of course I was going to hop on board the minute I was cleared for takeoff. Here is a band that wholeheartedly embraces almost everything I hold dear to my rock and roll heart, whose shows are 90 minute orgies of kids both young and old screaming along at the top of their lungs to every single word, clapping, raising their arms, gleefully participating in call and response. Of course this is home sweet home. There is no irony, there is no detachment, there is a whole lot of gratitude and positivity and plain old FUCK YEAH going on. I am very much okay with all of this.

I freely admit that my interest in this band is from my own rockist prejudices, my preferences about How Things Should Be Done, my selfish desire to keep the music I grew up on alive, to keep kids listening to Who’s Next and London Calling so that the next generation of bands don’t all sound like Dave Matthews and John Mayer. And unlike the Hold Steady, with whom I would probably also share iPod playlists (and honestly like very very much), they ring home for me lyrically. Neither Craig Finn nor Brian Fallon are writing for me but I still resonate with Gaslight lyrics. (And that’s not a diss at Craig Finn, who is a brilliant lyricist, as hard as I try I just don’t click with the stories he is telling.) There have been plenty of other bands in the past who have tried to be the Clash and who I have dismissed in a flat second. I think it is just that TGA have found one particular intersection that repackages it in a way that you love or you hate; it’s not that it’s new or different, it’s just the way it’s put together this time by this particular group of people.

I have heard “Baba O’Riley” live dozens of times; if there is a song I should be burned out on it should be “Baba O’Riley,” and yet, when Brian announced it my immediate response was to make sure my phone was carefully zipped away in my pocket so I could pogo up and down like it was brand new. They play it straight but not without enthusiasm and humor, they are playing it for an audience that had likely largely dismissed the Who as their parents’ music or if not, at least as music made by dinosaurs and not relevant to them. It is all of those things and it is also just a song, just a cover, just a moment. I am sure that if I go back and watch the Livestream that I will find Brian’s voice lacking and the band not playing together in a couple of spots but that did not matter right then, what mattered was the guitars and the bass and the drums and Brian’s voice and the crowd singing along out of tune and off kilter and with love and affection. This was why, despite the show being filmed, I took out my camera and used up the last of my battery to try to capture it, put it in a bottle, give me a jolt of adrenaline the next time I need it.

I apologize in advance for the CARYN SINGS THE HITS OF THE WHO LIVE AT MHOW nature of this recording. (Brian didn’t even try for the Daltrey power screams and I didn’t even notice that I was doing it.)

If you liked The Gaslight Anthem, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 5-16-12 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

This is obnoxious and obscene and don’t let your kids listen to it. Or if you’re a kid listening to it, just don’t tell your parents.

This was their first single. I heard it on WNYU, which is where I first heard of the Beastie Boys. I may or may not have seen them play as a hardcore band, back in the 80s I once tried to figure it out but never could. I do know that I took my life into my hands going out to the Capitol Theater in Passaic to see them, back when they had the go-go dancers in the cages, and scalped tickets in front of the Garden when they opened for Madonna on the Like A Virgin tour. (Really, I wanted to see Madonna, but the Beasties just made it more interesting.)

Somehow I found myself in the middle of the crowd at Lollapalooza 96 in the middle of their set, very close to the front, and if you have ever been there you know what that was like: it was insane. Jumping, singing, arm waving, very very male. I gave up my front row seat at the 98 Tibetan Freedom Concert to my friend Kathy, who was wearing her Beastie Boys socks that day, because she deserved it more than I did.

The genius of making a record by prank calling Carvel and asking to talk to Cookie Puss will only make sense to a certain generation, and that generation of people is right now walking around their offices with red eyes and remembering the first time they heard a bunch of white Jewish kids rapping. They were our age. Everyone I knew knew someone who knew them. Everyone I knew knew someone who dated them. Everyone I knew knew someone who smoked pot with them.

And then, they grew up at about the same time we did, at about the same time we started feeling uncomfortable with the lyrics, when we got to the point where we couldn’t have kept listening if they kept going in the same direction. They still managed to be bad ass and full of conviction. They taught a generation of kids who probably couldn’t have found Tibet on a map to care about something beyond their own front yards.

They were New York and they were ours and they still are right now. We’re just missing one. Fuck cancer. Fuck this shit.

If you liked For Adam Yauch. I am so tired of writing these. you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I am not shy about saying that the experience of seeing Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey is highly overrated; that New Jersey crowds (outside of Asbury Park) are horrible; that you would be better off at seeing him in Boston or Philly or at Madison Square Garden. Tonight, the audience at the Prudential Center in Newark proved all of that wrong by being the best audience I have ever been part of in New Jersey and probably the best this tour so far. I turned around during “Rosalita” and saw leaping, jumping, dancing people in every single row, all the way up to the ceiling. They sang along — in harmony! — to the Levon Helm tribute “The Weight.” Signs were for things like “Acoustic Open All Night” or “Ain’t Good Enough For You.”

This amazing audience was, I believe, key to keeping the show energetic and moving through all of the many times — like the intro to “No Surrender,” which opened the show, houselights up tonight — that the band lost their place, couldn’t follow Bruce, or couldn’t hear each other. Seriously, Bruce had to start the first song over because the band was not playing in time. It would be easy to overlook that if it happened once in a show, but it happened, again, repeatedly, on songs like “My City of Ruins,” “She’s The One,” or the glorious trainwreck which was the birthday dedication for Backstreets‘ own Flynn McLean, in the pit with a sign asking for “Talk To Me.” The band kept playing and Bruce just kept conducting them as hard as he could, and just kept picking the performances up and turning them around, picking the energy up. The result was a highly enjoyable show despite the performance issues. I’ve always admired Bruce’s professionalism and ability to play through a fuckup that would cause someone else to get upset and make the mistake worse. And again, energetically this was such a great show the flubs were easily shrugged off. It is a little bit of a concern that they could go that far off the rails after such a short break, however – but then completely pull of an unrehearsed version of “The Weight” with aplomb.

Let’s talk setlist. Tonight went all over the place, veering and meandering with mixed results. I loved the “No Surrender” opener, and suspect we’ll see a lot more of that now that we’re moving to the stadiums. I very, very much appreciated the appearance of “It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City,” a song that greatly benefits from the presence of a full horn section, even if I felt it was lacking in oomph just a tiny bit. I am content with the “Easy Money”/”Shackled & Drawn” flip, even if I wish he could find a way to include both songs since both are strong numbers. I am very, very happy with the evolution of “Shackled,” of expanding Cindy’s reprise of her recreation of the Lomax sample, coming down off the platform to the front of the stage with Bruce. It makes a strong number even stronger. “Talk To Me” was definitely an audible, Glenn could see Bruce talking to Roy to let him know what was coming. I just do not understand what happened there – the performance in Tampa was absolutely spot on, so it boggles the mind that it could be so sloppy tonight. (And it wasn’t just the band, those were definitely not the lyrics in spots.) But it was still high spirited and full of energy and the end result was still positive. And, of course, “The Weight” was a wonderful, unexpected surprise. We saw him pull the sign out of the crowd and then Bruce came to the front with an acoustic, stage dark, in a spotlight, and I had no idea what he was going to do. Once it started, of course, it was fabulous, and the band — especially the horns — acquitted themselves at the level you would expect.

This brings us to the outlier tonight, the song Bruce got everyone worked up about by telling us he’d never done it before. Charlie was out on the riser with the accordion and of course that makes you think 1) “Wild Billy” or 2) “Sandy.” In a million, trillion years I would never have expected him to drag out “Bishop Danced,” and in a million, trillion years, I never would have eagerly awaited that particular choice from the outtake set. Seriously, there are probably 25 other songs that are superior to “Bishop Danced.”

I am personally not a fan of just hearing a song played live because it’s never been played live before, I want to hear a song played live because it’s a good song first, then I care about how rare it is. There is a reason that this song was an outtake. And the worst part was, this was not an audible; this was planned; this was arranged for the full band; this was soundchecked. Really, “Bishop Danced”? Because that will do so well in the stadiums. Please let this be an outlier. Because there is still a whole album full of material from The Promise we have yet to hear live. I mean, Newark didn’t deserve a full band “The Promise?” No, I am not going to be ‘glad’ I heard a second-rate song just so I can say I was at one of the two performances of it.

Other notes about the show: I thought tonight was the lowest point for “The Promised Land” in the history of this song’s live performance. It was stale and flat and suffered the most I have ever heard it suffer from its unfortunate home after “Sunny Day.” The Apollo Medley is starting to feel a tiny bit overplayed, but, again, you know, Wilson Pickett. (At one point tonight I thought he was going to audible “Sweet Soul Music,” which I would love to see come out for the summer stadium run, I think it would be a great fit and give him another place for a Clarence tribute – yes, I want him to keep the “Spotlight on the Big Man” line.) I was not a fan of converting the “If you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here” line into a song, I thought it extended it too much and made it lose its power. If he is tired of that tribute (which an astute reviewer discussing the New Orleans show noted), it would certainly be fine to retire it and find another one. There are certainly no shortage of moments in the show that could be dedicated to Clarence and Danny.

The new spoken intro to “We Are Alive” needs focus; it’s hard enough to ask the audience for quiet at that part of the show, asking for additional quiet while you ramble for a few minutes is going to be tough. The encore still feels bloated to me, I do not think we need “Rosie” and “Dancing In The Dark,” I really do not. If he wants to bring out “Rosie” then retire DITD for a show. I am uncertain how I feel about the omission of “Thunder Road” at this point. I very much enjoyed the horn arrangement and how it paid tribute to Clarence in a quiet way. Finally, I thought the sound had some problems tonight; I felt like Charlie was way too high in the mix, but at times could not hear Bruce or Roy.

I had GA for this show, deciding to take my chances with the lottery. Not only did I not hit the lottery, but did not come anywhere close to being in a decent second position. So I was back at the soundboard, which is a new location for me this tour. I enjoyed watching the beer drinking (and the singing of Wilson Pickett!) up close, but was most touched watching Bruce’s expression at the end of the Big Man tribute video. He is still feeling it as much as we are, more than we are, of course. At times I feel like this tour is a spirit walk for him — “How do I begin again?” in “My City of Ruins” resonating so hard for me, watching him onstage this tour. I know people were advocating for “Jungleland” tonight as though it is some kind of inalienable right. We may never get to see that again, and we will need to figure out how to be okay with it. It is not the same. It will never be the same. But it is right now, and right now is its own kind of very, very okay.

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I also highly commend my colleague’s thoughts on the show.

If you liked Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Prudential Center, 5-2-12 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I wrote this piece back in 1999, during the Reunion tour, when I found myself having too many discussions with music fans in their 20s who just refused to tolerate the very idea of Bruce Springsteen. It has been revised and updated.

I am often asked by music fans where they should start if they wanted to acquaint themselves with Bruce Springsteen’s catalog. This is not an easy question to answer. If your entree into Springsteen was your parents’ copy of Nebraska, I will tell you to go to the very beginning, because you won’t be surprised by the quieter, acoustic numbers (but you may feel alienated by the copious amounts of words and rhymes used). If you know Born To Run, get Darkness and then the Live box set, If you came in on The Rising, start at the beginning because you need to know the whole story.

I will also suggest that if you are seriously interested, that in addition to listening to the music, you need to get ahold of a book, preferably Dave Marsh’s Born To Run and Glory Days because they give you the best sense of what it was like in real time. They’re all a buck or two used, and available in libraries, so there’s no excuse. Yes, they are flawed, but they are also full of passion and enthusiasm, which any of their competitors lack.

1973: GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, NJ Bruce was signed to Columbia as a “new Dylan,” a folky singer-songwriter type, despite the fact that he’d been playing with a band for most of his history.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Blinded By The Light (yes, he wrote it), Growin’ Up, Spirit In The Night
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Lost In The Flood, For You, It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
RANDOM FACT: how many other rockers start their career with the first song on their first record being a tale of teenage masturbation?

1973: THE WILD, THE INNOCENT AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE
More rockin’ than ‘Greetings’ because this time, he brought the band along. Yay! A continuation of the characters and the Jersey Shore legends begun with the first album.
SONGS YOU KNOW: 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), Rosalita
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Kitty’s Back, Incident on 57th Street, New York City Serenade
RANDOM FACT: How many rock songs have a tuba in them? (see: Wild Billy’s Circus Story)

1975: BORN TO RUN
This record was described by Greil Marcus as “a 57 Chevy running on melted-down Crystals 45′s” and it is one of the most perfect rock and roll records ever made.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Born To Run, Thunder Road, Jungleland
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Everything else on the album
RANDOM FACT: Steve Van Zandt gets put on the payroll when Bruce asks him for help with the horn arrangements, and Stevie walked over to the horn section and sang them their parts. (Bruce: “He’s hired”). [You can now see and hear more about this relationship in the Darkness box set The Promise. It is worth it to buy the deluxe version.]

1978: DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN
This is my album. I was 14 when this came out and it spoke to every raw exposed nerve end in my psyche. I played it over and over and over and over. Now, you’ll notice the three years between BTR and Darkness, right? “Wasn’t BTR the album that made Bruce a superstar,” you ask? “Why did it take him so long to release a follow up?” Can you say, “litigation with former managers who get you to sign contracts on a hood of a car in a dark parking lot?” His former manager enjoined him from recording unless he was under his management, and the court ruled in his manager’s favor, so Bruce couldn’t record. He ciykd play live, though, and he did, constantly. BTR marked the lineup of the E Street Band which is the one for the history books.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Prove It All Night, Badlands, Promised Land
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Adam Raised A Cain, Candy’s Room
RANDOM FACT: Bruce was so obsessed with this album that he rejected the album cover several times over, and the night before it was due to be printed, he was at the printing plant because he didn’t like the way the cover looked, asking for changes to the ink at 2 in the morning. [This is the kind of stuff you learn from the Marsh books.]
UPDATE: In 2009, an extensive box set was released which documented the recording of and around this record. It is worth every penny.

1980: THE RIVER
While this record gives you a “Sherry Darling” and “Ramrod,” it also gives you “Stolen Car” and “Wreck On The Highway”. You will be surprised how many of these songs you know, and how many are still live staples.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Hungry Heart, Cadillac Ranch, Two Hearts, Out In The Street
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Independence Day, Point Blank, Ramrod, The River, Drive All Night
RANDOM FACT: “The River” was about Bruce’s sister

1982: NEBRASKA Bruce recorded these songs in his kitchen and sent them to his manager. (When this came out on CD in the early days of that format, we would ask “What’s the point, do you need to hear what was going on in the living room?” [okay. it was really funny at the time.]) He tried working on them with the full band but he couldn’t quite get it right, and then manager Jon Landau suggested they just release the original recording. It worked. Gritty, black and white tales of urban angst, the sound of driving alone on the Jersey Turnpike at 3am.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Atlantic City. [Also one of the most beautiful music videos ever made.]
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Johnny 99, Open All Night, Reason To Believe
RANDOM FACT: Bruce uses the term “wee wee hours” 7 times on this record

1984: BORN IN THE USA
This is probably where most of you come in, or where most people struggle or give up, because of a bunch of synthesizers and bad 80′s production. You know what? Everybody had synthesizers and bad production in the 80s, but that doesn’t mean that the songs aren’t great. This is where Bruce became one of the biggest acts in the world, playing stadiums and bringing down phone lines every time tickets went on sale. This is where Steve Van Zandt becomes Little Steven and leaves the band. Enter Nils Lofgren, the only possible choice, on guitar.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Dancing In The Dark, Born In The USA, Glory Days, I’m On Fire
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: No Surrender, Bobby Jean, My Hometown
RANDOM FACT(S): The video for “Glory Days” was filmed at my old watering hole and second home, Maxwell’s, in Hoboken, NJ (I was allowed in as far as the corner); Patti Scialfa joined the band right before the tour started.

historical note: Bruce marries model/actress Julianne Phillips. Fans everywhere express their outrage that he didn’t marry some truckstop waitress.

1986: LIVE 1975-1985
For years, everyone had clamored for Bruce to put out a live record, and when he finally did, all we did was bemoan the lost opportunity. Instead of putting out one show, no matter how flawed (which is ridiculous to consider because the bootlegs prove that to be untrue), he put out a spotty and uneven mish-mash representing the middle of his career which did not capture the essence of live Springsteen and leaves out essential tracks like “Jungleland.”

1987: TUNNEL OF LOVE
People tend to refer to this as “the divorce album.” I find it fascinating that he wrote an entire album about how his marriage was falling apart and didn’t realize he had until it was done. (This is why Bruce started going to therapy.)
SONGS YOU KNOW: Brilliant Disguise
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Spare Parts, Tunnel of Love, One Step Up
RANDOM FACT: This tour was legendary for the horn section and the fact that the band all moved around and stood in different spots. (No, seriously, this was a big deal.)

historical notes: Bruce and Patti get caught by paparazzi on a in Rome (“Photographed in my jockey shorts,” as Bruce put it at his RRHOF induction), Bruce’s marriage formally ends, The E Street Band is dissolved, Bruce sells the house in Jersey and moves to California.

1992: LUCKY TOWN/HUMAN TOUCH
These albums, recorded without the E Street Band (although various members did appear on some tracks), were released on the same day, an unnecessary gimmick which completely and utterly backfired. The songs would have made a great single album, but no one wanted to hear solo Springsteen.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Lucky Town, 57 Channels
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: If I Should Fall Behind, Leap of Faith, Better Days, Roll of the Dice, Souls of the Departed

1993: UNPLUGGED
Despite being someone who would have shone in an acoustic format, Bruce brings along the “Human Touch”/”Lucky Town” band. It’s an interesting artifact of the time. The CD and DVD are different.

1995: THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD
Bruce lets his inner Woody Guthrie have full rein on this solo acoustic outing.
SONGS YOU KNOW: Ghost of Tom Joad, Youngstown
SONGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: Sinaloa Cowboys

1995: GREATEST HITS
I’ll just quote what I wrote about this record for brucespringsteen.net: “Bruce’s first compilation album incorporates 14 of his best-known songs, along with his recent hit “Streets of Philadelphia,” from the film Philadelphia, which won multiple Grammys and an Academy Award. Also included is fan-favorite outtake “Murder Incorporated” and three more songs newly recorded with a reunited E Street Band in January 1995.”

1995: BLOOD BROTHERS (DVD)
I will again quote what I wrote for brucespringsteen.net: “In 1995, Bruce decided to invite the then-disbanded E Street Band back into the studio to record new songs for his upcoming Greatest Hits album. This documentary captures the recording sessions, the live video shoot for “Murder Incorporated,” and priceless insights into the band’s relationships with each other at the time.”

1998: TRACKS and 18 TRACKS
Bruce goes into the vaults and digs out 4 CD’s worth of outtakes and rarities. 18 Tracks is the one-disc version, with the addition of “The Promise,” which, for reasons that still fail me, was left off of the box set. (When Charlie Rose asks you why a song was left off your box set, you know something is seriously wrong.) This will be worthwhile to you once you’ve dug into everything else and have a sense of the live show over the years, otherwise the songs will just be out of context and make no sense to you.

2001: LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY
It remains astounding that Bruce still struggles so hard with putting out a satisfying live product. While closer to giving you a live show end-to-end, it still has some continuity issues and sloppy editing. It is nice to have a soundboard-quality show, but this feels like a lost opportunity every time I listen to it. For a lot of people, this defines their vision of what Bruce is like live.

I am not going to cover The Rising or any of the records afterwards in this version of this guide because they are recent enough that you don’t need anyone to explain them to you (or you can just go to the official site. The site was relaunched in 2012, with writing from Chris Phillips, myself and other writers who are also fans. There are capsule descriptions of every single release ever, all of which I trust and endorse 100%.

LIVE RECORINGS/ROIOs [RECORDINGS OF ILLEGAL ORIGIN]

We are blessed that Bruce Springsteen is one of the most bootlegged artists of all time. Due to the amazing live shows, people were taping live Springsteen back in the very early days, and back then, Bruce encouraged it (see the Roxy 78 and the legendary “Bootleggers, roll them tapes!” exhortation). In 2012, you do not need to pay for bootlegs, and you do not need to haunt tiny dusty record stores in Greenwich Village (or your city’s equivalent) to find recordings of live shows.

Let me say that again: YOU DO NOT NEED TO PAY FOR BOOTLEGS AND IF YOU DO YOU ARE JUST STUPID AND LAZY.

The fan community is incredibly generous and if you join one of them, you will find people who are willing to help you, just by sending them blank CD’s and return postage. (I need to point out here that I no longer trade because I do not have time, so please do not write me asking for help with this.) Now you’re going to ask “Where are the fan communities” and here’s where you have to go some work and use the Google to find them. I am not going to tell you where to go. Yes, it takes some effort, but it should take some effort. If you aren’t willing to work at it, you don’t deserve it.

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I cut this exact ad out of the New York Times one Sunday, and hung it on my bedroom wall. I couldn’t go into the city to see it, but went down to Ridgeway Cinemas one Saturday afternoon to see it, all on my own.

When it was done — before it was done, even — I had gone out to the pay phone to call home and ask if I could stay to see it again. It wasn’t because I thought it was amazing (although I certainly did think that), it was because it was so enormous, so mind-blowing, so more-than-I-ever-thought to my 14 year old brain that I couldn’t possibly take it all in at once, so I stopped trying and told myself, “Don’t worry, it’s a movie, you can just see it again.”

I came back, later, I saw it at midnight movies, I dragged friends, I used it as a litmus test in relationships. I kicked myself, continually, for not having had been old enough to have seen the Band live, which was obviously not something that was within my control. I made up for it by devouring everything I could find about them. They schooled me. They grounded me.

How could this not fail to completely blow your mind? I’m surprised I left the theater at all that day.

The last time I saw Levon Helm, he was playing drums in a band that was supporting Hubert Sumlin. I didn’t know he was going to be part of the band, and from where I was sitting initially, I couldn’t see the drummer–but I didn’t need to. His style was unmistakable, his touch on the sonic thumbprint couldn’t be anyone else.

So much music. So much great music. So much great music that meant so much, did so much, extended so far, changed so very much. Thank you, Levon Helm.

If you liked On Levon Helm, and The Band you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

When I was old enough to remember listening to and caring about music, we lived in the middle of nowhere, a town in Michigan so small that when I visited it for the first time in 25 years, my first question to my mother was, “Where did you shop? Where did you buy clothes?” But there was a local FM station and at night I could twist the gold dial of the radio my mother gave me and could pick up Chicago radio, WLS, and Detroit radio sometimes, in the summer when the sky was clear. I would ride my bike to the discount store that had a tiny music department, sheet music and some albums and cheap acoustic guitars. I would pick up the goldenrod-colored fliers that had the Billboard Hot 100 and mark the songs carefully, the ones I knew vs. the ones I hadn’t heard vs. the ones I wanted to own. I would make a purchase of one or two 45′s and reverently flip through the albums. The only albums I owned were K-tel compilations, it wasn’t until my 8th birthday until I had enough cash of my own to buy an actual LP (School’s Out and We’re An American Band, for the record. There were also some David Cassidy purchases, later).

I was not old enough yet for Rolling Stone, and back then you could not just buy it at the supermarket. I discovered Tiger Beat and 16 and was allowed to buy those. Later, when I got a little older, I discovered The Midnight Special when a babysitter had the volume up too loud on the TV, and hearing rock and roll guitar, wandered out to see what was going on. I always had insomnia, was always up late, even when I was small, and once I discovered that there was rock and roll on television, would bribe the babysitter with promises of wrangling the other children to not cause problems in exchange for her letting me stay up to watch The Midnight Special, yes, I will run at full speed to my room where I will pretend to be sound asleep as soon as we hear my parents’ car hit the gravel at the bottom of the driveway.

But American Bandstand (and Soul Train!) were out in the open, in the middle of the day, flanked at the end of Saturday morning cartoons. No one noticed, no one shooed me outside to play, I never had to ask permission or hope no one else wanted the television, I could just sit there and watch. And I would watch everything that was on there, even if I didn’t like it, there was so much to watch, what the kids were wearing and how they danced. How the girls on Bandstand all had long beautiful straight hair, Marsha Brady long and straight, something I was not allowed to have.

My favorite part of Bandstand was Rate-A-Record, where Dick Clark would ask kids what they thought of a record! It wasn’t long before I would sit there in front of the tv and either nod with someone’s opinion or scowl if I thought they were wrong, and award myself imaginary prizes if my score matched any of the contestants’ numbers. It was where I first started trying to put into words what I thought about music, where I first started to think about music, where I realized that I could think things about music.

I know, Bandstand discriminated and Dick Clark wasn’t a saint and I remember learning about payola and what that meant much, much later. But for an awful lot of people, it was one of the only ways that music came into their home in a visual fashion, one of the few ways they had to see music and see musicians perform. It was a godsend. It was a ray of light. It changed so many things. It undoubtedly changed me.

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After Friday night’s bulldozer of an intro, Bruce clearly decided he liked it enough to try it again tonight, but this time, with mixed results. Things were a little odd, a little off balance, a little not quite all together for this second MSG show. “Badlands” didn’t have the same punch, but “We Take Care of Our Own” and “Wrecking Ball” (which has grown on me) felt solid as ever. I didn’t think we needed to go the “Out In The Street” route again, given that the people behind the stage weren’t the ones sitting on their hands tonight, but sure enough, we went there.

There was a long conversation with Kevin Buell during the intro to “My City of Ruins” which I hoped meant that he was changing his mind about something (and apparently, he did; Mr. Radecki has the info on that). I will always wish there was another place for the intros, for the roll call, for the laundry list. So much of the show keys off of this song — “How do I begin again?” — and I don’t think it gets a chance to breathe properly. It is always powerful and always strong, but it would be so much stronger if Bruce could just sing and the band could just play it through start to finish.

Bruce sitting down on the stage, announcing that they were going to play something they hadn’t yet played this tour. I was guessing “Spirit,” I was hoping “Spirit,” and a conversation about a local hangout at a lake, more like a pond, and everyone’s fingers behind the stage were already twinkling in the air. This was the point at which Bruce had to go over to the VIP’s on the side of the stage and tell them to stand up. This is, and remains, the problem with the Garden, that the front is full of VIP’s and the pit gets overcrowded due to VIP’s and the rest of us sit behind the stage.

“Spirit” was a little sloppy; okay, it was a lot sloppy. It wasn’t that loose, rollicking flow that you expect from “Spirit,” it was a “when is everybody going to catch up to each other” sloppy. Luckily Bruce can sell the song whether or not the various band members are playing at the same tempo he is, and sell it he did, writhing on the monitor at the front, stalking the edge of the stage, finding people in the crowd down front who were singing like their lives depended upon it.

A large PLAY THUNDERCRACK FOR MY BIRTHDAY sign down front convinced Bruce to take it, and as much as I love “Thundercrack,” it can only be played and do well in very specific places and MSG is, to be honest, borderline. But it was a fine version of “Thundercrack,” the band knows this one now, they don’t get lost and I cannot complain about “Thundercrack” in the set (although I was worried it was going to take the place of, say, an “Incident” or a “Serenade,” and I am selfishly glad it did not take the place of either). I worry about “Thundercrack” losing the crowd most of all, and, again, the people twirling their fingers in the air were behind the stage and in the pit and way, way, way at the back.

“Jack of All Trades” didn’t seem to lose the crowd tonight. “Trapped” was fine, but nothing special; tonight was not a particularly strong showing for Jake Clemons but the crowd is, as always, immensely forgiving. I worried about “She’s The One,” whether it would have enough oomph, enough power, enough darkness to not be anemic, but it was beyond fantastic, one of the best “She’s The One” performances I have ever seen. It was slightly arrhythmic, still in the neighborhood of Bo Diddley but maybe one street over, it was slippery and sexy. The women in my section were definitely feeling this one.

The transition into “Easy Money” was fine, although I think this needs to stabilize itself a bit more. However, in order to do that, Bruce will need to decide what he wants this particular number to be. He tried using Stevie as a foil, he’s fallen back on pulling Patti up for a June & Johnny moment, which is fine with me, but I’m still not sure what this is.

And then, there was “Sunny Day.”

“The Promised Land” was a low point tonight. As mentioned previously, this was not one of Jake’s good nights, and the solo I felt lacked power. The Motown medley is getting to the point where I wonder if they could maybe possibly try something else, people sit down during the intro, people aren’t interested in a very lengthy history lesson, they get up and dance once the song starts but it takes so long to get there, and again I wish there was more singing and less dancing and Jake doing the robot and then we have to wait for the run out to the platform and the chugging of the beer (I am going to have a heart attack watching that, I swear, I cannot understand how security is clearing this every night).

There is now an overhead camera shot of Bruce crowd surfing. Even with that, I feel like we are not quite at the edge of ridiculousness with this particular number. If we didn’t have the six minutes of crowd participation which was “Sunny Day” just one song ago, I would welcome this particular interlude in the set with open arms because BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS SINGING WILSON PICKETT.

“Because The Night” is such a New York City song, I am glad it is here tonight, I am glad that Nils is there to channel the whirling dervish into a fantastic solo. The horns are magnificent in this song, and I love that Patti is now sharing a microphone with Bruce for the penultimate verse.

Following “We Are Alive,” Bruce audibled something, and Glenn said, “Good for you, Bruce” but I can’t lipread and my first thought was “Jungleland” and that was what I started to type without my glasses on because I knew it would fog up my glasses when I started crying, and I was crying anyway because it was “Backstreets” and those intro chords, Roy is not a big man but he is enormous when he plays those intro chords, they hit me straight in the center of my chest, square on, dead center. BOOM. It was everything that “Backstreets” needed to be at that moment, everything that “Backstreets” is, roaring out of that stage, and changing the tone for the rest of the show.

I was prepared for “Thunder Road” next – the prompter that Curtis and Cindy use is under Roy’s piano and I could see it from where we were (unfortunately) but yet Bruce starts singing, “This train..” and there is a guitar change and he starts to cue the band in and some people in the audience know what’s going on and others don’t and then he gets everyone going and welcome back, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” all is forgiven! It was the perfect thing to put into the show, to get things back on track, and the perfect segue into “Rocky Ground”. Tonight, thank you, Bruce, he didn’t talk through the intro, he waited until he was done talking about WHY Hunger and introducing Michelle before cueing Max and beginning the song.

Bruce gestures at Stevie and tells him, “Come here, I need Steve for this song” and I’m not even sure Steve knew what Bruce wanted and we were thinking “Ramrod” and I was actually hoping for “Talk To Me” (or, I know, “Lyin’ In A Bed of Fire”. I think that sign is just going to go to Europe with us, along with airplane bottles of tequila to hand Bruce out at the center platform). I can be of mixed mind about “Rosalita”‘s presence in a set but it’s not overplayed right now and in terms of pinning down the corners of the history of the band and the songs that are important, “Rosie” is welcomed and needed and it is a barnburner lately, nothing is old or tired or rote about it, even if the horns careen off course with alarming regularity.

The rest of the encore was the rest of the encore, your houselights and your “Born To Run” hysteria, your kid-shopping for “Dancing In The Dark” (someone needs to tell him that it’s entirely possible to either 1) not play the song or 2) not pull a kid out of the audience, just end the song six minutes earlier). “Tenth Avenue” was fantastic tonight, it had good pacing, the intro didn’t go on too long, Bruce now bellows “HORNS” when he wants the horns to come in, assuring that they do not miss his cue or mistake his arm waving at the upstairs as a cue, and the tribute to Clarence is getting better, if that was at all possible, bringing down the house lights just the tiniest bit to emphasize the video on the screens. And “Tenth” remains the right note to close the show with. I am liking that it ends there, that there is no possibility for any more afterwards, that it is the time for acknowledgement and goodbye.

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I have a Springsteen related mailing list, for upcoming writings and when my book about the European tour comes out; I also have a novel out — and on sale now! — that any music fan will love. Thanks for clicking and reading.

If you liked Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Madison Square Garden, 4-9-12 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/