Lost but not forgotten, from the dark heart of a dream
Adam raised a Cain

In the hallway Andy Gould lamented that there wasn’t anybody shy of retirement age that could get up on stage and fete James Taylor.

Oh, India Arie acquitted herself well.  And Keith Urban rocked the house.  But Keith Urban shares James Taylor’s manager.  And he flashed, but he instigated no belief.  And make no mistake, we used to believe.

On paper, last night’s affair was a creme de la creme fete.  The kind of affair the public drools about missing.  But it was lame.  Boring.  Bullshit.  Because it lacked the passion, the edge, the SPIRIT of rock and roll.

I’m a big James Taylor fan.  I would have much rather seen HIM perform for an hour.  Then again, when he finally hit the stage late in the evening he did that sweet grandfatherly act that sounds good but means almost nothing.

I’d tell you I’m giving up, that I’m leaving music, throwing my mind up north to Silicon Valley.  But last night I saw Bruce Springsteen, and once again, I saw the future of rock and roll.

Oh, don’t test my pedigree.  I bought "Asbury Park" when it came out.  Went to the Bottom Line in 74, the year BEFORE "Born To Run", because I had to hear the songs I loved from "The Wild, The Innocent…" live.  And to say he killed would be an understatement.

But somewhere along the line Bruce lost his way.  Oh, after the American earthiness of "Darkness".  Sometime later, in 84, when he sung about "Glory Days" and played stadiums.  He was being famous, and that’s kind of strange for an outcast.  It never works for someone on the fringes.  Only those in the MAINSTREAM are comfortable with fame.  Because for those on the edges…they don’t fit in the middle.

I can’t blame Bruce for taking a left turn.  Having a family.

Oh, he did "The Streets Of "Philadelphia", a deserving Academy Award winner.

But then he reunited with the E Street Band.

Neil Young doesn’t get together and go back on tour with Buffalo Springfield.  You can’t give the public what it wants.  You’ve got to be true to yourself.

And then came "Devils & Dust".  One could applaud where it came from, one just didn’t want to listen to it.  And you wanted to listen to the old albums, over and over again.  It seemed Bruce Springsteen had lost his way.

But that turns out to be untrue.  Last night Bruce Springsteen convinced me he’s an American original.  He’s what this country is about.  A hunger to express oneself, a hunger to MAKE IT!

Bruce Springsteen is a shitty storyteller.  He’s no raconteur.  Still, you hang on every word.  Because it’s not the STYLE of what he’s saying that’s important, but WHAT he’s saying.  In a world where everything’s dolled up for public consumption, that’s a REVELATION!  When Bruce hit the stage last night and started talking there was an intimacy and an honesty that eluded all of the household names that preceded him.

And speaking of preceding him…  Bruce remarked how he had OPENED for one of the previous introductory hosts, Cheech Marin, at a club in Philadelphia.

Can you imagine Paris Hilton OPENING for someone in some shithole in the hinterlands when her "album" finally comes out?  Can you imagine her starting at the bottom and CLAWING her way to the top?  That’s what Bruce Springsteen did.  And you have no idea how hard it is.  Playing original material no one wants to hear, everybody but your bandmates telling you to give up, get started in the work economy with a straight job, or be left behind FOREVER!  The only thing you’ve got is belief, in YOURSELF!

Bruce spoke in an offhand manner that made you believe he was speaking to YOU!  And you’d let him go on forever.  You were hanging on every word.

And then he strummed that acoustic.  With a power that nobody on stage had done previously.  He threw his hand across it like a worker in the old west driving a railroad spike.  You see, almost forty years on, Bruce Springsteen had to prove it to us, that he still had it, that he still mattered, that he was IMPORTANT, that we should pay ATTENTION!

That’s what rock used to be.  It used to DEMAND we watched.  That’s why we went to the gig.  To see the human cannonball.

And the people playing the music, these outsiders, this was the only way they could make it in this life, the only way they could survive, and therefore they put their complete heart and soul into it.  They needed to MESMERIZE us, so they could continue to do it.

Everybody before Bruce was going through the motions.  With that guitar strum, Bruce entered a trance, he went into a zone, he showed us what rock and roll was all about.

His pure DESIRE translated.  It RIVETED US!

He played James’ "Millworker", from "Flag".  And he changed a line.  He added a word.  He sang that millwork was a "boring FUCKING job".  A destiny he’d escaped through hard work and inspiration.  Watching him, you were inspired too, to avoid a life of drudgery, to be your best.