This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Showing posts with label bruce springsteen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bruce springsteen. Show all posts
*On The Anniversary Of Folk's Appleseed Records (2007)- A Tribute Album
CD Review
Sowing The Seeds-The Tenth Anniversary, Pete Seeger and various artists, Appleseed Records, 2007
Most of the musical reviews in this space center on individual and group performers or particular musical genres, especially folk, blues and classic rock and roll. Very occasionally this space salutes record labels like Chess, Sun, Rounder, Smithsonian/Folkway, Red House, and here, Appleseed Records. On those occasions the record label may be as important to the genre as the performances of the artists because they established a genre, drove it forward, keep it alive or acted as a repository, or all of the above. That is the case here with a CD salute to the 10th Anniversary of Appleseed Records (2007).
For the history of the label there is a more than informative booklet that comes with the 2-disc CD set, including plenty of discology–type information about each track. I want to concentrate here on the performers and the performances to give the reader who may not be familiar with any of this some sense of what the label has tried to do. I will just drop the name Pete Seeger in first place here because it is his spirit that has driven this project, his sense of the desperate necessity of preserving and continuing the folk and political protest traditions and because many of the songs here are performed by him, or are covered by other artists. Beyond that the litany of performers range from “born again” folkie Bruce Springsteen, actor and activist Tim Robbins, Pete’s half-sister , Peggy, a folk legend in her own right, old time folkies like Eric Andersen and Tom Paxton, and some newer folkies like Ani DiFranco. A nice mix.
Of course, that description begs the question of what is good here. What do you need to listen to get the essence of the Appleseed tradition? Well, Pete and Bruce on Bruce’s “Ghost Of Tom Joad” that evokes the original Great Depression “Grapes Of Wrath” pathos (and very timely today when such messages are needed). A patriotic (too patriotic for my tastes) Pete on “Bring Them Home”. Tom Paxton’s heartfelt and fully justified tribute to the fallen New York 9/11 fire fighters, “The Bravest”. David Bromberg’s rousing, bluesy “Try Me One More Time”. And today very appropriate, as well, Pete Seeger tune's, “The Emperor Is Naked Today-O”.
*********
THE EMPEROR IS NAKED TODAY-O!
As the sun Rose on the rim of eastern sky And this one World that we love was trying to die We said stand! And sing out for a great hooray-o! Your child may be the one to exclaim The emperor is naked today-o!
Four winds that blow Four thousand tongues, with the word: survive Four billion souls Striving today to stay alive We say stand! And sing out for a great hooray-o! Why don't we be the ones to exclaim The emperor is naked today-o!
Men - have failed Power has failed, with papered gold. Shalom - salaam Will yet be a word where slaves were sold We say stand! And sing out for a great hooray-o! We yet may find the way to exclaim The emperor is naked today-o!
Originally titled "As the Sun" Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1970) (c) 1977, 1979 by Fall River Music Inc.
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bruce Springsteen performing his version of Blind Alfred Reed’s How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.
Live In Dublin, Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band, 2 CD set with DVD, Bruce Springsteen, 2007
I have been all over the American songbook for the past couple of years. Old –time Appalachia hills and hollows (ya, I know hollas but what is a poor city boy to do) stuff from the Carter Family and Clarence Ashley, country blues stuff from the likes of Son House, Skip James, and Bukka White, bluegrass from Doc Watson and Hazel Dickens, swamp cajun stuff from Clifton Chenier, Tex-Mex stuff, electrified come to the city blues via Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Then to the more “refined” playbook from the hills and hollows of, ah, New York City’s Tin Pan Alley by the likes of Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, and Irvin Berlin. Onward to the “founding” fathers and mothers of rock and roll like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl, Wanda Jackson and Lavern Baker. Finally, well almost finally, the 1960s folk revival minute around Cambridge and New York that drove my youth with the likes of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Seeger.
And it is that last name, Pete Seeger, that connects all of the above-mentioned genres with the CD under review, Bruce Springsteen’s epic (okay, okay, just monumental) Live In Dublin album, which is nothing (or almost nothing) but big kudos to his roots and to Pete’s efforts over a very long career to preserve some forgotten aspects of that American songbook. Peter is well known as a left-wing political activist and folksinger. Less well known is his role in keeping roots music alive (a task handed down from his musicologist father). So Bruce Springsteen, a rock and roll guy known to connect to his roots and to the people, is right at home here paying homage to the parts of the songbook that Pete has helped preserve.
The CD compilation I am reviewing is a two CD set with DVD of the Dublin performances complete with probably every known great session player available and, perhaps, every known western instrument from sexy sax to wailing kazoo (nice, right). The stick outs here include Jacob’s Ladder, We Shall Overcome, Jesse James, his version of Blind Alfred Reed’s How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live, and My Oklahoma Home. See the American songbook, and a couple of rock classics thrown in. Got it.
This review was originally posted for the DVD. The accolades for that serve for the CD as well. There are also CD/DVD combination discs available
"Frankly, I had never been a strong fan of Bruce Springsteen’s during his more raucous Rock & Roll career. I like Rock & Roll very much but most of his work seemed, to my ear, a little off kilter. However, with an acoustic recording in 2005 (and an earlier one from from 1996 that I will review separately) and now an American tradition folk recording of some works made famous by the legendary folksinger and ardent folk traditionalist Pete Seeger Springsteen has come back home. This session produced interesting versions of some common American songs like "Eire Canal", "John Henry", Mary Don't You Weep" and "Shenendoah" that are done with so much retexturing (Springsteen’s term) that Bruce has now created a niche for himself in the folk pantheon. Who would have thought?
This is a short documentary about the making of the sessions album but it gives real insight into the way Springsteen ‘feels’ the song, gears up, and then goes out and performs it in that gravelly voice that I like in male singers. For my money his version of "Shenandoah" is one of the most hauntingly moving I have ever heard (partially as a result of great back up on instruments and vocals, including a strong performance by Bruce's wife Patty). And I do not usually even like the song. All this, plus his gang of musicians were obviously having a good time. And it shows from start to finish. I am going out to buy the album, pronto. (There are some DVD/CD reverse side combinations available on this one)."
Note: The reference to Bruce coming home is from the DVD. One of the back up musicians' father was a well-known folkie in the 1960's who taught Bruce his acoustic guitar back then. What goes around comes around.
***An Encore Presentation -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s
Night- The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time-With Bruce Springsteen's "Jersey Girl" in Mind
By Lance Lawrence
An old man walked, walked
haltingly down a North Adamsville street, maybe Hancock Street, or maybe a
street just off of it, maybe a long street like West Main Street, he has
forgotten which exactly in the time between his walking and his telling me his
story. A street near the high school anyway, North Adamsville High School,
where he had graduated from back in the mist of time, the 1960s mist of time. A
time when he was known, far and wide, as the king, the king hell king, if the
truth be known, of the schoolboy be-bop night. And headquartered himself,
properly headquartered himself as generations of schoolboy king hell kings had
done previously, at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor as was his due as the reigning
schoolboy king of the night. But that schoolboy corner boy king thing is an old
story, an old story strictly for cutting up old torches, according to the old
man, Frankie, yes, Francis Xavier Riley, as if back from the dead, and not fit,
not fit by a long shot for what he had to tell me about his recent “discovery,”
and its meaning.
Apparently as Frankie, let us
skip the formalities and just call him Frankie, walked down that nameless,
maybe unnamable street he was stricken by sight of a sign on a vagrant
telephone pole announcing that Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show
was coming to town and setting up tent at the Veteran’s Stadium in the first
week in June, this past June, for the whole week. And seeing this sign, this
vagrant sign on this vagrant telephone pole, set off a stream of memories from
when the king hell king of the schoolboy corner boy night was so enthralled
with the idea of the “carny” life, of this very Jim Byrd’s Carnival and
Traveling Show carnival life, that he had plans, serious plans, to run away,
run away with it when it left town.
Under this condition, and of
course there was always a condition: if Ma Riley, or Pa Riley if it came to it,
although Pa was usually comfortably ensconced in the Dublin Pub over on Sagamore
Street and was not a big factor in Frankie’s life when it came time for him to
make his mark as king hell king, just bothered him one more time, bothered
about what was never specified at least to me. Of course they never did, or
Frankie never let on that they did, bother him enough to force the issue, and
therefore never forced him on the road. But by then he was into being the
corner boy king so that dream must have faded, like a lot of twelve year old
dreams.
In any case rather than
running away with the carnival Frankie served his high school corner boy term
as king hell king, went to college and then to law school, ran a successful
mid-sized law practice, raised plenty of kids and political hell and never
looked back. And not until he saw that old-time memory sign did he think of
regrets for not having done what he said that “he was born for.” And rather
than have the reader left with another in the endless line of cautionary tales,
or of two roads, one not taken tales, or any of that, Frankie, Frankie in his
own words, wants to expand on his carnival vision reincarnation and so we will
let him speak :
Who knows when a kid first
gets the carnival bug, maybe it was down in cradle times hearing the
firecrackers in the heated, muggy Fourth Of July night when in old, old time
North Adamsville a group of guys, a group of guys called the “Associates,”
mainly Dublin Pub guys, and at one time including my father, Joe Riley, Senior,
grabbed some money from around the neighborhood. And from the local merchants
like Doc over at Doc’s Drug Store, Mario over at Estrella’s Grocery Store, Mac,
owner of the Dublin Pub, and always, always, Tonio, owner of Salducci’s Pizza
Parlor. What they did with this money was to hire a small time, usually very
small time, carnival outfit, something with a name like Joe’s Carny, or the
like, maybe with a merry-go-round, some bumping cars, a whip thing, a few
one-trick ponies, and ten or twelve win-a-doll-for-your-lady tents. On the side
maybe a few fried dough, pizza, sausage and onions kind of eateries, with
cotton candy to top it off. And in a center tent acts, clown acts, trapeze acts
with pretty girls dangling every which way, jugglers, and the like. Nothing
fancy, no three-ring circus, or monster theme amusement park to flip a kid’s
head stuff. Like I say small time, but not small time enough to not enflame the
imagination of every kid, mainly every boy kid, but a few girls too if I
remember right, with visions of setting up their own show.
Or maybe it was when this
very same Jim Byrd, a dark-haired, dark-skinned (no, not black, not in 1950s
North Adamsville, christ no, but maybe a gypsy or half-gypsy, if that is
possible), a friendly guy, slightly wiry, a slightly side-of-his-mouth-talking
guy just like a lawyer, who actually showed me some interesting magic tricks
when I informed him, aged eight, that I wanted to go “on the road” with him
first brought his show to town. Brought it to Veteran’s Stadium then too.
That’s when I knew that that old time Associates thing, that frumpy Fourth of
July set-up-in-a-minute-thing-and-then-gone was strictly amateur stuff. See
Jim’s Carny had a Ferris wheel, Jim had a Mini-Roller Coaster, and he had about
twenty-five or thirty win-a-doll, cigarettes, teddy bears, or candy tents. But
also shooting galleries, gypsy fortune-telling ladies with daughters with black
hair and laughing eyes selling roses, or the idea of roses.
And looking very
foxy, the daughters that is, although I did not know what foxy was then. Oh
yah, sure Jim had the ubiquitous fried dough, sausage and onion, cardboard
pizza stuff too. Come on now this was a carnival, big time carnival, big time
to an eight-year old carnival. Of course he had that heartburn food. But what
set Jim’s operation off was that central tent. Sure, yawn, he had the clowns,
tramp clowns, Clarabelle clowns, what have you, and the jugglers, juggling
everything but mainly a lot of whatever it was they were juggling , and even
the acrobats, bouncing over each other like rubber balls. The big deal, the
eight- year old big deal though, was the animals, the real live tigers and
lions that performed in a cage in center stage with some blonde safari-weary
tamer doing the most incredible tricks with them. Like, well, like having them
jump through hoops, and flipping over each other and the trainer too. Wow.
But now that I think about it
seriously the real deal of the carny life was neither the Associates or Jim
Byrd’s, although after I tell you about this Jim’s would enter into my plans
because that was the carnival, the only carnival I knew, to run away with. See
what really got me going was down in Huntsville, a town on the hard ocean about
twenty miles from North Adamsville, there was what would now be called nothing
but an old-time amusement park, a park like you still might see if you went to
Seaside Heights down on the Jersey shore. This park, this Wild Willie’s
Amusement Park, was the aces although as you will see not a place to run away
to since everything stayed there, summer open or winter closed. I was maybe
nine or ten when I first went there but the story really hinges on when I was
just turning twelve, you know, just getting ready to make my mark on the world,
the world being girls. Yes, that kind of turning twelve.
But nine or twelve this Wild
Willie’s put even Jim Byrd’s show to shame. Huge roller-coasters (yes, the
plural is right, three altogether), a wild mouse, whips, dips, flips and very
other kind of ride, covered and uncovered, maybe fifteen or twenty, all based
on the idea of trying to make you scared, and want to go on again, and again
to“conquer” that scared thing. And countless win things (yah, cigarettes,
dolls, teddy bears, candy, and so on in case you might have forgotten). I won’t
even mention that hazardous to your health but merciful, fried dough, cardboard
pizza (in about twenty flavors), sausage and onions, cotton candy and salt
water taffy because, frankly I am tired of mentioning it and even a flea circus
or a flea market today would feel compelled to offer such treats so I will move
on.
What it had that really got
me going, at first anyway, was about six pavilions worth of pinball machines,
all kinds of pinball machines just like today there are a zillion video games
at such places. But what these pinball machines had (beside alluring
come-hither and spend some slot machine dough on me pictures of busty young
women on the faces of the machines) were guys, over sixteen year old teenage
guys, mainly, some older, some a lot older at night, who could play those
machines like wizards, racking up free games until the cows came home. I was
impressed, impressed to high heaven. And watching them, watching them closely
were over sixteen- year old girls, some older, some a lot older at night, who I
wondered, wondered at when I was nine but not at twelve, might not be
interfering with their pinball magic. Little did I know then that the pinball
wizardry was for those sixteen year old, some older, some a lot older girls.
But see, if you didn’t
already know, nine or twelve-year old kids were not allowed to play those
machines. You had to be sixteen (although I cadged a few free games left on
machines as I got a little older, and I think the statute of limitations has
run out on this crime so I can say I was not sixteen years or older). So I
gravitated toward the skee ball games located in one of those pinball
pavilions, games that anybody six to sixty or more could play. You don’t know
skees. Hey where have you been? Skee, come on now. Go over to Seaside Heights
on the Jersey shore, or Old Orchard up on the Maine coast and you will have all
the skees you want, or need. And if you can’t waggle your way to those hallowed
spots then I will give a little run-down. It’s kind of like bowling, candle-pin
bowling (small bowling balls for you non-New Englanders) with a small ball and
it’s kind of like archery or darts because you have to get the balls, usually
ten or twelve to a game, into tilted holes.
The idea is to get as high a
score as possible, and in amusement park land after your game is over you get coupons
depending on how many points you totaled. And if you get enough points you can
win, well, a good luck rabbit’s foot, like I won for Karen stick-girl one time
(a stick girl was a girl who didn’t yet have a shape, a womanly shape, and
maybe that word still is used, okay), one turning twelve-year old time, who
thought I was the king of the night because I gave her one from my “winning,”
and maybe still does. Still does think I am king of the hill. But a guy, an old
corner boy guy that I knew back then, a kind of screwy guy who hung onto my
tail at Salducci’s like I was King Solomon, a guy named Markin who hung around
me from middle school on, already wrote that story once. Although he got one
part wrong, the part about how I didn’t know right from left about girls and
gave this Karen stick girl the air when, after showering her with that rabbit’s
foot, she wanted me to go with her and sit on the old seawall down at
Huntsville Beach and according to Markin I said no-go. I went, believe me I
went, and we both practically had lockjaw for two weeks after we got done. But
you know how stories get twisted when third parties who were not there, had no
hope of being there, and had questionable left from right girl knowledge
themselves start their slanderous campaigns on you. Yes, you know that scene, I
am sure.
So you see, Karen stick and
lockjaw aside, I had some skill at skees, and the way skees and the carny life
came together was when, well let me call her Gypsy Love, because like the name
of that North Adamsville vagrant telephone pole street where I saw the Byrd’s
carnival in town sign that I could not remember the name of I swear I can’t, or
won’t remember hers. All I remember is that jet-black long hair, shiny
dark-skinned glean (no, no again, she was not black, christ, no way, not in
1950s Wild Willie’s, what are you kidding me?), that thirteen-year old winsome
smile, half innocent, half-half I don’t know what, that fast-forming girlish
womanly shape and those laughing, Spanish gypsy black eyes that would haunt a
man’s sleep, or a boy’s. And that is all I need to remember, and you too if you
have any imagination. See Gypsy Love was the daughter of Madame La Rue, the
fortune-teller in Jim Byrd’s carnival. I met her in turning twelve time when
she tried to sell me a rose, a rose for my girlfriend, my non-existent just
then girlfriend. Needless to say I was immediately taken with her and told her
that although I had no girlfriend I would buy her a rose.
And
that, off and on, over the next year is where we bounced around in our “relationship.”
One day I was down at Wild Willie’s and I spotted her and asked her why she
wasn’t on the road with Jim Byrd’s show. Apparently Madame LaRue had had a
falling out with Jim, quit the traveling show and landed a spot at Wild Willie’s.
And naturally Gypsy Love followed mother, selling flowers to the rubes at Wild
Willie’s. So naturally, naturally to me, I told Gypsy Love to follow me over to
the skees and I would win her a proper prize. And I did, I went crazy that day.
A big old lamp for her room. And Gypsy Love asked me, asked me very nicely
thank you, if I wanted to go down by the seawall and sit for a while. And let’s
get this straight, no third party who wasn’t there, no wannbe there talk,
please, I followed her, followed her like a lemming to the sea. And we had the
lockjaw for a month afterward to prove it. And you say, you dare to say I was
not born for that life, that carnival life. Ha.
Reflections In The Aftermath Of The 40th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Last year, 2015, I like a billion other citizen-music critics meaning no more than that I wrote a small sketch about the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic first widely admired album, Born To Run (“iconic” a word now attached to every half-baked event and fully-baked person that has ever come to the surface with the slightest bit of renown but until the fever flavor of the month gets replaced by a more sober assessment like enigmatic I will follow the herd on this one) and placed my assessment in various blogs that I follow and other relevant social media sites but also no less than I had the same right as professional music critics to commemorate a milestone event in my own trek through life.
Since then I have been thinking about what I said back then and I have some additional things that might be of interest to “Bruce Springsteen nation” even though we will presumably not be commemorating the anniversary of the first distribution of that album for about another ten years. Part of the impetus for reflecting on the album was that one night my old Carver High School friends Bart Webber, Sam Eaton and Jack Callahan were discussing my sketch at one of our periodic get-togethers at the Rusty Nail, a bar we hang out in of late near Kenmore Square in Boston, now that we are all retired or semi-retired and have time to philosophize over some high-shelf scotches and whiskeys. (For those who do not frequent bars, are tee-totallers, or are just curious that “high-shelf” designation is important especially to four guys who grew up “from hunger” down in Carver, then the cranberry capital of the world or close to it who when young and thirsty drank Southern Comfort, low-shelf whiskeys like Johnny Walker Black, no scotches high-shelf or low, and if pressed hard drunk Thunderbird or Ripple wines.)
That night we got, as we have been doing since those high school days when we hung out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys pining away, into a dispute, although we always called it a beef back then about the virtues of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics on stuff like Thunder Road and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. Their collective wisdom was that Bruce “spoke” to that Saturday night “chicken run” everything is all right down at the far end of the beach as long as you have your honey on board, take your baby for a ride, see the sights but get the hell out of Carver at all costs unless we wanted to wind up like our parents tied by a million cords to the freaking bogs. Me, well me, I thought they all had had too much to drink that night, maybe too much to dream too since while I am willing to give Bruce plenty of simpatico for merely having survived his youth in Jersey a few years after us that we were driven much more by guys like the literary on the road Jack Kerouac, the poetic mad monk Moloch-hunter Allen Ginsburg, and muse musically by Bob Dylan. They raised a collective sigh and then made the inevitable comment that covers all our disputes these days that I had probably done too much grass/ cousin/speed/hash or any combination thereof and the chickens have finally come home to roost. Here in my updated version of that sketch from last year reflecting that conversation with my friends. I hope it will hold everybody’s tongues until mid-2025 when we have to think through the damn thing again:
“I got my ‘religion’ on Bruce Springsteen ass-backward (something unkind souls of my acquaintance, that trio of corner boys who still think I am addled by the acid trips of my youth and therefore feel free to discount everything I have said for the past forty years, would say was a more generalized condition), meaning, my meaning anyway, was that I was not an E Street Irregular back in the day, the day we are commemorating with this little sketch, the day when Bruce Springsteen busy in the subterranean world around New York City trying to catch on well after the folk minute and acid rock moments had played out sprung his sweet baby everything is all right Saturday night Jersey boy of a different kind magic on the rock and roll scene with the album Born To Run on a candid world. You see I was in a monastery then, or might as well have been, and did not get the news of the new dispensation, that a small stab was being attempted to create a “new breeze” after the previous breeze had played out a few years before, that there was a new “max daddy” rock and roll star out in the firmament and so I let that past. (As will be explained presently there were reasons for that, reasons that the in-tune Bart, Sam and Jack did not have to deal and they could track the rise of Springsteen in the normal progressive of their rock musical interests.)
“Here comes reason for that ass-backward part though. See I really was ‘unavailable’ in that 1975 year since I was one among some guys, really a lot of guys although that was something I didn’t know until many years later, some Vietnam veterans who were living under bridges, along the riverbanks, along the railroad tracks of the East Coast from about Boston in summer (the area which I had come from since Carver is about thirty miles south of Boston) to D.C. maybe a little further south as the weather got colder trying to cope as best we could with the ‘real’ world when we got home. The post ‘Nam ‘real’ world that just wasn’t the same as before we left from home and our standard dreams of marriage, white picket fence houses, kids and dogs after whatever we left of ourselves in burning, shooting, napalming, molesting a whole race of very busy people with whom we had not quarrel, no quarrel at all. Plenty of guys, most probably if anybody took a survey on the subject of post-war adjustment, got back and just went to their standard dream lives. Others of us, me and my brothers under the bridge, took a detour, a wrong detour but a detour and so the old hangout with the buddies world of high school chatting about girls with didn’t have or if we did have didn’t have dough to take out properly, about cars we didn’t have either and mostly just hung out talking about music, about what we talk about since we always had a spare quarter to play the latest tunes on Jack Slack’s jukebox, or our leader madman Frankie Riley did, seemed very far away. The fight to keep warm, to keep doped up, to keep from jail except when we wanted to be “vagged” to get indoors and some food and a shower, and most of all to keep moving, something that I still feel even today at times, is what drove our sullen dreams.
“So we, me, were not doing a very good job of getting along with our lives, mostly. Not succeeding against the drugs (my personal problem from cocaine to meth and back depending on when you ran into me, if you dared), the liquors (my boy Seaside Sean from up in Hampton Falls in New Hampshire who gathered a fistful of medals in Vietnam and who tossed them over the fence at the United States Supreme Court building in that famous VVAW demonstration earlier in the decade unlike me who only survived because a couple of black kids from Harlem saved my ass a couple of times although later not their own, whom I couldn’t save one night when the DTs got to him so bad he went down into the Hudson River from the nearest bridge he was so lost), the petty robberies (Jesus, holding up White Hen convenient stores with my hands so shaky I could barely keep the gun from jumping out of them and if the young girl behind the register had decided to take a stand I probably would not be writing this, at least not as a free man), and the fight to stay away from the labor market. Work which seemed so irrelevant then, work for what purpose if your dreams were not of white picket fences, the curse of the ‘lost boys of the bridges,’ the boys who wanted no connection with Social Security numbers, VA forms, forwarding addresses, hell even General Post Office boxes just in case some dunning repo man, or some angry wife was looking for support, support none of us could give for crying out loud why do you think we worked the stinking garbage strewn rivers, rode the dreamless smoke streams trains, faced the rats mano y mano under the bridges. Work if pressed up against the wall only at some day labor joint giving false social security numbers, pearl-diving where no question were asked as long as the dishes and pans didn’t pile up, or in-kinf for a few nights reprieve from the bridges at some Sally (Salvation Army) harbor lights mission. Not the time to be worrying about grabbing that girl heading to Thunder Road.
“Yeah, tough times, tough times indeed, and a lot of guys had a close call, a very close call, including me, and a lot of guys like now with our brethren Afghan and Iraq soldier brothers and sisters didn’t make it, guys like Sean who if you looked at him you could not believe how gone he really was with that baby-face of his I still see now, still see as he trogged his way to that night bridge and just let himself free fall I hope somebody up in Hampton Falls claimed him for we, I, couldn’t do so since I was on the run myself, didn’t make it but are not on the walls in black granite down in D.C.-although maybe they should be.
“Of course Brother Springsteen immortalized the Brothers Under The Bridge living out in Southern California along the arroyos, riverbanks, and railroad tracks of the West in a song which I heard some guys playing one night when I was at a VA hospital in the early 1980s trying to get well for about the fifteenth time (meth again, damn I can still feel the rushes, still want my sweet jesus high, when I say the word) and that was that. I cried that night for my lost youth, for Sean, for the guys who played the song over and over again, Saigon, long gone… no way long gone. The next step, after a few more months of recovery, was easy because ever since I was kid once I grabbed onto something that moved me some song, some novel, some film I checked out everything by the songwriter, author, director I could get my hands on.
“Once I did grab a serious chunk of
Springsteen’s work, grabbed some things from the local library since my ready
cash supply was low I admit I got a bit embarrassed. Admitted to myself that I
sure was a long gone daddy back in 1975 and for few years thereafter. How could
I not have gravitated earlier to a guy who was singing the high hymnal songs
about the antics of the holy goof corner boys who I grew up with, the guys out
in the streets making all that noise, trying to do the best they could in the
hard working class neighborhood night around Harry’s Drug Store on windless
Friday nights without resources after all the grifter, sifter, and
especially midnight shifter stuff was said and done (and where are they now,
Frankie, Markin, Jack, Jimmy, Tiny, Dread, and a few other who faded in and out
over the high school years, I know where Jimmy Johnson and Kenny Bow are, down
on a black granite stone in D.C. still mourned, mourned since they never got to
graduate from the corner boy night like the rest of us one way or another).
“Yeah, singing out loud about the death
trap small town that kills the spirit of the young (mine spent up in Carver
down Massachusetts way), especially in the close quarters of the working class
neighborhoods like the small shack of a house I grew up in(along with four
brothers if you can believe that looking at the house today which is owned by a
new ramshackle generation caught on the low-down) along with all the other
stuff that went with it about keeping your head down, about not making waves,
about not bringing public shame, about going along to get along. Yeah, the
whole nine yards. The worse part though was to do your duty, do the right thing
when your freaking country called, called for any reason. You know what I
say-fuck that, get the hell out of Dover, Auburn, Saratoga, Naples, Oceanside,
Fayetteville, Steubenville and a million other Carver-like towns before the
bastards eat you alive. That was the message, or one of the messages, Brother
Bruce laid down.
“Here is another part to consider too,
the constant hanging around with nothing to do looking for the heart of
Saturday night and maybe a date with Lorraine who had been promising to take me
“around the world,” (I’ll let you smart people figure out what that meant on
your own) when we got married and settled down after I got out of the Army
(which was in our stink-hole of a town considered automatic, double automatic
as the war clouds heated up in Vietnam as we were getting ready to graduate).
Lorraine, if you can believe this and you should, lived in an even more
ramshackled shack of house than I did, even more run down because her old man
was a drunk and her mother had some kind of mental problems that nobody could
ever figure out (she would years later be “put away” as the saying went so
there was truth to her problems, maybe that old man drinking and belting her
around added to the pain in her head and she just nodded out into her own
world, I guess). Lorraine maybe dirt poor, maybe not the best dresser since her
clothes came out of the local Bargain Center that she was afraid to admit to me
until I told her my stuff was strictly hand-me downs from my older brothers and
my mother made her purchases for us at that same store, was the smartest girl
in her class (she was a year behind me), was in the College Prep classes while
I was in some dink General Ed track. But here is where having too much time on
your hands, and too much “from hunger” too got in the way.
“Not so sweet Lorraine was two-timing
me, she was two-timing me with a guy from Hingham in the back of his Chevy half
bare-assed, taking him “around the world,” which I figure that you have figured
out by now what it means, as my friend Jack found out from his sister who was
dating the guy’s younger brother and passed on to me, the bitch. Yeah, I took
it hard, took it harder when she lied to me that they were “just friends,” that
our thing was real. I dropped her like a hot potato, gone (although not
forgotten obviously since I still have a slow burn about that situation, hell,
she was my first love). I heard later when I was in ‘Nam from that same Jack
that she went with this Hingham guy out to California for a while, that the guy
had treated her right, that they had been on the same wavelength about getting
out of Podunk, getting out of that public shame stuff too. Jack said he heard
she had become a “flower child” or something but then his sister stopped dating
the guy’s younger brother and she kind of just faded from the
earth.
“The guys were right, my corner boys were
right, right as hell, live fast, live very fast and don’t look back because
there ain’t nothing to look back to. Just keep looking for some new Lorraine to
break your heart, you know you will so you don’t have to take it from me, to
take you “around the world” if she decides not to two-time you for some new
Jimmy. Just keep looking and moving, that’s the ticket. Yeah, it’s a sad, cold
world so damn you had better run, run as hard and fast as you can. That’s the
score, Jack, that’s the score.
“Yeah but Bruce singing about getting out on that Jack Keroauc-drenched hitchhike highway that I dreamed of from my youth, of hitting the open road and searching for the great American West blue-pink night that before ‘Nam every one of my corner boys dreamed of and Sam, Sam Lowell even did, did hit that road, of hitting the thunder road in some crash out Chevy looking for Mary or whatever that dish’s name was, looking for that desperate girl beside him when he took that big shift down in the midnight “chicken run,” in taking that girl down to the Jersey shore everything is alright going hard into the sweated carnival night. Later getting all retro-folkie, paying his Woody and Pete dues looking for the wide Missouri, looking for the heart of Saturday night with some Rosalita too (and me with three busted marriages to show for those dreams), and looking, I swear that he must have known my story for my own ghost of Tom Joad coming home bleeding, bleeding a little banged up, out of the John Steinbeck Okie night, coming home from Thunder Road maybe dancing in the streets if the mood took him to that place that you could see in his eyes when he got going, coming home from down in Jungle-land the place of crashed dreams out along the Southern Pacific road around Gallup, New Mexico dreaming of his own Phoebe Snow. Yeah, thanks Bruce, thanks from a brother under the bridge.”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bruce Springsteen performing Brothers Under The Bridge.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
******
Saigon, it was all gone
The same Coke machines
As the streets I grew on
Down in a mesquite canyon
We come walking along the ridge
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Campsite's an hour's walk from the nearest road to town
Up here there's too much brush and canyon
For the CHP choppers to touch down
Ain't lookin' for nothin', just wanna live
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Come the Santa Ana's, man, that dry brush'll light
Billy Devon got burned up in his own campfire one winter night
We buried his body in the white stone high up along the ridge
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Had enough of town and the street life
Over nothing you end up on the wrong end of someone's knife
Now I don't want no trouble
And I ain't got none to give
Me and the brothers under the bridge
I come home in '72
You were just a beautiul light
In your mama's dark eyes of blue
I stood down on the tarmac, I was just a kid
Me and the brothers under the bridge
Come Veterans' Day I sat in the stands in my dress blues
I held your mother's hand
When they passed with the red, white and blue
One minute you're right there ... and something slips...
Frankly, I had never been a strong fan of Bruce Springsteen’s during his more raucous Rock & Roll career. I like Rock & Roll very much but most of his work seemed, to my ear, a little off kilter. However, with an acoustic recording in 2005 (and an earlier one from from 1996 that I will review separately) and now an American tradition folk recording of some works made famous by the legendary folksinger and ardent folk traditionalist Pete Seeger Springsteen has come back home. This session produced interesting versions of some common American songs like "Eire Canal", "John Henry", Mary Don't You Weep" and "Shenendoah" that are done with so much retexturing (Springsteen’s term) that Bruce has now created a niche for himself in the folk pantheon. Who would have thought?
This is a short documentary about the making of the sessions album but it gives real insight into the way Springsteen ‘feels’ the song, gears up, and then goes out and performs it in that gravelly voice that I like in male singers. For my money his version of "Shenandoah" is one of the most hauntingly moving I have ever heard (partially as a result of great back up on instruments and vocals, including a strong performance by Bruce's wife Patty). And I do not usually even like the song. All this, plus his gang of musicians were obviously having a good time. And it shows from start to finish. I am going out to buy the album, pronto. (There are some DVD/CD reverse side combinations available on this one).
Note: The reference to Bruce coming home is from the DVD. One of the back up musicians' father was a well-known folkie in the 1960's who taught Bruce his acoustic guitar back then. What goes around comes around.
