Entries tagged as ‘Bruce Springsteen’
November 23, 2009 · 1 Comment
By Thursday morning last week, I had made up my mind to give the show Bruce Springsteen played in Baltimore on Friday night a pass. My attempts to procure a ticket through honorable means had failed. The aftermarket bidding for general admission tickets to the arena floor, where my friends would be, had inflated beyond my rationally justifiable price range. I’d already seen the great man perform with the E Street Band twice in 2009; five times in the last 24 months. That’s enough Boss, surely.
Even before I was a semi-pro critic, I was skeptical of superlatives. To me, they always reduced criticism to mere marketing. I don’t even like the year-end lists nearly every professional critic is compelled to compile. So that’s why, after returning home in the small hours of Saturday morning having experienced a concert that left me elated like no rock show has in years, I hedged. “One of the three or five best gigs I’ve ever seen,” I wrote in a excited Facebook post before going to bed.
But after chewing the matter over in the cold, clear light of a couple of days, I’m prepared to go all in: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s first show in Baltimore since 1973 was the best concert I have ever attended, by The Boss or anyone else. (more…)
Categories: job insecurity · music · navel-gazing
Tagged: Baltimore, Bruce Springsteen, concerts, criticism, pop music, setlists, superlatives
Look, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer didn’t invent this stuff, either. The greased hair and the leathers and the overdriven takes of Mad Men-era rock standards already had a blanket of dust on them a generation thick by the time The Boss and The Clash got around to them.
Jersey pomade-punks The Gaslight Anthem are the most persuasive current exponents of this tradition, and they don’t hide it. Hell, they called their latest album The ’59 Sound. At a sold-out 9:30 Club last night, they ripped through that nostalgic long-player in its near-entirety, frontman Brian Fallon balling up his handsome face to yowl about Redemption and car crashes and good girls in trouble with archaic-sounding names like Gale and — of course! — Mary. (more…)
Categories: 9:30 Club · The Washington Post · music · shameless self-promotion
Tagged: Bruce Springsteen, music, pop music, Post Rock, The Clash, The Gaslight Anthem, The Washington Post
My preview of Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood‘s gig with The Screwtopians at the Black Cat tonight is in today’s Examiner. It’s always a delight to talk to Patterson. We had an even longer, more freewheeling conversation two Sundays ago than when I interviewed him for DCist in May of 2008. Though the Examiner piece was focused on Murdering Oscar, his new-but-not-really “solo” album, we talked a lot about upcoming DBT projects, too. I hope I’ll be able to get that material out sometime soon.
(more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Black Cat, bonus audio, Bruce Springsteen, Drive-By Truckers, Murdering Oscar, music, Patterson Hood, songwriting, The River
Bruce Sprinsteen at Verzion Center, Monday, May 18, 2009. Photo by Kyle Gustafson.
Better: Read this review on DCist, where you can enjoy the rest of the great Kyle “Information Leafblower” Gustafson’s fabulous concert photos.
Bruce Springsteen is still Working on a Theme.
Actually, it’s more or less the same theme he’s been working on at least since Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978, when the theme morphed from, essentially:
This town is full of losers. Let’s you and me pull out of here to win!
(more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Bruce Springsteen, concerts, faith, music, rock and roll, salvation
. . . for which I will be departing directly, a porkpie-tip (though I’m more into Western shirts just now) to the Paper of Record’s ace pop critic Josh Fredom du Lac for posting all these old reviews of DC-area Springsteen concerts on the Post Rock blog. (Also for his interview with local boy and E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren, required reading for any E Street fan.) As someone who reads old rock journalism obsessively, I love this.
(more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Bruce Springsteen, critcism, music, The Washington Post
