On "Jack of All Trades"

Bill Glahn writes:

“The wonder is, these songs bring forth such personal stories, the kind of detail you'd expect to be a journalistic staple somewhere--mainstream or alternative--because Bruce made it personal, rather than the "normal" which is almost clinical. You hear people HURT, you hear some of the consequences of the systemic collapse, and for the most part, first-hand, not third-hand.” (from a conversation with Dave Marsh on fans' responses to Wrecking Ball)

I didn't start digging into the album, Wrecking Balluntil yesterday. Jack Of All Tradeswasn’t the first song that grabbed me musically, but it is the song with the biggest connect. The biggest connect in a long, long time for me from a Springsteen song. And I think the reason for that is that it comes from the perspective of the lowest rungs of the working class – not the wider expanse of the middle class. I'm finally reading Daniel Wolff's 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land,which IMO, is a great piece of literature to read along with this new album. Especially the parts regarding attitudes of the Asbury Park business community toward the "great unwashed" of the west side.

I've got a story...

The last time I saw Dave Marsh in person was at a gathering following SXSW in 2007. A few days later Dave posted something in an email discussion among friends along the lines of "Bill looks great, if exceedingly tired."

When I moved to Austin, about a month before I saw Dave, I was beyond broke and not quite over some ill health. I worked a lot of day labor jobs to get by. That's about as low on the ladder as you can get and still be working. But I learned a lot there.

I learned the best places for finding unfinished cigarettes and how to smoke them in a semi-sanitary fashion (strip the unused tobacco and re-roll them in fresh papers). I learned that it didn't take much cheap high gravity malt liquor (one 99 cent 24 oz Steel Reserve) to put yourself in a deep sleep and allow your body to heal for the next day. I learned that Austin has a good (and mobile) support system for feeding hungry folks. And most important, I learned that you never EVER admit that you never did any specific job before.

In fact, pretty much every person that showed up at Labor Ready was a Jack (or Jill) of all Trades. I mean - the worst that could happen would be that you wouldn't get sent back to the same job the next day, but you'd still make a day's wages on the deal.

"Anyone with carpentry experience?" "Fuck yeah, my dad was a carpenter. I grew up on that shit."

"Anyone ever run a commercial dish washer?" "You bet! I was the king of dish washing at the Denny's in my hometown."

And my favorite? "Who has a valid driver's license and a clean driving record? It WILL be checked."

Very few hands up on that one and I knew I'd be car hopping at the weekly Car Mart auto auction. If you could be convincing enough (and had a car) you could get work somewhere every day - often another shift at night as well - and even some weekend work in the bargain. But the pay was shit and the work (except for the car hop gig) grueling and everybody's hope was latching onto a permanent job and a return to some normalcy.

Eventually that happened with an underground construction company (sewer and waterline installation) where "Jack of All Trades" was escalated to a whole new level.

I lived in an apartment complex almost entirely inhabited by Hispanic construction workers - a mix of Texas natives, illegals with legal relatives, and green card immigrants, A couple neighbors worked for the same company I worked for and a few other co-workers lived in complexes near-by, so we hung out some both on and off the job. And I started to get some advice. "You work too hard, Beell. If you want to make better money, hop on a machine. Don't wait to be taught. Just hop on like you've been doing it all your life."

When the bosses weren't around I'd jump on a backhoe and start trenching (under the watchful eye of my compadres to make sure I didn't hit any underground utilities or such). When the bosses would show up they'd tell them "Beell's pretty good on a backhoe." I learned all kinds of shit. Cement work (I really WAS good at that!) Road patchwork (cutting old portions out with a concrete diamond saw and filling in). Front end loader work. Roller work. Jack-hammer work. Pipe fitting. Really - becoming a real jack-of-all trades provided a degree of sanity while I was in Austin - something I miss greatly in the mundane labor I now do in Springfield. But I have med benefits. A much less rewarding reward system now, but a needed one. Which, for the most part, does not exist in the jack of all trades world.

Back to the Springsteen song...

The "tired" tone of the song is perfect. Even more so from a day labor perspective. And you never really get over the hostility toward bosses - who are always content to watch you shovel your way to your next meal no matter what toll that backbreaking work takes on your body and soul. The only real way to get around the bosses at that level is another song altogether. We take care of our own.

More on Working on a Dream

Barbara Hall writes:

There's so much to listen to in this record. My ears are all jammed up with it. I love the operatic nature of it. As much as anything, I love the long phrasing which allows Bruce the time and space to sing. I just love hearing him sing. Not the modern Bruce staccato singing but the old Bruce chasing down these endless melody lines singing, but with a brand new, or old school, understanding of how to do it. It strikes me as funny and sad and weird that he is one of the best soul singers of our time.

The romance of the record, and the phrasing, too, reminds me of The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle. Not in a nostalgic way, but in a way where those songs finally figured out what they were really meant to accomplish.

There are only a couple of songs where he overloads the lines with lyrics. Mostly, he just creates this space to maneuver. I guess the overall thing, much as the last album, is the harmonics, the sense of space, and the unusual and unexpected forms of filling that all up.

But here's the thing. This record isn't like anything we've heard before. You almost can't compare it. It's of a piece, or mise en scene as the filmsters like to say. A friend was asking me what it was like and I said it was mostly like a film score. In the best way. In that you can't really break it down or take anything out of context. Listening to it while I drive makes me a little drunk. I wonder what I'd say if I got pulled over.

When I was studying film in school, I fell in love with it (Fellini, Bergman, Bunel, et al) because it was like entering someone's dream. This record is like entering some dream Bruce is having, too. Sonically, lyrically, atmospherically. I suspect it might take years to get it entirely.

I guess that's why he's Working On A Dream.

Rediscovering the Wonders of Music

Danny Alexander writes from Overland Park, KS:

I stopped off at Target on my way home from work and bought Working on A Dream on the day it came out. I put it in, and "Outlaw Pete" lasted almost exactly the length of my ride home. It was a singular experience in my listening life. I didn't follow the lyric, aside from the refrains, but the music moved me close to tears at that first point where it grows quiet, and then the music swelled again, and I had that feeling I have watching an epic western, that I didn't know where it was going to go, but I was just glad to be along for the ride. I don't remember all the particulars of the sound swelling in my car, but at that point, where I turn off 95th Street onto Connell and wound through a neighborhood to 91st, I felt like I felt as a teenager-- when music told me of limitless possibilities, when I knew the feel of the key to the universe in that old parked car. But this was a different universe, and a different car.

From 91st, I took another jog through a neighborhood on a street called Knox until I reach 89th, where I live. The music was drawing to a close, and I'd moved close to tears twice more. What I knew, pulling into my spot, was that I wasn't ready to go on to the next song yet. I thought of that moment in "This Magic Moment," when you talk about exchanging glances, lifting the needle and starting the record again.

Fortunately, I didn't have to move on, or I had an excuse not to. I came in the house and showed the CD to my wife Lauren, and we went up to our room and put it on the beatbox. It reminded me how good music is when it's played by the side of your bed, filling up your room with worlds worth dreaming about. We wound up cuddling, and just listening. Lauren was beginning to doze by "The Last Carnival." but she was also surprised, in a good way, that it had flown by so quickly. Lauren also said she appreciated Bruce writing "Queen of the Supermarket" for her, longtime checkout girl that she is.

I haven't had this kind of reaction to a record in so long that I think I'd begun to think music couldn't do that for me anymore. It figures Bruce could prove that wrong. But even though I had a sense I was going to like this record more than anything since The Rising, I didn't expect this, this feeling of Christmas morning coupled with a starry night on section roads.

I suspect that's the happiness that critics keep noting. (I haven't read the reviews so much as comments about them, although I did read that lame Spin thing.) There's a joy here, but it's nothing so simple as a man being content. It makes me think of Sonny finding that brand new piano in his hands in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." The joy I hear is a man (and a whole crew I'd guess) who's rediscovering the wonders of music. I feel certain he had to go there to take me there so completely, so quickly. As I've said many times, I'm a slow listener. It's very rare I'm affected in any way approaching this so quickly. I'm a happy man tonight, and that's not a simple thing at all; just precious.

Springsteen at the Super Bowl

Stewart Francke writes:

All the sanctimonious hype around Bruce Springsteen playing the Super Bowl rubbed me the wrong way. Why is anyone shocked or surprised by Bruce playing the Super Bowl? What is there to "come to terms" with? Name any major successful act and he's made exactly the same mercenary concessions to sales and fame and money that any other act has--maybe even moreso than others. The only thing that's different is that they don't make claims otherwise. If you listened to him at the press conference, he doesn't either, yet his fans seem to make them for him and get all hung up on the past.

He plays stadiums and has for 20 years; he pushes singles and records with more media concentration than anyone; he releases a Greatest Hits to the highest bidding retailer; he charges an arm and a leg to see him; he lets his music be cut up with football sounds--- wherein all this is there a "shock" he's playing the Super Bowl? And his 12 minute mini-set, in the end, was fabulous.

I guess it's because the biggest difference--and this is a big one--is that the music's a ton better, and a ton more meaningful and enduring than with other acts. His music has defined and framed our lives. But is it "selling out?" That's absurd. I have no problem paying an arm and a leg to see him; it's worth it, one of the few things in American life where that's so. But I don't get why the world keeps expecting him to behave like some fringe artiste, making decisions based on principles that would keep him out of the limelight. Everything he does is admittedly about the limelight. And it really should be no other way--the music is to be shared. And it's beautiful music. I'd do it exactly the same way, with as much honesty and class as he's displayed recently--he's doin all this cuz he loves it and needs it and wants the world to dig the music. No harm, no foul. As Greil Marcus famously wrote, and I paraphrase, the game of pop is not worth playing on a limited basis.

All the erroneous rhetoric in Bob Lefsetz's bitter pollyanna trip--two columns worth of kvetching over Bruce "selling out," bemoaning rock's lost innocence. Hell, I'm a long time fan and I'm happy Bruce is so exposed currently--I get to see more of him and hear more of his music. He's pimpin a killer new record and a great body of work...what's the problem? Great things are hard to find in this world.

I have to say I was turned off with the first couple listens of Working On A Dream. Now I've lived with it in my car for some long drives and many listens, and in a lot of ways it's the Bruce album I've been waiting for. I bitched about him doing the dry-as-dust cowboy songs when he was capable of such florid, ornate and moving music...and now he's done it. I really like a lot of the same things as a songwriter and record-maker: The fluid string arrangements (with real strings), the simple groove, the arcing, long melody lines, the arpeggiated guitars often doubled, the piano as response to the vocal, played on the upbeat; the harmonic innovation (this is what's really blowin my mind with this new record) and the lyrics about contentment--which is to say you gotta know the other side of contentment before you can write about it. You gotta know suffering to sing wisely of contentment.

I made my homage to the Beach Boys with Sunflower Soul Serenade, and it's hip to hear Bruce mining those same sounds in intros and bridges--the bass lines built on thirds (straight outta the Carole Kay/Brian Wilson cookbook) the spry quarter note piano stabs, doubled by harpsichord and organ, the sleigh bells and glock (nothing new to Bruce of course) and of course the lovely vocal arrangements.

"This Life" and "Kingdom of Days" are songs I wish I'd written and, in a weird way, songs I feel I've tried to write--"All The Love In a Day" and "Famous Times."

I wrote to my friend Danny Alexander that at first the songs seemed impersonal and benign. But I was wrongheaded with my first couple listens--It's maybe his most personal record since Tunnel Of Love, and the best lyrical commentary on a happy marriage ever in rock. Maybe it's the flipside to Blood On The Tracks or Shoot Out The Lights, those sad song cycles of marriages falling apart in bitterness and desperation.

But it's the melodic and harmonic construction, along with the lead vocal timbre, that makes me say Home Run. From the relative "ease" of "Surprise Surprise"--a major key melody built around flatted fifths that is as fine as any Bacharach or McCartney melody--to the descending flow of "Kingdom of Days," these are melodies that not only resolve--they anticipate the melody line to come. Brilliant gifts that he lets shine through by getting out of the way in the writing process.

It's almost not fair--just when you think of Bruce as a non-melodic "talking" songwriter, he pulls all these languid, gorgeous songs out. I could go on of course, about all the songs, but I really need to listen more. I don't really give a fuck if he plays in a Wal-Mart parking lot if he keeps making records this vital, this beautiful. I've always aspired to make "beautiful" music, because to my ears it works and there's a shortage of it in rock'n'roll. I hope he puts another another out in the fall. Keep 'em comin'.

I do have to say I don't get "Outlaw Pete," if there is anything to "get." I know the image of a baby in a diaper robbing someone is funny, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny. I can't imagine writing a song like "Outlaw Pete" in a zillion years, but if I did I woulda made the baby have a dirty diaper on top of it all. The music is epic--a lost cross between Kris Kristofferson and Morricone.

I initially thought this record would comment on our troubled times. Is it me or is this the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in 30 years? With the constant drone of job cuts, lawsuits, bailouts, plant closings, foreclosures and city corruption here in Detroit, this is a Turgenev Russian winter. Stark, lonely, frightening on one hand; on the other I see families and friends pulling together and at least trying to weather this. They talk about it being so bad in '82, but this is far worse to me. Dow cut 15% of its white collar jobs last week. We're all trying to find gigs but the climate is one of fear and abjuration. Everyone's just hangin on, and that includes me and my family, my band, many of my friends.

At first, truth be told, I was miffed with Bruce putting out such a record in these times, seemingly without comment on how fucked up we are. Then I got it--this is the kind of record we need. We don't need more headlines and portrayals of lives betrayed in meager economic times; they're everywhere around us. This record is a reminder about life's bittersweet longing--a personal statement that is inclusive in its vision and breathtaking in its scope. It's such a deeply felt, (and I hate this term but it really really applies) life-affirming circle of songs. Shaped like a life-saver for a reason. As passionate about life and living in its totality as those great lines in "Badlands."

Remarkable, really, when you think about how his motivation could so easily wane. More than any mythical thing surrounding him, or deals with stores, or support of labor, or the legendary 4 hour shows, or the legions of fans...the beauty and clarity and discipline and work ethic in these late-in-life records prove beyond any doubt how he's in it for the music, and only for the music.

I'd like to think if I had all the money in the world and access to private jets etc that I'd still make a record a year and tour all year. But a part of me thinks I might drink at a small cafe in Majorca for 6 months. Nah...I only care about music and family and town too. It's just as hard to maintain discipline when you're broke. In the end, I'm happy Bruce wanted to play the Super Bowl. It was an iconic meeting of American institutions. For 12 minutes I forgot it was winter in Detroit.

Tom Who?

Karen Brown writes:

I'll admit it. Although I've certainly heard of Rage Against the Machine, I'd never heard of Tom Morello and never heard him play. When Lauren Onkey supplied this You Tube link of Tom Morello playing with Bruce Springsteen in Anaheim, I wasn't all that eager to watch it. Why? I didn't know who Tom Morello was and as I read comments from others who'd been sent the link and heard that it was about his guitar solo, I thought, "I'm not going to get this." I seldom "get" musical solos because I have no basic understanding of what a good technical performance means. I know about singing; instruments not so much. It's why I don't participate in discussions about musicians and their abilities. It's beyo nd my area of expertise, over my head, out of my league. It would be like me showing up at the Indy 500 in a Model T Ford. But, finally, curiosity got the best of me and I thought I'd just privately watch and listen and see if I could decipher any nuance of brilliance out of Morello's sharing the stage with Bruce.


At first, nothing. "Yup, as usual I don't get it," I thought with this sense of resignation. Then slowly, then quickly I started to get it. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My heart seized up and filled up my chest. I drew in breath and didn't let it out again until I realized I was beginning to feel lightheaded. When Morello took the song away from Bruce, I felt whole. Completely whole. It was amazing. I still have no idea if what he did was technically brilliant but spiritually brilliant? Absolutely.

Ghosts In The Eyes . . .

Lorenzo Wolff writes:

So my old Buick Le Sabre broke down a bunch of times coming back from gigs or rehearsals in New York and I decided that it’s time to put the old girl to rest. Me and my Pops go down to the local used car dealership and after looking around for a minute we walk into the office and sit down in front of the salesman. He’s a shorter guy with a goatee that was probably hip five or ten years ago, smoking a chewed up cigar and staring at a computer screen, looking tired and a little unhappy that customers are coming in right when he’s trying to close up. He grudgingly starts to talk about what kind of car I want and I mention that I’m a bass player and I play a giant Hartke bass rig, so the car has got to be pretty big. His eyes light up as he puts down his cigar, smiles at me and asks me to follow him into the back room. Through the door and I see six or seven electric basses and a big electric upright on a stand. He tells me that he spent three years of his life as a session bass player, living on the Lower East Side and paying rent (barely) with money from music, and a day job at a guitar store. He never quite got that big break and had to quit for a job with a little more security. I talk to him for a minute about the things that musicians talk about, what kind of strings he uses and what bands he played with, more out of habit than interest. He tells me about the tour than he went on with his band where Blink 182 opened for him, and how he could have made it, if only the guitar player had been a little bit better. Eventually the talk comes back to cars so he shows me a few and I thank him and I leave.

The next day I go to see Bruce Springsteen play at Nassau Coliseum. The crowd files in and the place is packed, I mean more drunk white old people than I’ve ever seen in one place. I’d never been so conscious of being eighteen in my entire life. It’s the Magic tour, so he’s playing with the E Street Band and they sound great. One look at Bruce and you can tell that this is what he was born to do, and this night is special. Just like every night when you step on a stage is special. But for some reason I can’t seem to enjoy myself like I ought to be. There’s something unsettling about the look on Garry Tallent’s face. He looks like a Vietnam vet tonight. Not that fresh shell shocked look, but that look of someone who’s had to think about the war every night, for thirty years. Thinking about his experiences and the experiences of his friends who were chalked onto the MIA column. I try to shake it off as Thunder Road hits the first pre-chorus. “Woa, Come take my hand, riding out tonight to case the promise land…” but Garry still looks exhausted and haggard. When the second chorus dies down I finally know what I’m feeling. I’m not just seeing Garry up there, I’m seeing all of the other bass players who didn’t make it. The old guys in Asbury Park, working at garages, telling anyone who’ll listen that back in 1973 Bruce Springsteen opened for them. And then the third verse starts, and I can hear Bruce’s voice, explaining it to me:

“There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away,
 They haunt this dusty beach road and the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets”

(Lorenzo Wolff can be reached at lorenzowolff@gmail.com)

On Lessing and Lawrence

Barbara Hall writes:

I dug up my copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover with the Doris Lessing introduction (not preface, as I originally said . . . I think I also said reissue instead of reprinting . . . too much record talk, I guess . . . btw, scholars, what's the difference between a preface and an introduction? I'm sure I used to know when I was an English major instead of an unemployed writer . . .) and I have to stump again for people to check it out.

All I can say about Lessing is that I still want to be her when I grow up. Anyone who reads her autobiography has to agree that as regards her own life, she can be more than marginally full of shit--maybe some of the most eloquent writing she's ever done is in her justification of leaving her children behind with her marriage — eloquent yes, convincing, no — but I sincerely hope I still have her clear-eyed, unsentimental point of view when I'm her age . . . which is about 88? I have always felt that she was weirdly disconnected from any point in time--The Golden Notebook transcends all those constraints, even as she writes so particularly about a specific period in history. I suppose her science fiction work illustrates her inability to be bound by the time-space continuum. She seems to me somewhat supernatural. And it's very well illustrated in the following excerpt about education:

"The other thing taught from the start is to distrust one's own judgment. Children are taught submission to authority, how to search for other people's opinions and decisions, and how to quote and comply....It may be that there is no other way of educating people. Possibly, but I don't believe it. In the meantime it would be a help at least to describe things properly, to call things by their right names. Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:

'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of the particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself--educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.'"

She just never bought in. Probably because she was the product of so many different cultures, she avoided assiduously connecting with one. She just saw stuff. And had the great ability to tell about it. She reminds me of Chrissie Hynde, who just never got the memo that women couldn't play the electric guitar and lead a band. Well, not just a band, but a great band.

Anyway, the cover art of the Penguin Classic reprint is a series of comic strips by Chester Brown which are worth the price of admission all by themselves. All these things threaten to eclipse the importance of the book itself but re-reading Lady Chatterly's Lover is another interesting experience. Some of the writing is fit-like, but much of it is still so pertinent and certainly as dirty as it ever promised to be. Love among the class structure is a subject I never tire of. My first novel (and one could argue all the subsequent ones) was about a poor person growing up in a rich place. My story, too, and I forget who said we just keep telling the same story over and over, hoping it will end differently. Anyway, the last name of my first protagonist was Collier. I didn't even know at the time that that was the what coal workers were called. Or maybe I did in that Jungian collective unconscious kind of way.

The great quote that Lessing pulled from the text to illustrate Lawrence's sense of humor, or at least irony, was this: "Ours is essentially is a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically." Does that somehow relate to the discussion of Bruce's nostalgia in "Long Walk Home"?

Lessing maintains that Lawrence still provides one of the greatest texts ever written on sexual politics, the push-pull of the male-female dynamic. As the song goes, who am I to disagree?

Long Walk Home

John Floyd writes:

Bruce Springsteen's "Long Walk Home" is the song I can't stay away from at the moment. My dad was in a hospital on the edge of the part of Memphis where I grew up, a part of town I haven't seen in a long time and that has changed in every way imaginable. I drove there during a work break on Saturday, mostly to see my mom but to also get the lowdown from the doctor. After seeing my dad more or less dead and driving back through town, "Long Walk Home" came up on a comp of stuff I burned just to have in the car (where Beny Moré and Gang of Four are always close friends). I listened to that song all the way back to work, over and over, crying for the first time, losing it completely when the line comes about the town wrapping its arms around you. Jesus, I'm losing it now, just thinking about that line, and the one after it -- nobody goes it alone. Not among the folks here, that's for damn sure. I've been leaning a lot on "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" of late, I guess cos I feel like an insecure and unattractive and unworthy forty-something, but this last week or so, "Long Walk Home" has just obliterated everything else I've wanted to hear, give or take Mable John's "Take Me." Go figure.

Anyway, one more thing, then I'm done: I had to go to the funeral home today to take care of the cremation paperwork. Turns out the funeral home is located in the building that once was my father's favorite restaurant, Monte's, an Italian joint that's been closed for 20-plus years. I'm driving down Summer Avenue, address in hand looking for the home, knowing the neighborhood but none of what's around me, if that makes sense, and when I figure out where I'm at, I think to myself, you've got to be fucking kidding me. The women at the home must've thought I was crazy, looking for the spot where my dad's favorite table used to be.

Found it.

Terry's Song

Dave Marsh writes:
(This is a story I originally told on my Sirius Radio show, Kick Out the Jams, and then wrote down at the request of Danny Alexander. It isn’t exactly what I said, but pretty close.)

At the last E Street Band rehearsal show, at the Meadowlands, I was standing behind a barricade to the left of the pit (Clarence’s side of the stage) about 30 or 40 feet out. There were a bunch of ALS patients there, all in wheelchairs.

If you don’t know that disease, it’s the worst one I’ve ever run across; if there’s worse to run across, I don’t want to know about it, ever. What happens, essentially, is that slowly, bit by bite, day by day, but really sloooowly, your nervous system shuts down. Maybe first you lose a little of your motor control or the tips of your fingers are numb or something. Eventually, it’s all gone. The trajectory is 18 months to maybe eight years. Most of the victims--and they are victims, there is no greater betrayal of life by the body—are women, although the most famous ALS victim was a man, Lou Gehrig.

I know a reasonable amount for a lay person about the contours of ALS, because when Terry Magovern’s fiancé, Joan Dancy, was diagnosed, I did an intensive five hours of research. Did it the way I usually do medical stuff, get up early and keep at it from four to nine AM. When I was done that day, I went out to the kitchen, where Barbara was having her cup of tea. She said, “Did you find much?” I said, “I printed out 75 pages.” Then I turned and dumped it all in the trash. “There’s not a word here that Joan or Terry needs to hear. Compared to ALS, there’s as much research going on for sarcoma as there is for curing AIDS.” There was nothing. The whole NIH clinical trials database (http://clinicaltrials.gov) had three studies, all being done by the same person, who I believe was Joan’s doctor at Columbia. The rest was all coping strategies, and none of them were something a newly diagnosed patient needed to know about yet.

I had to say all this to Terry at the time, and he took it like the hero he was, and Joan did, too. At her funeral, there was a lot of talk about how smoothly everything had gone, how buoyant Joan’s spirits had been (and they were), how she held everyone together (and she did). Terry asked me to stand up and talk about the horrors they had confronted. I don’t know exactly how I did it, except I’d rather have died myself than let Terry down. (As I said on the show, we were perfect for one another: I never shut up; he never talked.) I never get very nervous before I speak but being called to rain upon the parade was nerve-wracking. But it needed to be said because it was not just Joan’s beautiful life but also her horrible death that was going to move people to get something started for other ALS patients.

And so they now have the Joan Dancy and People with ALS Support Group. Terry put it together, and but he died this summer, which nobody who knew him to get over (listen to Magic track 12, believe it all and know that that’s just the outline). Sean, Terry’s wonderful son, carries on the project. He says he’d do it anyway but knows without question that Terry would haunt him if he didn’t do it and do it right. Sean brought the ALS patients I saw to the E Street rehearsal show.

All the patients I saw that night were women, adult females in, I’d guess, their late 30s to early 60s. Each of them was accompanied by a caregiver. One of them, one of the younger ones, had an oxygen tube on which she repeatedly sucked desperately.

The woman I talked about on the show was almost prone in her wheelchair, her head on a head rest, which means she had lost control of the muscles in her back and couldn’t sit up. Like an infant, right? And she had her hands crossed in her lap, perfectly straight.

Beautiful hands, long long fingers, flawless. But she could no longer move them. Lovely face, with the common elongation of features that comes as the muscle tension in the face disintegrates. When her friends talked to her, she lit up the place with her smile.

I happened to look over at her during Born to Run when the house lights were full up. She was singing along. I don’t mean just mouthing the words. She was singing. And her eyes flashed and her beautiful face smiled. And I thought, “The meaning of it all is right here. A woman who can’t walk, or even move her hands, or hold herself upright, is singing that she was born to run.”

She was my hero that night, and afterward, I went over and told her so, though she didn’t seem to know what to do with the information. I said “thanks, and she beamed that smile again, so it felt like I got two rewards--the song and that smile--and maybe she at least got one.

I don’t remember how I got out of this story on the show, because writing it down makes you think a more about what you’re saying. What I think now is that I don’t think I’ll ever get out of it, altogether.

Don’t want to either.

(Contact the Joan Dancy and People with ALS Support Group at Riverview Medical Center, Riverview Terrace Bulding, 2nd Floor, Front Street,Red Bank, New Jersey 07701 or phone 732.450.2677)

Radio Everywhere...

Stewart Francke writes:

I wanted to share this with y'all because Bruce's new single has just floored me...inspired and rejuvenated me. This all initially came up in a multi-conversational exchange on the Strat email list, Holler's starting place for many things eventually blogged here.

A couple things after several more listens to "Radio Nowhere."

1. Most encouraging is that my daughter and her five 13 year old friends that just listened to it with me loved it and downloaded it. Reminds them of Fall Out Boy. OK, I'll live. Fall Out Boy ain't as jive as a lot of the other younger rock bands by any means.

2. Centerpiece solo "bridge" is both sax & lead guitar, in unison. So in the Brian Wilson/Phil Spector way of hearing things, it's a whole new instrument (combining two or more playing the same part, like a bass harmonica and a banjo in Brian's case). So forget my previous talk of CC's sax tone. It's a hip sound and one of the great lost arts--the instrumental bridge.

3. Nobody's really discussed the vocal performance--one of Bruce's finest. Why? Well, restraint for one, exemplified by the natural confluence of the Tom-Joad-cowboy-campfire-Woody-
Seeger-Sessions-roof-of-the-mouth-voice-cracking with the full throated Roy Orbison-Dion somber clarity found in his earlier Born To Run/Darkness On The Edge Of Town singing.

4. But the biggest reason for my excitement? He must've recently listened to a ton of Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Nina Simone, Al Hibbing, Nat Cole, Willie Nelson--singers who break the melody apart with natural syllabic finesse. But it's quite another thing to also write your own songs, and THEN break them down with that same finesse--that's bad. Superbad...and that means good. He shows great skill in not marginalizing meaning for singability (what his detractors, particularly in the don't-like-Joad-crowd, refer to as "mumbling.")

It's a technical issue, not one of lyrical meaning--When he sings "But all I hear-a-waaha-za drone," he lays back in the pocket, behind the beat and the result GRABS your head.

Same with "I just wha-haana hear some rhythm" If he'd hurried the "wanna" and stressed the "hear" he woulda been singing out of the pocket about wanting to live in the pocket and "hear some rhythm."

And he didn't write too many words! The only bit that's even close to forced is "drivin through the MISTY rain"...he coulda said "drivin through the night rain" or any other single syllable adjective...it wouldn't have worked as well, poetically ("misty rain" becoming as it does, beautifully, "mystery train") or rhythmically.

Although "Radio Nowhere" might seem like minor Springsteen to his detractors, along the lines of "Murder Inc." or "Jackson Cage" or "Cross My Heart," it's major Springsteen... and will endure as such. IMHO.

The vocal is the work of a master:
1. Less is more.
2. Content dictates form.
3. God is in the details.
4. Lyrics are clear, singable and impeccably rhythmic...there's such a natural pocket to his singing and Max's joyous drumming.
5. The modal changes appear to be major thirds or fifths--a pop thing, really, and not a true key change modulation a la Hungry Heart. The vivid dream of the song is never jarred out of its running time.
6. He sings the notes straight, without melisma or fucking around with pitch, in tune, with the emotion of a real man, not a star.

Another, more empirical effect of the song: There's a guy on my block who is a Brucephile and an old friend--an uberfan, a dedicated cat that has structured worldwide trips around tours and owns damn near all the important bootlegs, belongs to Bruce boards and just loves loves loves Bruce and his music. In any format. Beautiful guy--keeps me informed.

So tonight I walked down and asked him if he'd heard "Radio Nowhere." He says, "I never want to listen to any new stuff until I hear it live first." Interesting, I think. Warms to the studio records only AFTER first hearing it all live. Pretty cool...and something I could never do. But then again he sees a ton of shows each tour. Usually makes the trek to the first couple tour nights etc. Went with his wife to Dublin for the taping of that Seeger Sessions Live in Dublin DVD. And I still see it the other way around--the live versions change and grow and become something else, but they're essentially representations of the studio recordings.

So I go,"aw c'mon man it's just me...I wouldn't steer you wrong--this is some of the best shit he's ever done in my mind." I finally talk him into hoppin' in the car and we go out on to Woodward and around the neighborhood with the windows down, iPod cranked, beautiful night, full moon, song jammed up beyond any normal aural values. Volume is giving us dirty looks from old men in wifebeaters drinking beer on their stoops.

He says, "I've read that people are sayin' it sounds like 867-5309."

I say, "That's way too fuckin easy and they're just bitter it ain't 'Backstreets' again and again--just listen. Suspend judgment for a minute and listen."

So we cruise and listen and he's obviously very moved.

"He sounds fuckin' desperate--that's when he's at his best," my friend says. "I can see his veins on his neck stickin out lookin' like a fuckin' rope when he sings this live."

Me too, now that he mentions it, but that anatomical anomaly is not what I was really thinking about...I was thinking that I was fucking happy! I was experiencing what Bruce desperately wants in the song--friendship, connection, hearing some loud guitars and some fuckin' rhythm. Feeling vital. And I was thinking, conversely, that I've felt awfully isolated, scared and lonely lately, unable to finish what I've begun, like the cat in the song (Bruce's construct--a character, or actually him? Does it matter?). As Warren Z sang, "My shit's fucked up."

"This has GOTTA be the first song live, right?" I say, happily bowing to his expertise. "Oh yea man...unless there's better shit," he says, "and that would be beyond words, right?"

By now, in the middle of a second listen, he can't really speak. He's bangin' the outside of my car door through the open window with his hand--hard.

"Play it again," he yells.

We play it a third, fourth and fifth time. We're up & down Woodward twice.

I say "You're gonna think I'm fuckin nuts, but this is in the thematic and sonic continuum of 'Born To Run.' It's as good, in its own way, as 'Born To Run'."

It's HIM, not a character, and he wants to--needs to--connect. Socially. Intellectually. Musically. Maybe he wants to redefine what it means to connect. With these drums and these guitars and faith in the magic of the night. OK so I'm now I'm getting carried away...but it was all TRUE right there, and then...gone. Magic? Who cares?

Now I'm yellin over the song.

"I think I get it," I yell.

"He/we needs to know if love is not only real, but if it lasts...can rock & roll & love still deliver him/us from nowhere? As we get older but still try to stay alive & vital? His theme is consistent, but the sound and his delivery are new, very relevant...I really do think it's among the best 15 things he's ever done."

I expect a harsh look from him for saying that. But as I look over at him, a now white haired middle aged guy...I see he's smiling and cryin'. It's all there, and it's all tumblin' out.

"God I'm so fuckin' excited," he says as he gets outta the car. He's not workin' right now--Michigan is fucked up, and has been hard for a couple years now.

Anyway, that's my story. That's what a new Bruce single can do, as far as my life goes anyway....and I'm no superfan or Bruce bulletin board guy. I'm just a fan and fellow artist who admires his work and his integrity.

This does not happen all that much in any other area of life for me. Maybe watching/helping people recover from the treachery of cancer, surely my kids being born or my wife & I getting married, probably playing my own shows and writing and recording my own stuff...maybe the occasional brilliant summer night with friends & family & music.

I certainly didn't expect a new song from Bruce and the E Street Band to make me feel like there is still a lot on the line--like maintaining guts & grace still really matters, for a ton of reasons. But that's what happened, exactly as it happened. Radio Nowhere, the existential reminder.

stewart francke, August 28, 2007