Great Plans

Lots going on. Recognizing the fifth anniversary of the death of Allen Woody, bassist extraordinaire. Five years ago tonight, my friend Chris and I went to about the worst damn show I've ever seen. We caught The Other Ones, parts of the Grateful Dead led by Bob Weir and Mickey Hart. If there were two people in the Dead that should NEVER EVER front a band, it's these two. I caught the band two years previous and the spark was there. I took my dad and even he loved the show. This time totally blew. One thing that didn't help was the fact that the setlist was nearly identical to the first. My only highlight was a cool Cassidy. Any rate, I came home and the next morning on the computer was a flood of e-mails noting Woody's death. Too bad.
Fifteen years ago tonight, Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin. That was a heartbreaker as well. What a loss. I remember starting my senior year of high school in a total funk because of that one.
On a positive note, my same friend Chris and I are seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with the Black Crowes opening up!!! The show's at the Greek Theater in Berkeley which is just about the best venue on earth. God did a nice job making the Berekeley hills, and tomorrow, a couple of great bands will sing his praises with some kick butt rock and roll. Hoping the Crowes smoke again. It will be great seeing my friend as we go way back and have a long and wonderful friendship. Plus, if you read this in time (and only if, no cheatsies), I'm buying tomorrow as a thank you!!! Here's to hoping that the Crowes play Descending and that Petty plays American Girl.

Tramps Like Us, Baby

We were Born To Run. Thirty years ago today, Bruce's breakthrough album was released and what a weird piece of music it is. This is the album that most people discover Bruce, as it was mine. While knowing the title cut and not being that impressed for years, I heard this album backwards and thankfully found all of the songs that stand the test of time and not the corporate dj thrashing. These songs and this album are weird and I'll discuss that below. But first, the track listings:

1. Thunder Road
2. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
3. Night
4. Backstreets
5. Born To Run
6. She's the One
7. Meeting Across the River
8. Jungleland

I heard the last song first and was immediately hit with the West Side Story 70s theatricality of the song but also the killer guitar break into the bridge. Hearing this song for the first time in my cousin's 67 Camero (how's that for cliche?) ten years ago, I went out and purchased the lp. That's right, vinyl. Celluloid. Wax. Taking the tracks in order, I heard songs that bounced all over from sentimental ballads to Philly soul to straight ahead rockers. I won't pontificate upon the fourth and favorite track as I've done many times in the past, though I will say that I never tire of the pain the protagonist experiences in the process of growing up and losing his naivete. Bruce's first album contained a song, Growin' Up though he didn't really sing it until Backstreets.
BTR is a transitional album in all sense of the word. It's nothing like his first two records which were wild exercises in funky r&b with Dylanesque lyric runs that only ended after every word in the English language was used to rhyme. Even Bruce says that Blinded By the Light caused his rhyming dictionary to burst into flames. No more familiar characters from the first two albums nor any of the epic grandeur of the second album. Rosie didn't come out because she wasn't asked, Janey, Sandy, the romantic young boys, they're all relegated to a single song. Here, Bruce begins singing, not about the characters, but AS the characters, which is what he'll be most successful at throughout his career. However, he's still fixated on "the city" and it's most likely New York. We're still very geography-driven and only with knowing where Bruce was up to 1975 does the listener understand Bruce's obsession with NYC. However, the girl, the boy and the car become monolithic symbols that become first defined here. The three are doing nothing but trying to get out, something they will spend albums still trying to do. Only in 1987 do the boy and the girl make it home and into adulthood with the Tunnel of Love album. Here, the boy and the girl are running to maintain their youth and innocence (however defined they may be) but starting in 1978, Bruce's characters run to maintain their pride and self-worth, even when they're looking for it. Born To Run is the last of the youthful albums and yet just a hint of what was to come with Darkness and The River. Nebraska will drive home the values and meanings of Bruce's successful years but Born To run seems to cling to that last glimmer of hope that by running now, the young will never get caught or caught up. Naive as he was thirty years ago, it is Bruce's desire to break out one last time before life catches up that makes me fall in love with Mary every time. Some days she's a girl, some times she's a lonely woman. Others, she's beautiful and sometimes the song sings from her mouth and perspective. Tenth Avenue is silly backslapping boy machismo that I only wish I had. Night is the first Darkness song as its themes are only beginning to be defined. Backstreets; enough said. She's the One is Buddy Holly if he lived. Meeting is strictly the prelude to the final cut which is Bruce's final magnum opus of rock opera. The title cut, which hangs occasionally like the albatross, when listened to with fresh ears, is the accumulation of twenty years of rock history and the trumpet blast declaration of independence for those still with hope throughout the years. Overblown, over-sung and yet dripping with a passionate zeal for truth, it's the last verse that has come to define the genius of Bruce Springsteen:

Someday, baby, I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun
But 'til then, tramps like us, baby,
We were born to run.

A Little Town In Texas

Right now is embroiled in a conflict as a mother of a killed Iraq War soldier holds a vigil outside the ranch of President George "Let Someone Else's Kid Serve" Bush. On an aside, remember this is August, the one month the president "vacations" since he's already screwed so much up in the country. I kind of like the president being out of the White House. Notice, nothing bad totally happens, but also remember the smug prick's attitude in August of 2001 that he had deserved a vacation. Bush has spent twenty percent of his presidency on vacation. Quite an efficient and hard working president. He's fucked the country up in only eighty percent of the time it took other two termers to thrash things. We all know that Cheney's in charge anyway.
Back to the rant: Cindy Sheehan has become the spokeswoman of the antiwar movement; she's the antichrist of the right. Her words and deeds have been misquoted, slandered and outright fabricated in right-wing circles to make her look like an evil hag. Here's a woman who once (like most Americans) supported military action in Iraq who has since changed her mind since her son was killed. Unfortunately it has taken many good-hearted people to have their loved ones blown up to change their minds; if we hadn't so blindly jumped into the war in the first place, maybe nineteen hundred families would have their sons and daughters with them.
Why did Cindy Sheehan's son die? For freedom, of course. For Iraqis to be free. To be free to live in a country on the brink of civil war; free for the nation's citizens to still be without electricity or civic offices or an operating military. Freedom for Iraqis to watch the Shiite faction attempt to create a government that is so liberal that it makes most other sixteenth century constitutions look conservative; Iraqi woman are watching their freedoms jeopardized. The nation's oil fields are in jeopardy; the nation's economy is in jeopardy. But there's always freedom. Freedom for Iran and Syria to use Iraq as a testing ground for later region-wide wars. Freedom for hundreds of more American soldiers and countless, God bless them, Iraqi civilians, like the forty-five killed today by car bombs, to be butchered. Freedom for the president to sink this country into the greatest foreign policy morass since the Vietnam War, something his own father promised not to recreate when he decided to declare war on the same country. We're free here at home to watch our economy sink based on the unstable oil market and U.S. hegemony weaken in the world's most unstable region. We're free to look like the puppeteers of Israel which is also currently watching a territorial struggle and its own people rent in two over imperialist actions shrouded in messianic demagoguery. We're free to see Iran and North Korea continue their nuclear programs in defiance of the free world's threats and efforts. We're free to see the safety of our own children threatened and all for what? I don't know; let me consult the polls and the straw men the Republicans will construct in order to distract voters who so patriotically will continue to send their children to be killed all in the name of Jesus, capitalism and American hegemony (not in that order).

8/9/95

Yesterday I was too deep in reflection and a bit of sadness to even write. Say whatever, but for me, this was a tough day for many reasons. I'm just thankful that Workingman's and American Beauty sound better than ever remastered.

Peggy Noonan ripped ol' Bushie Boy a new one over his handling Iraq. Wish I had the link, but it's on Altercation from today. I can't stand this woman and yet I found myself cheering for her today. Read it and you'll agree.

Looking forward to some good music trades in the mail. An Allman Brothers Band show from last month, a Grateful Dead show from '82 (something that will be new to me) and some upcoming Bruce. Not sure whether to make his show something old or new. Haven't been listening to the Boss much lately because I'm a bit spent listening to those acoustic shows. However, in just a week and a half will be the thirtieth anniversary of Born To Run. That'll be my little "Sgt. Pepper's" day where I'll listen to nothing but that one disc. Maybe even on lp, and I'll dig out my live shows and listen to live versions of those songs. Think I'm nuts? You haven't heard Thunder Road until you get the pops and hisses that remind you of your own life and haven't heard Backstreets until you've thrown on March 35, 1977, turned down the lights, cracked a cold beer and you'll ache like she just broke up with you...

OK, OK, Last Time Tonight

I saw this on the Allman Brothers Band listserv. Try this, this is awesome. Do a Google search and type in "failure" and see what the first site is. God bless the Internet. Must have been intelligently designed...

By the Way,

Bush went public that he supports the teaching of "intelligent design" in public education. Figures, since ID teaches that life on earth is too complex to explain so it must be in the will of God. I wonder if he can convince the Red Staters that maybe ID is the reason why their sons and daughters are dying by the thousands in Iraq. Maybe it's ID that's the root of why oil prices are skyrocketing; maybe it's ID that caused all of those WMDs to appear in the land of the fertile crescent. Ironic, isn't it, since many of the stories and theologies of the Old Testament Jews originated from that Mesopotamian place that this nation currently occupies. While George removes his opposable thumb from his butt, maybe he'll realize that he should stick to screwing up the present and not the future by meddling in education. The last thing we need is a class clown telling the school how it should be run. Maybe everyone'll get C's in order to disguise the dummies whose parents will keep them running the place.

The Most Rock N Roll Band

In rock and roll still is the Black Crowes. I caught them Friday night at the Fillmore in San Francisco after a gap of seven years. These guys were hotter than I've ever seen and you can tell that they're enjoying themselves and the people digging the music. The hall was packed for the first of a five-night run and the boys blew the doors off the place for two and a half hours. Great setlist including some wonderful covers. The Crowes have always done their homework, except instead of blatantly ripping off their sources they show respect for their elders and those that came before them. The hot old tunes they threw at us were Don't Do It (by Marvin Gaye but in the vein of The Band a la The Last Waltz), I'm Going Home by Delaney and Bonnie, a Byrds tune (that eludes me, darnit) brought to them by Gram from Sweetheart, and the evening's closer, Don't Let Me Down by the Fab Four. Gripping set, plus it didn't hurt that I got to look at Kate Hudson all night. It was all happening.

Thirty-one years ago today, Dick. Thanks. By the way, Mark says "yep, I was him." Say hi to Pat. Your son-in-law's gonna lose, by the way to Hillary.

Yesterday, broadcast journalism lost a giant. Peter Jennings succumbed to his battle with lung cancer last night. I've really wrestled with this, as I've always watched national news on ABC for him instead of Rather. I'd watch Jennings even over Tom Brocaw, though I liked him, too. However, as a teacher, I use the video documentary series The Century as a major learning tool for my Twentieth Century lessons, and Peter Jennings narrated the series. I've come to memorize his written lines and directed cues to the historic news footage that has taught U.S. history to almost ten years of students. I told my wife this summer how weird it would be to watch the videos that included James Stockdale and William Westmoreland, since they both just died this summer, but now the entire ten decades will have a sad, nostalgic feeling to them. My students won't care less but at least I'll be able to listen to Jennings' commanding voice and solid present stare and know that even in the worst of times things were going to work themselves out. RIP.

I Know, I Know, Shaddap, Chris!!!

I think this is the longest I've gone without blogging, and the inner blogger religion makes me feel guilty that I don't do it. I've been back to work and school is absolutely killing me. A first weekend respite is coming soon, and I'll be taking advantage of it by seeing the Black Crowes in concert. Should be a great one...

John Roberts, the riddle wrapped in an enigma...Hard core right-wing ideologue who does pro-bono for gay rights groups? Have fun with that, MSM!

Bush promotes intelligent design, because he believes that students should have the right to see what all the fuss is about and have the option to choose and debate what they believe in. Announced for next week, Condi Rice will push for students to have the option of taking Algebra II or some bullshit class where, because you don't like the answers in your real math class that either you don't agree with them or are too stupid to work them out, you get to choose the kind of math you believe in. Ironic, isn't it, because the hard core right wing has been screaming that only one version of U.S.history should be taught, that which promotes civic duty and nationalism. Google Lynne Cheney and you'll see that this woman is a frightening fascist.

Bill Frist finally remembers that he's a doctor and a man of science, not someone who'll be pushed around into making any more claims that HIV can be spread via saliva or that people aren't brain dead using video footage. Good job, Bill; just in time for you to start fundraising for that 2008 campaign...

Latest New Yorker has an article on the troglodyte Grover Norquist, who, in stumping the 1970s' (when has ANYTHING from that decade been politically worth keeping around?)idea that all taxes are bad, shows that he's going to hijack the Republican Party because he wants to see everything in this country fall to pot. Rich people shouldn't pay taxes, middle class people have no choice, and poor people can't afford to. So, in wanting to keep things status quo, he'll propose some smoke and mirrors social issue to stir up support for right wing anti-tax nutjobs who'll totally screw the middle class out of everything it stands for in the name of "values" issues. Either a genius or a total nut, but I repeat myself.

How is it that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby can just pass around top secret documents without permission and leak CIA names without getting caught but if schools don't agree to giving up names of graduating seniors to the military, they can be shut down? Maybe a non sequitor, but damnit, I'm pissed now!

My boy's waking up and I need to go. He's almost a year old now. Amazing.

Oh, by the way, Rod Stewart was greater than the Rolling Stones ever were from 1969 to 1974. Don't believe me? Buy his box set Reason To Believe. Sorry Mick and Keef.