{"id":2444,"date":"2009-12-02T08:15:22","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T16:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2009-12-02T08:15:43","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T16:15:43","slug":"more-rr-hall-of-fame-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/02\/more-rr-hall-of-fame-concert\/","title":{"rendered":"More R&R Hall Of Fame Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOVE HAS NO PRIDE<\/span><\/p>\n

A revelation.<\/p>\n

Have you ever been left?<\/p>\n

It hurts bad enough to go first, you’re wracked with guilt.\u00c2\u00a0 But when you’re left behind, you’re truly at loose ends.\u00c2\u00a0 You were the last to know.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually your beloved decided to move out, to dump you long before.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re over the emotional hump.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re just beginning.<\/p>\n

How many times have I heard "Love Has No Pride"?<\/p>\n

Written by Eric Kaz and Libby Titus, I was first exposed on Bonnie Raitt’s second album, "Give It Up".\u00c2\u00a0 Twenty years later, Bonnie cut an album just as good, maybe even better, "Luck Of The Draw", but for a long time "Give It Up" was my favorite, and the best.<\/p>\n

Although Chris Smither’s "Love Me Like A Man" is usually cited as the album’s centerpiece, the end of first side killer, I was more enamored of side two, which began with "Too Long At The Fair".<\/p>\n

Now unavailable in its fast, vinyl version, the slowed-down digital take still haunts.<\/p>\n

And then we’re straight into Jackson’s "Under The Falling Sky".\u00c2\u00a0 A tear in a way the original is not.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the oldie, "You Got To Know How".\u00c2\u00a0 Then the unexpected blitz of "You Told Me Baby".<\/p>\n

Only Bonnie can deliver this material.\u00c2\u00a0 Intelligent, with an edge.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got wimpy girls and slow-witted ones too.\u00c2\u00a0 But women with a mind, who aren’t afraid of speaking it…whew!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the essence of Bonnie Raitt’s appeal.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s your fantasy girlfriend.<\/p>\n

And then comes "Love Has No Pride".\u00c2\u00a0 The slow album closer.\u00c2\u00a0 The wimpy radio song.<\/p>\n

Until just now.\u00c2\u00a0 When I saw Bonnie perform it with Crosby & Nash at Madison Square Garden.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a little slower, and it was all about the message.<\/p>\n

But if you want me to beg, I’ll fall down on my knees<\/span>
Asking for you to come back<\/span>
I’d be pleading for you to come back<\/span>
Begging for you to come back to me<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, you eventually do sacrifice your pride.\u00c2\u00a0 After long torturous nights, on both sides of the raging debate in your head.\u00c2\u00a0 You swallow your pride, you’re honest.\u00c2\u00a0 You call them up and reveal your truth.<\/p>\n

But it makes no difference.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re already gone.<\/p>\n

This is a real story, one we almost all live eventually.\u00c2\u00a0 Grasping…for air.<\/p>\n

Sure, it’s about the song.\u00c2\u00a0 To create something so exquisite leaves the rest of us marveling.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s more than the changes, more than the words. It’s comes down to the delivery.\u00c2\u00a0 World-weary, having plied the boards for four decades, Bonnie Raitt delivered "Love Has No Pride" in such a way that I both related and was creeped out, I try to keep those emotions buried.<\/p>\n

It was the highlight of the first half of the show.<\/p>\n

THE PRETENDER<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m going to be a happy idiot<\/span>
And struggle for the legal tender<\/span>
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim<\/span>
To the heart and the soul of the spender<\/span>
And believe in whatever may lie<\/span>
In those things that money can buy<\/span>
Thought true love could have been a contender<\/span>
Are you there?<\/span>
Say a prayer for the Pretender<\/span>
Who started out so young and strong<\/span>
Only to surrender<\/span><\/p>\n

When these words poured out of the FM speaker in the fall of ’76 the term "yuppie" had not yet been coined.\u00c2\u00a0 Greed had not been legitimized.\u00c2\u00a0 We were just emerging from the hangover from the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Politics were taboo, but we were in a period of self-discovery.<\/p>\n

Whilst Jackson was singing about human emotions, charlatans like Werner Erhard were selling personal development programs, insisting that they could wipe away a lifetime of hurt, a lifetime of bad deeds in a weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to be content, we wanted to be happy idiots.<\/p>\n

We now are.<\/p>\n

We live in a world of consumerism.\u00c2\u00a0 People are not concerned with family life so much as what money can buy.\u00c2\u00a0 And this goes for the religious zealots too.\u00c2\u00a0 The "Atlantic" placed part of the blame for the economic crisis at the feet of the religious right.\u00c2\u00a0 Telling their flock that they were entitled to a life of plenty.<\/p>\n

Jackson delivered his number in an understated fashion.\u00c2\u00a0 But when he reached the above lyrics he belted them out, over an audience of winners who overpaid to be up close to what once was.<\/p>\n

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE<\/span><\/p>\n

I keep my distance from Jerry Lee Lewis.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember that exhaustive story in "Rolling Stone" wherein the suspicious deaths of those around him were delineated.<\/p>\n

But years later, in the twilight of his life, delivering his rockin’ original purely solo, the words stood out, they evidenced their truth.<\/p>\n

I’m real nervous, but it sure is fun<\/span><\/p>\n

Who hasn’t been anxious about asking that girl to dance?\u00c2\u00a0 Worried that the momentum built up in your head won’t sustain.<\/p>\n

Rock and roll doesn’t only speak to your genitalia, it also speaks to your head and heart.<\/p>\n

LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH<\/span><\/p>\n

In concert, the CSN show is pure nostalgia.<\/p>\n

But strangely, their segment worked on HBO.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of Stephen’s playing.<\/p>\n

Anybody can have technique.\u00c2\u00a0 You can pull up prepubescents on YouTube who can hit all the notes, replicate famous solos, dazzle with their speed.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s he who develops his own sound, that we hear and recognize instantly, that are truly Hall of Fame material.<\/p>\n

Thirty nine years ago, Stephen Stills was the biggest act in the business.\u00c2\u00a0 His solo album sat on the mantel of baby boomers throughout the land. Revisit it, you’ll be stunned.<\/p>\n

Stephen’s worse for wear, but it’s still him.\u00c2\u00a0 Dig him now, he won’t be around forever.<\/p>\n

SUPERSTITION<\/span><\/p>\n

It was written for Jeff Beck.\u00c2\u00a0 Stevie delivered it to the guitar maestro and then had second thoughts, he decided to record it himself.\u00c2\u00a0 "Superstition" was Stevie Wonder’s breakthrough.\u00c2\u00a0 All these years later, "Sunshine Of My Life" is the most famous track off "Talking Book", but it was "Superstition" that exploded Stevie Wonder, let him leave the "Little" appellation behind.<\/p>\n

Sure, he’d put out "Music Of My Mind", had even toured with the Stones, but "Superwoman" got very limited airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 But the clavinet underpinning of "Superstition" could not be denied.\u00c2\u00a0 Stevie Wonder rode the track straight into the American mainstream, where he went on to deliver on the promise, releasing three more albums just as good as "Talking Book", and they don’t get any better.<\/p>\n

Meantime, Jeff Beck ultimately cut an abysmal, bottom-heavy take of "Superstition" with Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert and then went jazz-rock, and was forgotten by the hoi polloi.<\/p>\n

Until last night.<\/p>\n

I credit Harvey Goldsmith.<\/p>\n

Beck’s been great forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Never lost a step.\u00c2\u00a0 As hot today as he was in the Yardbirds, as he was when he worked with Rod Stewart.\u00c2\u00a0 His fleet fingers are dancing over so many records.\u00c2\u00a0 But only when Eric Clapton had to pull out of this Hall of Fame gig did Jeff Beck get his chance.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure Harvey made it happen.<\/p>\n

And boy did Jeff deliver.<\/p>\n

Yup, almost four decades after Stevie Wonder retrieved his career-breaking hit, he called Jeff Beck on stage, to wail, to play along.<\/p>\n

And boy did he.\u00c2\u00a0 Wail.<\/p>\n

This was not nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 This was not quaint.\u00c2\u00a0 When Beck worked out, it was positively 2009, positively alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Live long enough, and maybe you get your due.<\/p>\n

BRUCE<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s tough.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s become an institution.\u00c2\u00a0 If you criticize him, you’re Un-American.\u00c2\u00a0 His followers have become like Palinistas, their man can do no wrong.<\/p>\n

He worked really hard.\u00c2\u00a0 But his voice was lacking…\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he’d done too many dates.\u00c2\u00a0 He was great on "Pretty Woman" with John Fogerty, but he lacked the transcendence we’ve all seen him deliver in the past.<\/p>\n

But the E Street Band?\u00c2\u00a0 They killed!<\/p>\n

Clarence nailed his sax solo.\u00c2\u00a0 Roy tickled the ivories.\u00c2\u00a0 And Max Weinberg evidenced restraint.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t call attention to himself, he just provided the underpinning.<\/p>\n

The rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s why we go to the show.\u00c2\u00a0 To go home.\u00c2\u00a0 To where we’re understood, where we’re our best selves.<\/p>\n

I went to the Bottom Line on a sweltering June night back in ’74, a year before "Born To Run" was released.\u00c2\u00a0 "The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle" had become my favorite album.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to see the man perform.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t difficult getting a ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 But I got there two hours early, ate an overpriced salad in a plastic boat, just to be within mere feet of the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 I could have sat in the very first row, but I left two empty chairs between me and the platform, I wanted to be far enough away to get pristine sound, to take it all in.<\/p>\n

The stage was crowded with players.\u00c2\u00a0 The songs on the albums came alive.\u00c2\u00a0 But the moment of transcendence came deep into the set, on a brand new number, "Jungleland".<\/p>\n

The midnight gang’s assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night<\/span>
They’ll meet ‘neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light<\/span><\/p>\n

It used to be Esso.\u00c2\u00a0 It had only been Exxon for a year or so.\u00c2\u00a0 Standard Oil of New Jersey coming up with this non-word that they could brand their company with throughout the world.<\/p>\n

You see Bruce Springsteen was new, he was ours.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t endure the war, he didn’t grow up in poverty in some godforsaken gray city in England.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a baby boomer.\u00c2\u00a0 Born into the land of plenty, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

What a complicated place, the Garden State.\u00c2\u00a0 In places gorgeous, in others a dump.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s got the beach.\u00c2\u00a0 The land of romance.<\/p>\n

Yes, Bruce Springsteen grew up in Asbury Park.\u00c2\u00a0 Where money wasn’t short, but support was.<\/p>\n

Our parents had grown up hard.\u00c2\u00a0 They knew how to provide, put food on the table, they just didn’t know how to relate.<\/p>\n

Bruce sang of this.\u00c2\u00a0 Of hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n

It’s not about this song or that, it’s about what he represented.\u00c2\u00a0 Liberation from a society that said you had to go to the right school, had to look a certain way.<\/p>\n

I find it ironic that the bankers who bought up the good seats at the Garden are such Boss fans.\u00c2\u00a0 If they were made fun of in school, at least they got straight A’s, so they could go to an Ivy League school, so they could rape and pillage as an adult.\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce was a loser with a capital "L".\u00c2\u00a0 Winning nowhere.\u00c2\u00a0 And through hard work and belief in himself, he triumphed.<\/p>\n

And he’s been on an endless victory lap for decades.<\/p>\n

Because he didn’t foresee this.\u00c2\u00a0 That little Bruce Springsteen could win, be a legend, rich in cash and adulation.<\/p>\n

He married an actress.\u00c2\u00a0 Went to psychotherapy.\u00c2\u00a0 Got divorced.\u00c2\u00a0 Remarried.\u00c2\u00a0 Had a family.\u00c2\u00a0 Went solo.\u00c2\u00a0 Went folk.\u00c2\u00a0 Reformed the band and has been trying to find the proper direction ever since.<\/p>\n

But at least he’s still alive, he’s still kicking.<\/p>\n

So many of the greats are no longer here.\u00c2\u00a0 They used dope to get through.\u00c2\u00a0 They were loved, but they couldn’t fit in.\u00c2\u00a0 On the surface they looked like kings, but inside they lived a life of pain.<\/p>\n

The ending of "Jungleland" was a triumph.\u00c2\u00a0 Of sheer power.\u00c2\u00a0 Of a man who played by his own rules and won.<\/p>\n

And that’s rock and roll.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOVE HAS NO PRIDE A revelation. Have you ever been left? It hurts bad enough to go first, you’re wracked with guilt.\u00c2\u00a0 But when you’re left behind, you’re truly at loose ends.\u00c2\u00a0 You were the last to know.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually your beloved decided to move out, to dump you long before.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re over the emotional hump.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Dq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}