Musicalia: Happy Bruce Springsteen Day!

With the latest Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band album hitting the streets today, it makes sense to throw a little something up here today. Don't you fret though, despite the musical nature of this post, there will still be a Prick Tunes entry today. Bruce and the Boys (and Girl) were the only guests on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past Friday and they performed a song on Monday as well, and while it's likely you've already seen this all, it is certainly worth seeing again, particularly the raucous blow out that was "The E Street Shuffle"--a legitimate holy shit performance.

On Monday's show last week, they busted out "We Take Care of Our Own," the album opener...


...and then they took a run at the title track.


Moving on to Friday, here is "Jack of All Trades," the fourth track off of the brand new album Wrecking Ball.


Next up is the song that directly follows "Jack of All Trades" on Wrecking Ball but actually preceded it on the show, "Death To My Hometown" featuring Tom Morello on foot-stomps (and guitar).


And finally, what follows is the otherworldly performance of "The E Street Shuffle," the lead and semi-titular track from the classic album The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.

Prick Tunes: Bruce Springsteen "Fire"

I've got fire on the brain.

Prick Tunes: Bruce Springsteen "I'm on Fire"

This here's one of my favorite Springsteen songs. That should say enough.

John Sayles directed this video, which I found a bit odd.

Musicalia: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Austin, TX

Seeing The Boss is a slightly different experience than seeing Leonard Cohen to be sure.

Jackie and I arrived at the doors about fifteen minutes before they were done giving out lottery numbers for the floor at the Frank Erwin Center. When the winning number was drawn, we ended up 250 people back in the queue. Upon finally being let in, we found ourselves standing about five people removed from the center of the stage, and unlike what people had told us about previous shows they'd attended at the Erwin Center there were no chairs set out on the floor.

Ho. Ly. Shit.

How this happened, I'll never be sure. But it did, and neither of us will ever complain about our vantage point for the show.

Seeing Springsteen that close, I can safely say that if ever a man were to claim the title of The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz now that James Brown is gone, it's Bruce. For two hours and forty-five minutes of rock bliss, Bruce Springsteen belted out every song with so much vigor that it's hard to imagine him not having had a stroke on stage twenty-five years ago.

Earlier in the day, I had thrown in Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River on a lark, which was a good thing because the set was marked with "Badlands", "The Promised Land", "Prove It All Night", "Sherry Darling", "Out In The Street" and "I'm A Rocker", and they are weirdly the two albums I am least familiar with (I don't have them in a portable format, just LP).

They blasted out "She's The One", "Born To Run", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Jungleland", during which I nearly shat myself out of amazement. He gave me chills with his rendition of "The Wrestler". They killed with a rocked-out rearrangement of "Youngstown" and a rollicking "Johnny 99". I'm a perfect two-for-two on seeing "Because The Night", as well, which is fine by me because it plays really well. "The Rising" roused my spirits, and completed the feel of a recession-tinged show.

Even "Outlaw Pete" played all right, despite my general dislike of the song.

Moreover, he took requests three times, with "Sherry Darling" and "I'm A Rocker" having been taken early on ("Rocker" didn't get in until the encore, though), and "Glory Days" serving as an addendum to the encore after they were all ready to leave the stage. One of the best parts was that they clearly did not have a strong grasp on "Sherry Darling" and "I'm A Rocker", but they played them anyway, adding a good dose of unpredictability, especially when Bruce acknowledged as they started into "Rocker" that he didn't remember how it started. With the three requests, it meant we ended up getting two more songs than those jackoffs in Arizona.

Now, before the show, I asked Jackie what song she wanted to hear most, and she said "I'm On Fire" to which I (kind of dickishly) told her not to get her hopes up. Well, as soon as we got back home, I got a call from Mark (who was also at the show but was seated with Chad) to tell me that he looked at the hand-written setlist and "Sherry Darling" took the place of "I'm On Fire". Who's the jackass now, Jack?

Regardless, the show was outstanding, probably even better than the Dallas show Chad, Mark, and I went to last year. It sure as hell didn't hurt that I was often standing a mere 10-to-15 feet away from The Boss as the veins popped out of his head and neck.

Musicalia: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band "Working On a Dream"

Clearly, this is not the most timely of reviews. Over the past month-plus, I have had plenty of opportunity to listen to Working on a Dream, and that opportunity has led to a mixed feeling about the record. 2007's Magic was an altogether enjoyable record for me. When I go back to it, I never feel the urge to skip a track, at least not as the result of not liking a song.

The same cannot be said of my listening experiences with Working on a Dream.

To kick things off, the listener is assailed by "Outlaw Pete", a song which I really think could work on a different project but strikes me as more of a solo Springsteen song than an E Street song. Instrumentally, it works (as just about the entire album does), but it really feels out of place on this record and with this band. The song is not done any favors by its somewhat lame title.

After that, though, there are two rock-solid E Street songs, "My Lucky Day"--which is an unabashed rollick imbued with just enough recklessness to endear itself to the listener--and the campaign trail title track, "Working on a Dream". Its ever-presence in support of Obama probably warms me to it more than the song may have in another time and place, but no listener really goes into any song without any personal baggage. Appreciation of music is largely informed by our relationship to the music and what we associate songs with, for better or worse.

Speaking of worse, the album goes from a great two-three punch to "Queen of the Supermarket". I am not really sure how to put this kindly and, as such, have been rendered impotent for a month, at least insofar as being able to write about this album is concerned. The weird thing is the first three lines of the song along with the intro could trick you into thinking you might be in for a pretty good song, and musically it has its moments (its coda is particularly striking), but lyrically it is preposterous. You get what he is trying to do, but the song is just off, and it also has the shocking beginning of the final verse that is as follows: "As I lift my groceries into my cart / I turn back for a moment and catch a smile / That blows this whole fucking place apart." What the fuck?

Luckily, the album regains its balance with "What Love Can Do". Of course, it falters again with the next track, "This Life", which errs to far into the realm of schmaltz and simply never comes back.

Now if Working on a Dream ended there, the album would likely have been an abject failure with two of the first six songs being bad and another seeming out of place entirely (although it is not without its merits). Luckily, much of the best is saved for tracks seven and beyond.

While "Good Eye" is not the most complex song ever written, it really works as kind of a dirty electric blues song that makes me look back fondly at some of the strongest parts of Tunnel of Love. That song rolls into the simple country-western track "Tomorrow Never Knows", which bides the albums time until "Life Itself", Working on a Dream's first inarguably accomplished song both lyrically and instrumentally. It works on every level and has complexity that early tracks that work like "My Lucky Day" for all their strengths lack.

From their the album takes a two-song detour into the inoffensive but ultimately forgettable in "Kingdom of Days"--a nice enough song but is not done any favors by being placed after "Life Itself"--and the poppy but bordering on being gratingly repetitive "Surprise, Surprise", which at my count says the word 'surprise' 42 times.

Again, if the album ended on that note there may be some issues, but the last proper album track "The Last Carnival" the supremely moving elegy to Danny Federici. It's really fucking powerful, and the choir singing as the music comes down on the carnival is devastating.

And of course, there is the bonus track, "The Wrestler", which--having seen the film it was written for--makes for an album with back-to-back elegies that punches to the gut that leave you gasping for air by the time you have made your way through them.

Any doubt as to whether or not he still has it is dispensed with by the last two songs. Working on a Dream is not an album without its shortcomings, but it is quite a bit more adventurous sonically than its predecessor and has three songs that stand up to anything in his catalogue and another handful that you certainly wouldn't be upset with having seen in concert.

Man on Film: The Wrestler Redux

As I sit here listening to Working on a Dream for probably the seventh time in the past two days, it occurred to me that I had not written a review/reflection* on The Wrestler. Well, that's not entirely true. In fact, that is not even remotely true. Unfortunately, the slipshod, mailed in manner in which I wrote the initial review of The Wrestler was so lacking that I actually forgot I had done one until I went back and checked my blog. So without further ado, I shall enter a second installment into the annals of the internet; one which does more justice to the film than my initial try. If you have not seen the movie yet, you may not want to proceed past this point as there will be talk about plot points to the point of there being some fairly significant spoilers. You have been warned.

*I'm sure I've said this here before, but I hesitate to call what I'm doing here reviewing for a few reasons. Chiefly, I do want to err from reviewing films, per se, in this space. While there are certainly reactions to, ruminations on, and reflections on films here at Inconsiderate Prick, review implies an act that I'm not sure I feel comfortable using here.

I have actually reviewed films in print in the past and can safely say that what I do here is different from what I did in that capacity. I have also written a fair amount of film criticism and written more than my share of film theory papers as a result of having minored in film theory and would also have to say that what I am doing here would not qualify as such without a liberal amount of stretching the definition of film criticism and theory.

I also tend to bristle against reviews of films, as the popular form of film review is one which has largely abandoned analysis of elements in filmmaking that are key to understanding and appreciating a film, opting for a simple critique of acting and narrative and crediting and disparaging those elements to the direction, for better or worse. So, while the film reviewer or critic more often than not leaves me wanting, I would prefer to not associate myself with that form (even though I assign each such entry with the "film reviews" tag, for lack of something more apropos or even more pretentious than this diatribe) and try to distance myself somewhat from reviewing a film and approach something more closely resembling a reaction/reflection.

Perhaps this return to the film has been spurred by the repeated listens to "The Wrestler", which so aptly evokes the character of Randy "The Ram" Robinson that it actually moves me. Few songs affect me to that extent, but if a song actually moves me to the extent that I have to revisit a film I saw two weeks ago, it certainly achieved its goal.

Maybe my return to the film was inspired by having heard Darren Aronofsky on Fresh Air Monday. His love for the character seems real. His respect for the medium--the line that it walks between artform and spectacle, sport and play, play-fighting and true pain--really came through upon having heard him speak of the sport and the research done for the film. Any doubt of the sincere passion he felt for not only the character he constructed but for the real wrestlers of years past and the lackluster place they have left for the place they once held was eliminated upon hearing him talk at length on the film.

What Aronofsky accomplishes on screen is truly amazing. In the opening credits, he lies the pinnacle of The Ram's career out for all to see--the years in which he rode atop the wrestling circuit, headlining events at the Madison Square Garden to sellout crowds. The success of Randy "The Ram" Robinson at what many would argue was the pinnacle of wrestling's popularity* is promptly put in the distant past as we are jarringly introduced to present day Ram, performing in high school gymnasiums and VFWs for chump change in front of tiny crowds of the unipeds and the downtrodden, seeking out their own escape from their own forgotten lives.

*Sure, wrestling enjoyed a resurgence in the late '90s-early '00s, but with the exception of The Rock none of those wrestlers transcended the sport and captured imaginations like Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair or Andre the Giant or Rowdy Roddy Piper did.

And while you instantly feel sorry for this man who has to subject himself to such a pitiable set of circumstances, attempting to revisit and recapture the gloried acts of his prime to ever dwindling crowds of spectators while his body struggles not to perform the acts but to merely continue on, Aronofsky imbues him with the flaws of every man. This is not a noble man who has lived a life free of transgressions. He abandoned his wife and daughter when he still mattered and wants back in his daughter's life largely because he feels alone. He is a man that, when given another chance, blows it nearly every time. You get the sense that he more than likely made the bed in which he lies. Regardless, he is a man who has been exploited to make money for others--much more money than you would imagine he could ever have seen. When The Ram's body has been used up, he is left alone to deal with the damage, while the parties complicit in and profiting from the abuse are nowhere to be seen. Despite his obviously self-absorbed and self-destructive path, Randy "The Ram" Robinson is a mostly likeable character who, on a certain level, seems like a person with a good heart even though he never managed to put together a life that included much more than himself.

And, upon trying to right the wrongs of his past, he is justly spurned by his daughter after falling into old ways and forgetting about plans he made with her. When trying to reach out to the equally-aged-for-her-field Cassidey, his initial attempts are rebuffed. When she finally does come around, he has already determined the path he must take. His body has been used up, all the spare beats in his heart have been spent, and if he is going to go out, he is going to go out with the people who love him, even if that love is only for those few briefs moments in the ring where he is king.

And goddammit, when he jumps off of that top rope, and the screen goes to black with just the cheer of the crowd which slowly shifts into the should-be Oscar-winning Best Original Song, Aronofsky punches his audience square in the gut. "Tell me friend can you ask for anything more?"

Musicalia: Wait, Bruce Who?

All right, just to forewarn you, there will be an inordinate amount of Bruce Springsteen posts coming down the pike. This is merely the first of many. Well, not the first. I have written about him before, including a travelogue of sorts last spring when Chad, Mark, and I went to see him in Dallas. If you are interested, it is here (be forewarned, there will be references to defecation in that post, but if that scares you off, you should probably avoid this site).

Now, that was my first time seeing The Boss, which means I had my mind fucking blown. Amazing. Walking out, I just wanted to see him again. That's cool, because if things go according to plan, I will get to see him again. On April 5th. And I can probably walk there if I'm feeling particularly pumped.

So you'll not be hearing long-winded accounts of defecating in disturbingly black bathrooms or feeling sorry for the gayest kid in Hillsboro, Texas. No, Bruce Springsteen is coming to town on the Working on a Dream tour.

And Mr. Springsteen, if you're reading this and need a place to stay, there's room at my house. I would totally hang out with you if you asked.

Welcome to 2009

We're only a couple weeks away from an entirely new era* for the United States of America. We're only a few weeks from a new Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band album. A little later, and there will be a new Jason Isbell album as well. The Wrestler will start opening wider. The actual good movies and not the lame pre-Christmas schmaltz will start coming out. "House" moves to Mondays. New episodes of "Flight of the Conchords" will soon begin airing. It will be increasingly difficult to avoid "The United States of Tara", which despite the involvement of John Corbett (who I like, and from what I've heard is a nice guy), looks insanely bad.

*I write enough about baseball that I reflexively capitalized 'era'. Huh.

Be prepared.

Bruuuuuuuuuuuce News

When he busted out a new song on Monday Night Football, I think most of us Springsteen fans were hoping for (and almost expecting) a new album to follow.

Well, his site officially announced the news that "Working on a Dream" will be coming out January 27th, five days before what will surely be a glorious Super Bowl Halftime performance. This will be another E Street Band record, which I am totally behind as I liked "Magic" as much as all of his other recent, non-E-Street projects--even the Seeger Sessions material, which I was absolutely obsessed with.

Now, as soon as I found out, I wanted to chime in with my excitement. I was coincidentally listening to "Devils & Dust" today (actually, I listened to it twice), reconnecting with a great album. As soon as I spied the news in someone else's New York Times, I got excited and jumped--fairly quickly--to the hope that he'd be touring again and rolling through Texas.

In honor of the new record, much of which he had been playing on the campaign trail in support of Obama, here's a little clip:

Two of my boys be makin' some noise

No, I know what you're thinking, and Burt Reynolds and Ben Affleck did not start a thrash metal band. Releasing this statement on his website and widely reported on here, the Boss endorsed Barack Obama. Even sweeter than that, he called out the media for their retarded coverage of this election, choosing to focus on quotes taken out of context rather than, oh, have an insightful discourse on the issues. Kudos, Bruce. Kudos.

More thoughts on Bruce...

During the encore in his concert at the American Airlines Center, he brought a group of elementary school girls, who had been cheering their asses off from the floor, up on stage to dance to "Dancing in the Dark". And dance they did. And, while I'm usually the guy who's sitting there irritated by what kids are doing, I have to admit it was cute.

The only problem here is that Bruce has now ruined concerts for these girls. Seriously. When are these girls ever going to have another concert that measures up to what they got on Sunday night? They saw the Boss. He engaged them in conversation earlier in the concert. He got them up on stage and let them dance all around him. Then he hugged them as they left the stage. And it was Bruce Fucking Springsteen. It's not like we're talking about some girls getting up on stage with Big Head Todd and the Monsters or the Gin Blossoms. They got all this at a Springsteen concert in what was likely a few of their first concert experiences. Nothing can ever measure up to that, and they couldn't possibly have an appropriate degree of appreciation for what they got, and when they hit their 20's they'll probably start to doubt their recollection as to how great that night was.

Well, if you're reading this sometime in the future little girls, you had the best night of your life on April 13, 2008. Nothing will ever compare. Not even childbirth. You peaked. But it was a helluva peak.

Bruuuuuuuuuuce

If I were to start this tale at the beginning of the day, this would be a long entry. One far too long for my energy level at this moment, so I'll save Sunday morning for another time...

After getting off work at 10:15 am when my roommate/relief got there, I called Chad to tell him I was off, grabbed coffees at Little City, changed, and waited for Mark to be somewhat ready. As tends to happen when a road trip of any sort is being undertaken, Mark was not ready. This being at least the third time the three of us have gone galavanting across the Great State of Texas we were more or less expecting it and were not really bothered by it, nor were we in any particular rush.

For the greater part of the ride towards Waco, we sat trying to guess what the next song would be on the "Hair Nation" (inspired largely by the fact that I'd just begun my detour from McCullough's John Adams that morning and was quickly becoming enamored with Klosterman's Fargo Rock City) and "Movin' EZ" stations on Chad's Sirius Radio, starting with Hair Nation, going to Movin' EZ, then switching back to Hair Nation when it was determined that Movin' EZ tendencies to play more Streisand and Warwick than Bread and Hall & Oates was going to make us gay. In case you were wondering, no, they did not play Minnie Riperton's "Loving You", which was quite the disappointment.

Despite Chad's primal urge to gorge himself on Flying J fare, he was more than willing to forgo a meal there in favor of buying half of Mark's $6 way in to the Dr. Pepper Museum in order to take a gander at the scariest thing ever:

Animatronic Doc Alderton, complete with moving eyes. After being scared sufficiently shitless, Mark met us back at the soda fountain, where Chad and I were trying not to be lewd, which requires herculean effort on even our best days. In no more than ten minutes, we'd shown Mark what he needed to see, grabbed Dr. Pepper soda-fountain-style, and got back on the road.

Our next stop was a brief one in Hillsboro, where we couldn't help but feel bad for the gay young Black man working the counter at Taco Bell, as Hillsboro did not strike us as a town that would be especially open to that. I made sure to be especially nice to him, as I'd imagine most people who come up to the counter at a Taco Bell in Hillsboro, Texas, just look on in shock, afraid that they're going to catch the gay. But I could be wrong. Probably not, though. At any rate, we determined that he'd more than likely end up in Austin within the year.

Back in the car (and following my realization that as a child I had really gay taste in music*, which probably means something), we resumed out retarded guessing game and put in calls to find out the following two things: 1.) Was Lou Gramm the lead singer of Night Ranger or Foreigner (the latter)? and 2.) Who was the non-Paul Carrack singer in Mike + the Mechanics** (Paul Young)? I split on those, so pride was won and then promptly lost, leaving me empty inside, right where I started...

* This was set off when I reasserted my belief that Okkervil River sounds like Counting Crows, whose CDs were in my collection back in the 1990's but were sold at least eight years ago. I then proceeded to admit that I also owned Throwing Copper (I still kind of like "Lightning Crashes" although not nearly as much as I used to and I'd love to watch the episode of Strange Luck that it was featured in). I saved face when I could truthfully say that I hated Collective Soul and that Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid was unquestionably garbage and that Billy Corgan pretty soundly burned them back when Collective Soul tried to knock the Pumpkins. Ryan, if you're reading this, and remember the details, please post the story in the comments section.

** By the way, Rutherford does appear to have co-written almost all of their songs and wrote "The Living Years" with some dork named B.A. Robertson. Both of them had recently lost their fathers.

Eventually, we rolled into the American Airlines Center Platinum Parking Ramp with an hour to spare before we were required to have gotten our wristbands for some retarded lottery that they were going to have for the floor ticket holders for the evening's festivities. Wristbands firmly sealed, we set off to the Victory Tavern and Grille, which you can most definitely avoid, mostly so that Mark could take a dump before setting foot in an arena. Absolutely retarded pricing. I, too, made use of their facilities and believe I got my $28 worth out of that place in one way, at least. Mark said that it was the most expensive shit he'd ever taken and all he got was a bowl of soup and a beer.

Upon settling our bill (and getting the $10 I was almost shorted in change), we headed over to the Floor Ticketholders Retardo-Lottery where we lost and were stuck in the second section of the floor, but it took the Keystone Kops about 45 minutes to get the second flight of floor people, so we got to wait for a year or so before we got to go in.

Once set in our spots on the floor, we waited. While we waited, we wondered to ourselves why we didn't just get assigned seat, but in retrospect we didn't really know that we'd get dicked by some nonsensical lottery system or that we would've been able to see just fine from just about all the seats in the joint. But after suffering through an insanely long sound check and a howling group of fucktards from Vidor*, the Boss finally came on stage and unfurled this set. Anyone who's seen the Boss already knows what I'm about to say, but if you haven't, here you go. He's fucking amazing. He's so high-energy. He's coming up on 60 and could run circles around my lazy ass. And I truly believe he's one of about four artists (Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan) who have been around since the 1970's or longer and are still producing relevant music.

* For the first time, I was at a concert where I was largely impressed by the fans at the show. It really seems like the only people who were a problem were 20-somethings. In fact, all of the people around me who were more middle-aged were pretty awesome. They were really into everything but didn't let their enthusiasm turn them into annoying assholes. The same cannot be said for about half of the 20-somethings around me. Coming in at the top of my shit list was a guy in an Asbury Park three-quarter sleeve shirt with two trampy East Texas girls, all of whom were extremely fucked up. Unfortunately they were not so fucked up that the tone-deaf, rhythmless choad--who I'll refer to as Wayne from here on out--forgot the lyrics to all of his songs. Nope. Wayne sang out. Loudly. And off-key. And he clapped. A lot. Out of rhythm, like the drunk-ass white guy he was. And he really loved to shove his open hand up into the air, then clench his fist meekly, then lower his hand, wait 30 seconds and then repeat the whole process again. Slowly but surely, these assholes tried to wedge themselves in ahead of me, to which I did not budge, despite the whore-y attempt by Harlot #2 at grinding against me in what I can only assume was a brilliant attempt to use her feminine wiles to gain access to the slot in front of me. And were this a person who was not incredibly irritating for so many more reasons that I don't care to elaborate on I'd have probably allowed them past, but not here.

As far as the set was concerned, "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" was probably the song I'd ideally have heard first, so to have him kick off with that was pretty great. The Magic songs really fit in well with the rest of the set (especially "Devil's Arcade" and "Last to Die") and are a testament to his consistency over the years. I loved hearing all but two tracks from Born to Run, an album I used to not be too crazy about (the prevalence of the horns bothered me) but have recently come around on. "Because the Night" was amazing. Clarence Clemons' solo in "Jungleland" was completely arresting and borderline shocking, since he's coming up on 67 years old. Hell, all of "Jungleland" was arresting. You kinda just stood there in awe. "Born to Run" was great, and the Born to Run trifecta to start the encore was golden. The weirdest/best moment had to be when Bruce brought Jon Bon Jovi on stage to sing "Glory Days" with them. And the closer, "American Land" is one helluva knockout punch.

As we walked out, there was no doubt in our minds that we'd spent roughly $100 well. The show was one of the best I've ever seen, if not the best.

In what would become arguably the worst spending of money (Victory does factor into the equation), we decided to hit the Jack in the Box drive-thru, and Mark and I fell asleep, leaving poor Chad to the road and his sleep-deprived depravity. Waking up in Austin an hour-and-a-half later, Dokken was on, and I couldn't believe I'd fallen asleep for so long. After dropping Mark off, we pulled up to my house with Bon Jovi's "Runaway" rattling out of the speakers, bringing the day in which I finally saw the guy whose "Tunnel of Love" became the first tape I ever owned to an appropriate end.

I hope there are many more times.