Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 7: Bruce Springsteen - RDS

Traffic was pretty terrible in Dublin this evening. That’s why I spent the first 4 songs of Bruce Springsteen’s set tonight standing outside the gate of the R.D.S. on Simmonscourt Rd. waiting for my gig buddy for the night to fight his way through traffic. Nonetheless even from that exterior position I could hear the boss perfectly and I suspected from the opening salvo of “The Promised Land” and “Radio Nowhere” that the gig just might be something special. As things turned out, ticketless as I am, standing in the same spot on Friday and Sunday nights Mister that sounds pretty tempting at this point.

The night was, for me, an odd mix of being thrilled by what is possibly the best Rock n’ Roll band anyone has ever put together kicking out jam after jam after jam and a vaguely sad sort of nostalgia. If the greatest gift that my father ever gave me was a love of music thanks to his picking of folk and country tunes on his guitar as I listened on as a child the musician who left the most lasting impression on me from that period is Springsteen, from the ages of 7-11 I barely listened to anything else, and if I did then I certainly don’t remember it. Tonight was the third time that I’ve seen him at the RDS over the past 15 years and the first time that my old man, thanks to a recent shoulder operation, hasn’t been along for the ride and at numerous points during the gig I thought of how much he’d have enjoyed it and wished he was there with me.

Moments like during “The River” when Bruce deviated from the recorded melody of the song while underneath I could hear the crowd sing it like on the album. Or when “Reason To Believe”, so quiet and meditative on Nebraska was transformed into a gigantic blues-rock workout complete with screaming harmonica and snarling vocals. Or just the general brilliance of “Darkness On The Edge Of Town.”

But it was the encore that was the killer. Emerging after a few minutes break having already performed for the best part of 2 hours Springsteen went straight into “Thunder Road”, then “Born To Run” which segued into “Bobby Jean” (i.e. one of the few songs on Born In The USA that I love on record). Next came “10th Avenue Freezeout”, at that point I was thinking that the only way to make the run of songs more perfect would be if “Street Of Fire” or anything else from Nebraska made it onto the setlist. Though in order to save my head from exploding the night ended instead with a much drawn out take on “American Land” from the Seeger Sessions album, which I guess was for the best.

YAY!

After much worrying about internet queues which seemed to get ever longer instead of shorter I've now got a pair of standing tickets for the Thursday gig.

"I love you daddy."

"I love you too son."

By the way, this is the first post I've made with my laptop since it's return. I'm currently in the process of backing up the hard drive in preparation for sending it back to have the faulty drive replaced (turns out the original issue was that the motherboard went kaput).

I wish I was in Belfast tonight.

Pinback will have to do though.



In case the video doesn't show up.

Fingers crossed for Wednesday.

EDIT: Pinback more than did. Fantastic. Great set by the Dudley Corporation too

BBBBBRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEE!!!

My favourite guitar.

The boss plays the R.D.S. on May 22nd next year.

Come next Wednesday (the 28th) when tickets go on sale the Irish information superhighway is gonna be jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power-drive.

Remember the video of Arcade Fire playing with Springsteen?

There is some sort of precedent.

Oh and seemingly covering Cyndi Lauper wasn't a new thing either.

Bruce Springsteen and Win And Regine from Arcade Fire

From last night via the good folks at trendwhore.

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - State trooper
Uploaded by trendwhore

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - Keep the car running
Uploaded by trendwhore

The National covering Springsteen's "Mansion On the Hill"

Can't can't can't wait for the gigs. Nothing will top Whelans but all the same ...

If he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run.

Jesus, what a shit week. Bye bye Juno, the house already feels emptier.

MP3: Okkervil River - Dead Dog Song from Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See
MP3: Bruce Springsteen - Reason To Believe from Nebraska (Though it's only the first verse that's relevant).

I just came.

The National are to cover Springsteen's "Mansion On The Hill" as a b-side to the "Apartment Story" single which is due out in early November.

Excuse me while I go clean myself up.

Retrospective Pt. 2 - Maybe everything that dies some day comes back.

My love of music probably comes from my father. Many of my earliest memories are of him in our kitchen playing his guitar even though I can only remember a few of the songs he used to play; "Sunday Morning Coming Down", "In My Life", "Save The Last Dance For Me", that bit from "Air On A G-String" that everyone knows from the Hamlet advertisement and various bits of 12 bar blues that he'd ocasionally get lost in for 10 minutes before moving onto some recogniseable song.

He also loved, and still does, Bruce Springsteen's music. Last November on the night that I went to see the Flaming Lips in Vicar St. he and a friend of his headed off to The Point to see The Boss and his Seegar Sessions band. It was the first time he'd seen him play since the pair of us went to the E-Street band comeback show in the RDS a few years previously (2002? I think it was 2002) and when I saw him the day after it he had the same look that I get after I've been to a gig that's blown me away. I think it's incredibly cool that in his 60's that can still happen to him.

Anyway, Bruce. Back in the 80's he (or rather CBS) put out a 5 vinyl box-set of live material dating from 1975-1985. My dad bought it and, not trusting me with our record player, copied all of it onto cassete for me. This was probably in 1987 or so. I don't think I listened to any other music for the next 5 years and I've remained a fan ever since even though for the most part I've had serious problems with a lot of the stuff from Born In The USA onwards. Rarely has it been because of any faltering in Springsteen's skills as a songwriter but due to the production on the albums. BITUSA has some amazing songs on it but I can barely listen to most of it due to the clumsey synth sounds that strangle the tunes but its follow up, Tunnell Of Love, generally thought of as the last "great" Springsteen album, remedied that somewhat.

But I don't want to spend too much time on negatives. To my mind Bruce released 3 truely great albums before he hit it huge in 1985, Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town (which I actually consider to be his finest album of the 70's) and Nebraska, which is where the song that wound up on that mix 4 years ago (and thus, why I'm making this post) comes from. Nebraska remains my favourite Springsteen album, recorded at his house on a 4 track it showcases his brilliance as a story teller and a songwriter. The legend is that when he tried to play the songs with a band and record them "properly" they lost so much he simply decided to release the demos that he had made prior to those sessions.

In 2007 it's not hard to find Springsteen's influence in music wherever you look, both in the good and in the bad. The Killers' last album borrowed heavily from his 80's excesses and The Hold Steady do a fine line in the straight ahead ass-kicking rock n' roll that defined Born To Run, there's even a line on their second album that goes "tramps like us and we like tramps". Even the Arcade Fire, they of the baroque sounds, archaic instruments and mass singalongs borrowed a couple of ideas on Neon Bible when it came to writing "Antichrist Television Blues" and "Windowsill" both of which, if they were stripped back to an acoustic guitar, might sound like Nebraska offcuts (although that's hardly surprising as Richard Reed Parry has described the album as being "American sounding" as opposed to the "Montreal sounding" Funeral and Bruce is to me a quintesentially American artist). (By the by, a few weeks ago I put up an Arcade Fire cover of "State Trooper" in this post.)

If I ever wrote a song as half as good as this I think I could die completely fulfilled artistically.

MP3: Bruce Springsteen - Atlantic City from Nebraska

P.S. If anyone has a spare pair of tickets for the Springsteen gig in Belfast in December, I'd love to bring my old man to it.