From: owner-luckytown-digest@luckytown.org (LuckyTown Digest) To: luckytown-digest@luckytown.org Subject: LuckyTown Digest V9 #94 Reply-To: luckytown@luckytown.org Sender: owner-luckytown-digest@luckytown.org Errors-To: owner-luckytown-digest@luckytown.org Precedence: bulk LuckyTown Digest Sunday, October 13 2002 Volume 09 : Number 094 NOTE: Sale/trade posts should be emailed to luckytown-ads, *NOT* to luckytown. That includes tix wanted/tix grovels, post them to luckytown-ads, please. Contents: Press release for Barcelona broadcast in Europe ["Kevin Kinder" ] Re: SNL [TeleNYC@aol.com] Auction help ["Cindy Galbraith" ] Re: LuckyTown Digest V9 #92 ["Matej Krajnc" ] Ticketdrops in Europe? [Dirk-Willem Poot ] the Bruce Politik [mendez@comcast.net] Multiple Responses/Interpretations ["kyle gilrain" ] "MONUMENTAL"--FleetCenter (Boston) Concert Review (The Boston Phoenix) [B] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 15:40:08 -0500 From: "Kevin Kinder" Subject: Press release for Barcelona broadcast in Europe Email from brucespringsteen.net follows... MTV NETWORKS EUROPE PRESENTS 'A NIGHT WITH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND' World Exclusive Concert To Air Live Across MTV Europe and VH-1 UK on October 16th, 2002 London, October 7th, 2002: MTV Networks Europe is to present 'A Night With Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band' - a unique live concert with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to be aired live across MTV Networks Europe and VH-1 UK on 16 October 2002, it was announced today. Set to air to over 127 million homes across MTV's ten feeds in Europe and VH1 UK, the unprecedented musical event, 'A Night With Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band' will comprise a cross-channel 'live to air', commercial-free concert from Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona, with an exclusive one hour backstage 'Countdown To Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band' prior to the concert. Commented Harriett Brand, Senior Vice President, Talent & Music, MTV Networks Europe: "Bruce Springsteen is a musical icon and one of the world's most acclaimed performers. This exclusive performance commands proper treatment - so we have taken the step of clearing MTV Networks Europe and VH-1 UK of all advertising for the duration of the live concert. MTV Networks Europe is the only television network in Europe with the ability to offer an artist such an unparalled promotional platform whilst offering our audiences across Europe the opportunity to experience on of the world's greatest artists live in concert." Transmission details for 'A Night With Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band': Countdown To Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band Live -16 October, 20:00 CET MTV Euro, MTV Nordic, MTV France, MTV nl, MTV Italy, MTV Romania, MTV Polska, MTV Spain. MTV Live with Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band Live - 16 October 2100 - 2230 CET MTV Euro, MTV Nordic, MTV France, MTV nl, MTV Italy, MTV Romania, MTV Polska, MTV Spain. 2100 - 2230 BST VH-1 UK 17th October 2000 CET MTV Germany 3 November 2000 BST MTV UK http://www.brucespringsteen.net/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:40:24 -0400 From: "Bernardo, Thomas" Subject: Ed Miller's Comments about Springsteen & Commerce Edward Miller wrote in LTD V9 #93: "The fundamental explanation for the differing critical and political reactions to the two latest CDs [by Steve Earle & Bruce Springsteen] is this: Bruce wants to sell records, and therefore plays it safe and non-political, while Steve voices his convictions, record sales be damned." Oh, please. Is it possible for you to concoct a more ridiculous explanation? The truth is, there are any number of reasons as to why these two albums were received differently. Anyone who solely relies on the inane commercial argument not only has no appreciation for the distinct styles of these two artists, but also has no sense of what the musicians are trying to convey through their music. First of all, some argue Earle strained to pen a controversial song to generate interest and album sales. Granted, it's an outlandish take given Earle's previous creative decisions, but where's your argument if that were true? The point is, anyone who claims that genuine writers like Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen gauge commercial and controversial impact when they sit down to write a song has, at the very least, little grasp of the writing process and, worse, ascribes to these two artists dubious and dishonorable motivations wholly nonexistent in their respective careers up to this point. Second, and most important, the songs have very little in common. DeCurtis is more than a little disingenous by framing the issue as if both songs aim to deal with the same subject matter and content. DeCurtis concludes that Springsteen is immune from criticism because his album's the product of better marketing, while Earle -- the consummate renegade troubadour -- is somehow left to dangle in the wind for speaking his convictions. Nonsense. Both songs and artists are political but in a different way. Steve Earle is no more political just because he's louder about his views. That's like saying someone preaching on a street corner with a bullhorn is somehow more religious than a cloistered monk. You don't judge someone's intentions based on how much noise they make, or, for that matter, the manner in which they go about getting that message to the public. Simply because THE RISING was marketed to the masses does not mean Springsteen wrote and created with commercial considerations paramount on his mind. Anyone capable of a reasonable amount of nuanced thinking would find this obvious. Given Bruce's established creative track record (for, after all, we're not talking about some boy-band, here), we know he writes from a place of integrity, empathy, and considerable artistic sensibilities. How a finished song is ultimately marketed is an entirely different story than how it is conceived by the artist. Springsteen's finest writing resonates when it captures a balance between deft ambiguity and stories that deliver on different levels. It's usually when his writing's un-self-conscious, as opposed to when he strains -- albeit earnestly -- to preach or moralize. The songs on NEBRASKA serve as an amazing example. By far his most political album (and his most personal). Yet, I bet Springsteen wasn't even conscious of, nor cared to even entertain, the political or controversial implications of those stories when he was writing them. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he was somewhat surprised when critical reviews started pouring in praising the album as a brilliant critique of Reaganism. When all is said and done, though, tunes like "Atlantic City" and "Johnny 99" capture the desperate nature of marginalized characters a lot better than, say, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," which is a fine song in it's own right, but not as effective. The stories work as personal narratives in themselves, but also deliver important social commentaries. The non-preachy, subtle voice of this writing makes the point. You don't need the artist banging you over the head with it. For all of Steve Earle's admirable artistic traits -- and I count honesty as being one of them -- there's nothing remotely subtle about his John Walker song, and that's where the material suffers. The song is decent, but strains to psychologize Walker, leaving the listener to assume the song's subject ended up the way he did because he was raised on MTV and didn't look like the people he saw on television. Are those really the reasons why somone ends up like that? Or are the reasons much more complex and elusive and nearly indefinable? If the latter, that's the human condition. Great art, if it offers anything, offers us a glimpse of the light, perhaps a better understanding of the nature of the things around us. It attempts to approach truth, however brutal that truth may be, or however painful the search for it often proves. These are exactly the reasons why "Paradise" is one of the most profound and haunting songs Springsteen has ever written. Period. The song's character is not necessarily the suicide bomber of the first verse, or even the widow of the second (and possibly the third) verse. The character is the concept of paradise, itself. Does it exist? Does the mere thought of it provide solace for those who have lost dearly? What about those who choose life over death? How do we live this life if grace and healing seem so wholly absent during our darkest hours? What about distorted beliefs of what the afterlife is? And why is there such an attachment to the immanent while our hearts hunger for the transcendent? Is our resident song analyst, Ed Miller, now going to tell us that Bruce Springsteen had commercial considerations and endorsements in mind when he wrote this eerily powerful song? And what artistic statement challenges us to think more about the human condition: a noble attempt to explain John Walker's life or the song that captures -- in all its ambiguity -- our restless search for meaning beyond our very own existence? And I wait for paradise . . . Tom Bernardo ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:44:39 EDT From: TeleNYC@aol.com Subject: Re: From Rolling Stone: 'Earle Pays, Springsteen Slides' On Tue, 08 Oct 2002, Edward Miller explains: << The fundamental explanation for the differing critical and political reactions to the two latest CDs is this: Bruce wants to sell records, and therefore plays it safe and non-political >> Yup. That's gotta be it. Couldn't possibly be that they see things differently, or simply act differently in other areas of their lives. If Bruce wanted to play it safe, he never would have performed or released American Skin (41 Shots), as the people it was likely to alienate, and in many cases did, make up a significant percentage of his audience. As for Paradise, you see trepidation; I see brilliant subtlety that contributes to one of the most powerful and effective songs he's ever written. A baseball bat upside the head's effective too, but not generally artistically successful. For that matter, what the hell was Shakespeare thinking? Was Hamlet really insane or just pretending? Why didn't Bill make it clear? Freakin' wimp...play's a wishy-washy piece of...guy must have been sucking up to the nobles or somethin'... And, no, I'm not really comparing Springsteen to Shakespeare...although...hmm...could be an interesting dissertation in there somewhere... Scott Peterson TeleNYC@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:23:35 CEST From: Cristian Di Sclafani - Archesis Subject: Setlists since 1978 Hello, i write you to say that i have updated my web page on which you can get complete Bruce setlists from 1978 to today through a search engine and getting several statistics on Bruce concerts. You can find my Bruce setlist page on http://bruce.archesis.it Ciao from Cris Di Sclafani ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:44:40 EDT From: TeleNYC@aol.com Subject: Re: SNL On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Tom Ross wrote: << Well it took 10 years, but Bruce finally got the SNL monkey off his back. That earlier performance was......... well let's leave the past in the past. I thought last night's ( Oct. 5th ) SNL performance was amazing. >> Having just watched the Saturday Night Live episode on tape, I had a very different reaction. The performances were good, no question, but they also seemed a bit off. For one thing, watching what seemed like a dozen musicians crammed onto that tiny stage singing a song called "Lonesome Day" felt more than a bit incongruous to me. Profitable artistic tension can often come from just such situations, but this one just seemed odd to me. Great performance of the song--although Nils should have been turned up higher--but the visual disparity threw me. Not that this was Bruce's fault of course; the size of the SNL stage is the size of the SNL stage, and there's nothing he could do about it. But it still seemed odd. Meanwhile, I almost loved "You're Missing," but kind of saw it through the eyes of one who doesn't know the words by heart, as my wife needed the captions turned on-- Bruce's delivery for the first few verses was mumbled and mannered in a way that I found sort of effective, as long as one was familiar with the song; to one who'd never heard it, it was indeciperable, and surely this is a song whose lyrics are crucial. And that had to be one of the most pointless harmonica solos ever. Bruce has never been in a position to challenge Sonny Boy or Little Walter or even Magic Dick but this was far, far below his usual standards. His previous appearance, meanwhile, was a bold departure. Some of it may not have worked--I though 57 Channels was absolutely brilliant, although I know others thought it hideous-- but it was audacious, something Bruce isn't often. Mind you, I do have to try to keep my eyes on Bruce during that entire time, as Shane, the guitarist with the big hair, is so freakin' annoying; is it just me, or does he seem like he's trying out for the part of Paul Stanely in a Kiss cover band sans makeup? Scott Peterson TeleNYC@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:04:03 -0400 From: "Cindy Galbraith" Subject: Auction help The Canadian newsgroup, E Street Canada, is organizing an online auction to support the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto. I know that you've been asked many times, but the need is great. If you have items that you would like to donate, please contact me directly at cgalbraith@tvo.org. More than 150,000 in the Greater Toronto Area rely on food banks each month and almost 40% of these are children. I believe that this is simply unacceptable. Nobody wins unless we all win. Cindy Galbraith ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 17:09:12 +0200 From: "Matej Krajnc" Subject: Re: LuckyTown Digest V9 #92 Hello, I don't know if the answer to Cheryl has already been posted by anyone, but as to answer the "Only The Lonely" thing: Orbison and Joe Melson penned this song in 1959 without the dum be doo wah phrases. A demo of it was also sung lower and without falsetto. At the same time they also penned a song called Come Back To Me My Love, which had dum dum doo bee phrases. They rethought the idea, took the dum be doo wah from Come Back To Me and put it into Only The Lonely. Roy then took the song to Elvis, who just came back from the army, but the legend says he was asleep, so JOe Melson prompted Roy to record the song himself. It didn't quite click until Roy tried the falsetto. All that happened in 1960 and the demise in Roy's family slowly started arouund 1963 when he divorced his first wife. They remarried three years after that and soon after that she died. Two years later there was a fire and two of Roy's sons died. Roy's closest neighbor at the time was Johnny Cash, who bought the burned property from Roy. "Only The Lonely" was #2 on Hot 100 in 1960 and #1 in England. Roy rerecoded it in 1985 for his album of greatest hits In Dreams and sang it in Black And White Night, which featured Bruce, among others. The song Come Back To Me My Love got a slightly different dum bee dum bee phrase and emerged on Roy's first LP for Monument Records in 1961. Regards, Matej Krajnc from Slovenia ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:48:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Dirk-Willem Poot Subject: Ticketdrops in Europe? For years I have been reading on the digest about the Ticket Drop. No I find myself in a position that such an event would be the only way of me getting into the Dutch show. So does anyone know if Bruce has a history of ticketdrops in Europe as well? DW Furthermore I think that the Dutch ticketservice ought to be destroyed. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:48:35 -0400 From: mendez@comcast.net Subject: the Bruce Politik Paul Fischer's question as to Bruce's comments forced me to respond in LTD to what I feel is out-of-line in Bruce's dialogue with his crowds. At the Philly show Bruce was talking about how it is necessary and we should demand for our country to hold debate about going into War (Iraq). His words and tone of voice basically implying that this debate was not happening. Well either Bruce hasn't read the papers lately or he is misinformed. The debate he's calling for is exactly what has been going on in Congress the past week. Bruce should have couched his comments differently and he wouldn't have sounded so foolish. What about saying how great it is that our country IS debating the issue. Why the negative tone to his comments? Why all the talk about how bad this country is? You want talk about "civil rights" Bruce? Why not mention the rape, torture and murder of Iraqi citizens that dare speak out against the Iraqi regime? Bruce would be wise to remember that in Iraq and all of the other dictatorships and communist countries he would have been throw in jail (or worse) a long time ago for not only espousing his political viewpoints but just for singing his songs! No one is attending a Bruce show for a political lesson. They are concerts not political rallies. Talking about poverty, hunger, people being out of work and rebuilding run down cities and towns is one thing. But when you start talking from the concert stage about issues concerning a War that our country is currently involved due to the murder of 3,000 American's in a single day you are walking on a dangerous line and you better have your facts straight. My bottom line is if Bruce feels the need to talk about the War on Terror from the stage I'd like to hear more positive comments about what makes America great and how we should preserve those liberties for all generations and help inspire them for all peoples rather than how awful we are. Jon Mendez Secaucus, NJ [text/html attachment deleted] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:27:46 -0400 From: "kyle gilrain" Subject: Multiple Responses/Interpretations Ok my second post on Lucytown. My first never made it to the list. Mary's Place - Maybe because I am catholic...feels to me like the song is about the party we have after a funeral. We celebrate and try to move past the pain of the death. The party is a big stress release and is usually very fun for those who are there really only to comfort the immediate family. For those not in the immediate family it is usually a fun time to see those whom you have not seen in years (often times) and the immediate family does find that they "loose myself in the crowd." To be surrounded by those who care about you is very comforting, but you do not usually wanna celebrate. I think the song is filled with religious references that I do not understand....maybe because I am not a good catholic. Bruce, however, has found his way back into the church as he grew older so I am sure every single word means something. Of course, this is just my interpretation. I do love the one that a woman posted about Mary's Place being the "Stone Pony in the sky." I think she is my soulmate. "Rollback of our rights"...I could not help but laugh at the irony of Bruce telling people to watch out for this rollback and somone posting on here that they have no idea what he is talking about. He means that the price we are paying for the increased security and giving the FBI, police, homeland security, ect...the ability to just search and turn peoples lives upside down under the guise of making us safer is a clear violation of our civil rights and contradicts the fabric of our nation. We are going "back" to a time when not everyone has the same rights (i.e. white woman in a dinner calls in about different ethnic background possible terrorists and they are detained on the side of a road for a full day...searched..put on national TV, etc.). These aspiring doctors were eventually cleared, but imagine going to work the next day and trying to convince the ill to trust you? Anyway, this is going on all over. The ACLU has been slammed with work recently. Whew...its a brief but powerful message indeed. So..that said..please do not attack my political opinion. Afterall, this is just an interpretation of what Bruce said. Cheers, Kyle J. Gilrain "tonight all is silent in the world as we take our stand...down in Jungleland" BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (1975) Jungleland ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 21:30:23 -0500 From: Barry Kaplovitz Subject: "MONUMENTAL"--FleetCenter (Boston) Concert Review (The Boston Phoenix) From The Boston Phoenix Issue Date: October 10 - 17, 2002 Bruce Springsteen MONUMENTAL BY CARLY CARIOLI Last Friday night at the FleetCenter, I saw rock-and-roll's middle age, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. Like his songs, Springsteen the man seems to have acquired the granite solemnity of official sanction. His grim charcoal suit coat and vest, perhaps nicked from the grave of a Depression-era banker, matched his graying, close-cropped-yet-still-unruly steel-wool mane. As the opening convocation, "The Rising," reached its peak, Springsteen made a face that he often makes when he sings: that great De Niro-esque shit-eating frown, a gargoyle grotesque of passion and disappointment and determination. And as he made the face, he took his hands off his guitar and stood with legs apart in a slight crouch, arms out away from his sides, palms forward: the good, sturdy stance of a man determined not to tip or lean or fall, the poise of a defensive back resolved to let nothing by him. Below us, on the floor of the FleetCenter, several men held up an American flag with Springsteen's image superimposed upon the stripes, a sweating, bandanna'd likeness rendered in the blue-green patina of the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps it is too late to complain that Springsteen is now more monument than man, the type of artist who gets dragged out to commemorate tragedies and dedicate large public works (in the hours before his FleetCenter show, he sang at a new bridge named for the activist Leonard P. Zakim). Perhaps the complaint itself is misguided; maybe we need him this way, he set in his ways, we in ours. Surely there was nothing wrong with his performance last Friday. The E Street Band are one of the great rock-and-roll spectacles--having seen them let loose on the Spectorian two-chord punk of "Ramrod," I'll never again call Rocket from the Crypt the best band in the universe. Whether or not the stories Springsteen tells on 'The Rising' stand up to the scrutiny of future generations, the songs--the ghostland soul of "My City of Ruins" and the crisp, cheddar-sharp Appalachian deliverance of "Into the Fire," the absent-hearted ballads "Lonesome Day" and "Empty Sky"--could pass for greatest hits. A couple of them could pass for the songs of 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.' The faith, love, and hope of the compromised protagonist in "Badlands" became the faith, love, and hope of the uncompromised hero in "Into the Fire." This is Springsteen the monument in middle age: sentenced to rewriting his greatest hits and to dedicating bridges. A Springsteen concert is a ritual. And as one who recoils at the easy familiarity that ritual provides, I found myself wishing for a glimpse of a different Springsteen. There was a tiny glimpse, a cameo by the unsure-of-himself, new-Dylan Springsteen in "For You," the lyrically dense composition from his first album, 'Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.,' here delivered alone at the piano and, after all these years, still in a voice that seems to imitate Dylan. This must have been a special occasion: apparently he doesn't do that sort of thing much anymore. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/live/documents/02470697.htm ------------------------------ End of LuckyTown Digest V9 #94 ****************************** ********************************************************************* ** LuckyTown WWW URL ** The LuckyTown FAQ, back issues, web-based subscription/unsubscription, and many other things can be found on the LuckyTown WWW Page: http://www.luckytown.org ** LuckyTown mailing list addresses ** You can send email to go into the next LuckyTown Digest to: luckytown@luckytown.org You can send email to go into the next LuckyTown-Ads Digest to: luckytown-ads@luckytown.org Any questions for the list admin should be emailed to: owner-luckytown@luckytown.org To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luckytown.org with message body: unsubscribe luckytown-digest To get further information on how to subscribe/unsubscribe/change your subscription address, as well as the other available commands, send email to majordomo@luckytown.org with message body: help ********************************************************************* The contents of this digest are not necessarily approved by the list admin.