{"id":312,"date":"2006-02-07T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2006-02-07T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/02\/07\/musiccares-dinner-2\/"},"modified":"2006-02-07T13:00:16","modified_gmt":"2006-02-07T20:00:16","slug":"musiccares-dinner-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/02\/07\/musiccares-dinner-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MusicCares Dinner-2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lost but not forgotten, from the dark heart of a dream
Adam raised a Cain<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Oh, India Arie acquitted herself well.\u00c2\u00a0 And Keith Urban rocked the house.\u00c2\u00a0 But Keith Urban shares James Taylor’s manager.\u00c2\u00a0 And he flashed, but he instigated no belief.\u00c2\u00a0 And make no mistake, we used to believe.<\/p>\n

On paper, last night’s affair was a creme de la creme fete.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of affair the public drools about missing.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was lame.\u00c2\u00a0 Boring.\u00c2\u00a0 Bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it lacked the passion, the edge, the SPIRIT of rock and roll.<\/p>\n

I’m a big James Taylor fan.\u00c2\u00a0 I would have much rather seen HIM perform for an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I’d tell you I’m giving up, that I’m leaving music, throwing my mind up north to Silicon Valley.\u00c2\u00a0 But last night I saw Bruce Springsteen, and once again, I saw the future of rock and roll.<\/p>\n

Oh, don’t test my pedigree.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought "Asbury Park" when it came out.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And to say he killed would be an understatement.<\/p>\n

But somewhere along the line Bruce lost his way.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, after the American earthiness of "Darkness".\u00c2\u00a0 Sometime later, in 84, when he sung about "Glory Days" and played stadiums.\u00c2\u00a0 He was being famous, and that’s kind of strange for an outcast.\u00c2\u00a0 It never works for someone on the fringes.\u00c2\u00a0 Only those in the MAINSTREAM are comfortable with fame.\u00c2\u00a0 Because for those on the edges…they don’t fit in the middle.<\/p>\n

I can’t blame Bruce for taking a left turn.\u00c2\u00a0 Having a family.<\/p>\n

Oh, he did "The Streets Of "Philadelphia", a deserving Academy Award winner.<\/p>\n

But then he reunited with the E Street Band.<\/p>\n

Neil Young doesn’t get together and go back on tour with Buffalo Springfield.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t give the public what it wants.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to be true to yourself.<\/p>\n

And then came "Devils & Dust".\u00c2\u00a0 One could applaud where it came from, one just didn’t want to listen to it.\u00c2\u00a0 And you wanted to listen to the old albums, over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed Bruce Springsteen had lost his way.<\/p>\n

But that turns out to be untrue.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night Bruce Springsteen convinced me he’s an American original.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s what this country is about.\u00c2\u00a0 A hunger to express oneself, a hunger to MAKE IT!<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen is a shitty storyteller.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s no raconteur.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, you hang on every word.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s not the STYLE of what he’s saying that’s important, but WHAT he’s saying.\u00c2\u00a0 In a world where everything’s dolled up for public consumption, that’s a REVELATION!\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

And speaking of preceding him…\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce remarked how he had OPENED for one of the previous introductory hosts, Cheech Marin, at a club in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine Paris Hilton OPENING for someone in some shithole in the hinterlands when her "album" finally comes out?\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine her starting at the bottom and CLAWING her way to the top?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Bruce Springsteen did.\u00c2\u00a0 And you have no idea how hard it is.\u00c2\u00a0 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!\u00c2\u00a0 The only thing you’ve got is belief, in YOURSELF!<\/p>\n

Bruce spoke in an offhand manner that made you believe he was speaking to YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 And you’d let him go on forever.\u00c2\u00a0 You were hanging on every word.<\/p>\n

And then he strummed that acoustic.\u00c2\u00a0 With a power that nobody on stage had done previously.\u00c2\u00a0 He threw his hand across it like a worker in the old west driving a railroad spike.\u00c2\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n

That’s what rock used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 It used to DEMAND we watched.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why we went to the gig.\u00c2\u00a0 To see the human cannonball.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 They needed to MESMERIZE us, so they could continue to do it.<\/p>\n

Everybody before Bruce was going through the motions.\u00c2\u00a0 With that guitar strum, Bruce entered a trance, he went into a zone, he showed us what rock and roll was all about.<\/p>\n

His pure DESIRE translated.\u00c2\u00a0 It RIVETED US!<\/p>\n

He played James’ "Millworker", from "Flag".\u00c2\u00a0 And he changed a line.\u00c2\u00a0 He added a word.\u00c2\u00a0 He sang that millwork was a "boring FUCKING job".\u00c2\u00a0 A destiny he’d escaped through hard work and inspiration.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching him, you were inspired too, to avoid a life of drudgery, to be your best.<\/p>\n

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Lost but not forgotten, from the dark heart of a dreamAdam 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And Keith Urban rocked the house.\u00c2\u00a0 But Keith Urban shares James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-312","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-52","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}