Wednesday, July 30, 2008

School Of Rock:Brooooooooooooooce !!!!!

Bruce kicks ass live.

Let's just get that out of the way first. There may be some equals, but I don't know that there is anyone who puts on a better show than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band does(or is it do? neither looks right.) If you have never seen them live, you really should, it's well worth the money/effort.

I also happen to think he's a brilliant songwriter. I think he has written some of the greatest lyrics this side of Bob Dylan. Of course, he's a totally different type of lyricist than Dylan as well.
It's hard for me to write anything about him without slipping into drooling fanboydom, but I guess that's part of what School Of Rock is about too, isn't it?

As bad as my Bruce-itis is now, it was faaaar worse when I was in high school, at the height of Brucemania, after the release of "Born In The U.S.A.". I actually had the cover of "Born In the U.S.A." painted on the back of my jean jacket. Whoo-hoo !! I think I had a different Bruce concert t-shirt for each day of the week. How was I not a chick magnet ?

I remember we had to write this major paper on poetry for English class in 9th grade, and for one part of it we could choose our own poet, and I chose Mr. Springsteen. I think I dealt mostly with the songs on "Darkness On the Edge Of Town". I did get an "A", but that may have had more to do with my brilliant deconstruction of Ogden Nash's "The Camel".

Gee, I think this had a point when I started, I'm kinda rambling a bit now, I guess.

I think I have written at some point on this blog that what I love about him is that his music gives me hope. But it's not a naive hope. I mean, sure, "Thunder Road" and "Born To Run" are these sweeping, romantic tunes, but there's certain realism to them as well. In "Thunder Road", he tells the girl, "you ain't a beauty, but hey you're all right", and that "all the redemption he can offer is beneath this dirty hood", and the town in "Born to Run", "rips the bones from your back", and that's what they need to run from.

On his Video Anthology, he does an acoustic version of "Born To Run", which I will place below this paragraph,that is just gorgeous. In the intro(which is not included in the YouTube video-dammit), he talks about how the idea of running and never looking back was 'a nice romantic idea", but he realized that "after I put all those people in all those cars, I was gonna have to figure out someplace for them to go", and he talks about how "Born to Run" is about "two people trying to find their way home."



And it's interesting to hear him have that sort of take on it.

I also think he does a great job of capturing darkness and despair as well as hope, and it feels just as authentic. It does not come across as "trying" to be dark. In that way, I think, it feels like he's like the rest of us, he has light moments and dark moments, and we get a glimpse into all of them.

I doubt I have said all I can say about Bruce, so this may be continued, but right now, I'll leave you with a bit of the dark( a duet with Eddie Vedder, no less),




And a slightly lighter moment, where Broooooce makes a bit of fun of his sex symbol status.





Class dismissed...

1 comment:

Bar L. said...

Damn right NO ONE puts on a better show than Bruce (U2 comes close).

If I would have gone to high school with you, I would have totally been magnetized by the T-shirts. I've seen Bruce 18 times, my first time in 1981, my last time 4/7/08. I love the man, the music, the band...all of it.

His birthday is 9/23, he'll be 59.