Happy Birthday to the Boss

He's certainly no Laura Ingraham.

 

Columbo, age don't mean shit. The Stones can still put on a damn fine show, Aerosmith puts on a decent show (although better about five years ago), McCartney kicked ass last time I saw him (yes, I'm biased), Clapton too ... and the E Street Band is the best of 'em all at this point. Helluva, helluva show, "even at 57."

 

Believe it or not, The Who -- or the Daltrey-Townshend Band, if you prefer -- were terrific when I saw them last week.

 

Better late than never, here's another fan's top 10 list (at least for today... songs 3-10 are subject to change in order on any given day and some songs might move in and out given my mood - or what I've been listening to)

1. Thunder Road
2. Racing in the Street
3. No Surrender
4. Badlands
5. Across the Border
6. The Price You Pay
7. Incident on 57 Street
8. Prove It All Night
9. Jungleland
10. Promised Land


Top 11 covers he's done in his career (no particular order - not including officially released covers on an album as of 9/23)
How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live
Higher & Higher
Double Shot of My Baby's Love
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding
Jole Blon
Who'll Stop the Rain
Fortunate Son
Rave On
Twist & Shout
Quarter to 3
You Sexy Thing

 

Those four hour concerts included a 30-45-minute intermission. So it would in reality be 3.5 hours or so of music. In some cases it would be 3 hours 45-minutes... but back in the 80s/early 90s when I was trading cassettes, most shows would fit on 2-2.5 90 minute cassettes. Now in the CD era, nearly every show will fit on 2 or 3 CDs.

 

No love for the new (old) stuff he "borrowed" from Pete Seeger?
I caught that show a few months ago and still hum quite a few of those tunes on a regular basis. Not up there with the all-time BS greatest hits, but a few bars of "Eric Canal" on the CD tends to put the listener in a more sociable mood. At least it has that effect on me.

 

I hate about 98% of all Christmas music, but his version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," actually puts me in the spirit, provided I don't hear it before Dec. 1.

 

Nebraska is probably my favorite Springsteen album. Had big plans on writing a screenplay based on "Highway Patrolman" until I found out Sean Penn beat me to it -- and fucked it up -- with "The Indian Runner."

That remains probably my favorite of his songs. Such good, heartbreaking storytelling... And a terrific lesson in economical but beautiful descriptive writing.

Other favorites... The River, Be True, My City of Ruins, Streets of Philadelphia, Born to Run, and You're Missing.

 

No.

There's no bigger Bruce-booster than me, but I think the whole "Seeger Sessions" episode has been amazingly self-indulgent.

I think Bruce wanted to pay tribute to a seminal figure in political-folk music while he was still alive and able to, to some extents, appreciate it. (Various reports say Seeger, at 87, who still performs at times, is in 'tenuous' health, and from the evidence of recent interviews, not always "all there").

OK, that's fine, that's wonderful, I love me some Pete Seeger sometimes, but if you're going to do an album and tour of Pete Seeger's stuff, you ought to do about 10 albums of Woody Guthrie's stuff, and about 25 of Bob Dylan's, if you're going by musical/lyrical quality and social significance.

Seeger had a lot of good songs, but never matched up to Guthrie in front of him, or to Dylan coming up behind him. For that matter, he doesn't really match up to Bruce Springsteen, himself, on any of those counts.

I guess Bruce figured it was a good idea to put Pete Seeger back out to a larger audience while he was still alive.

Personally, I think he'd be better off writing and performing some new Bruce Springsteen songs.

But it's cool -- it's his life, he doesn't have to do what **I** want him to do with it.


1. Born To Run
2. Johnny 99
3. Atlantic City
4. The Ties That Bind
5. Highway Patrolman
6. Badlands
7. If I Should Fall Behind
8. Born In The U.S.A. (Vote For Change concert version)
9. The Rising
10.Stolen Car

 

Hey, nothing says you can't write your own anyway.

Did "Pretty Flamingo" make it onto an album?

 

I loved his cover of Aqua's 'Barbie Girl.'

 

Holy shit... how did I forget to include Pretty Flamingo on my list of best covers? I nearly died when I saw him do it 8/11/03 at Lincoln Financial Field and then again 19 days later at Giants Stadium.