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Hi Diane and Kush,

"Darkness" is, as Diane said, an excllent album to revisit. I remember the first time
I heard it: where I was, who I was with, the anticipation of it and the enthrallment
to know that the positive anticipation was not met with any kind of a let down.

Had a chance to revisit two songs from "Working On A Dream" today (a reward
for some very good work I've done): "Kingdom Of Days" and "Surprise, Surprise"
which follows it. Am in agreement that both songs are about, or at the very
least, are informed by his relationship with his wife. If you listen for it, you'll also hear acknowledgements of aging. They are both sweet songs, touching close to overt sentiment, but thankfully, not going there. The first stanza of "Kingdom" reads:
"Wih you I don't hear the minutes ticking by
I don't feel the hours as they fly
I don't see the summer as it wanes
Just a subtle change of light upon your face."
Time and seasons are classic metaphors for the hourglass. There's a bit of L.C.
poetic vagueness when Springsteen later sings of a "walk away" and a "sing away"
without defining what it is that is being walked/sung away from. Probably,
he was hoping for people to project into the movement whatever it is that's
relevant for them, maybe regrets of specific kinds, among them. With
"Surprise, Surprise" the line "we traveled so far we two" is a standout, as
covering distances, temporal and otherwise. And the temporal is even
more emphasized in "Kingdom Of Days," where he sings: "We laugh beneath
the covers and count the wrinkles and the grays". Again, both are nice songs,
though lacking a rock-and-roll punch. As a teenager, I was taken by Rod Stewart's
"Maggie May" (sp?) and his singing: "the lines on your face really show your age..."
Granted, it was someone else's face (and not that of a concurrently aging spouse),
but that was fully engaged rock-and-roll. Not knocking these two songs by
Springsteen, though, and giving him credit for expressing things as they appear to him,
in whatever way he chooses to honestly do so.

Steven, Diane...the first Springsteen song that "registered" in my mind was Born in the USA and first album I got of his was curiously enough Nebraska. I havent really gotten into Working on a Dream so havent had much to say about it (yet). But I have very slowly come to appreciate first The Rising and then Magic so perhaps WoaD has a future in my CD player. So far it is very pleasant to listen to (especially Queen of the Supermarket and Surprise Surprise) and The Last Carnival is truly poignant.
Steven ...glad you are helping out in stimulating our economy (and helping yourself to a new computer). The present crisis has made me more aware that we are all in it together - we sink or swim together. But we have a strong infrastructure so I believe we can withstand the shock. This too shall pass!
And that reminds me of some words from Long Walk Home ...

My father said "Son, we're lucky in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.

It would be great if Springsteen released a live album of just his new millenium songs.

Diane ...Sweet Soul Music was Sweet!! Which album is it from? Looks like there are still some Springsteen songs I dont know about.

Moi aussi, et aussi pas à Paris. Je voudrais voir Springsteen à Paris. Sur la vidéo ou en réalité

que? perdon, no entiendo frances. Por favor escribe Ingles como todos los demas!

Hi Kush,

There is that pleasant quality to "Queen of the Supermarket" and to "Surprise, Surprise."

You quoted from "Long Walk Home." It's a good song. That the song's dad spoke
of the town in a Norman Rockwellian ideal kind of way, may be at odds with the son's
finding "rank strangers" there now. Maybe its "a long way home" for what
the son feels is required to get back "home," but at least as a metapor for
what is good and supportive, those qualities (maybe in terms of personal
inner resources) are "home," nonetheless, which can be seen as a hopeful
statement. And back to the economy, there isn't a sense of the son there
being necessarily foreclosed/exiled from those supportive things. And in every town,
there are those that do focus on service to others, and who do, with words and deeds,
wrap their arms around others who need the care and connection,
of course.

Steven what you say in your last post about Surprise Surprise and Kingdom of Days rings true and I esp. agree with what you say about the deliberate vagueness of the walk away/sing away lines.

Kush are you heading south to Austin for a concert? Has that something to do with why you are starting to talk Spanish? Sé poco de francés y menos español. Si usted no habla Inglés me haces loco!

Sweet Soul Music was written by Sam Cooke and sung by Arthur Conley I think. Bruce's version is not on any album that I know of. When I first saw it I thought it was from a decade or so earlier than it is – when Bruce seemed to experiment more with different types of music - but it’s from the Tunnel of Love Tour 1988. Hey I just clicked on another youtube link to find this performance of Elvis’ Follow That Dream from the same Tour. (I saw that Tour and don’t remember either of these songs.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKIZr3S10Sc&NR=1
wow

Well I've given up trying to catch up and that's a niiice feeling:-)

Sé poco de francés y menos español. Si usted no habla Inglés me haces loco!

Bueno , vamos a cambiar a Ingles ahora. No mas Espanol o Frances. Ya tengo dolor de cabeza!

Nope no Austin right now. I wasnt gonna go just for the concert but could not get an extended break at this time (thats usually how my plans go). Nevertheless I am following the ticket situation in Chicago will see a little closer to the date if I can make it (2 hour drive) and if tickets are still available. Its on a Tuesday, who the heck goes to a concert on Tuesday?
Plus it feels weird to pay $250+ for a concert when I just saw these two geniuses in Chicago for $12 plus a few beers! There is no need to stimulate the economy that much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRXCc2BDIGo

But we'll see.....

Steven wrote:"Just about every song on Darkness has that searing darkness. It was the anger of a young man about the weight of his family's unresolved pain that was projected onto him; their 'lies':"
-- And, verily, he broke the mold. The inheriting of the sins, a biblically established
normality (really abnormal/dysfunctional) path of intergenerational transmission,
"The sins of the fathers...," stopped with him... a welcome new mold for
him to be setting and a model for others to take inspiration from, in this regard.

Hi Steven. What you said there was worth copying again. After watching that vid. of his Mum, it's easy to imagine a young Springsteen suffering under his father's anger/expectations, and with his mother in the role of sympathiser (he says somewhere on Darkness, your mother calls you by your true name). I imagine though that the school problems that made him feel like an outcast probably played as significant a role as the home problems in stoking the furious motivation that propelled Bruce into rock n roll. We busted out of class had to get away from those fools/We learned more from a three minute record baby than we ever learned in school.

Kush wrote: vamos a cambiar a Ingles ahora. No mas Espanol o Frances. Ya tengo dolor de cabeza!

Thank god for that. Although I only speak one language, that doesn't stop me noting poetry in other languages. There is a certain je ne sais quoi about an intriguing line in a foreign tongue. El rio de la musica entra en mi sangre, will always sound better than its English equivalent. If someone asks me a question in Spanish, I am OK so long as, en tu cuerpo yo busco la barca en mitad de la noche perdida, is an appropriate response.

I also like to collect proverbs in other languages. Here for example is a Ugandan one from this site, http://www.afriprov.org/,

Abayita ababiri bajjukanya. (Ganda)
Waendao pamoja hugutushana. (Literal Swahili Translation)
Umoja ni nguvu. (Figurative Swahili Translation)
Those who walk together warn each other. (Literal English Translation)
Unity is strength. (Figurative English Translation)

Well that seems to be the conclusion from the Summit today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRXCc2BDIGo

I just listened with headphones. It teeters dangerously on the edge of being a cacophonous racket, and I truly can't decide whether that makes it interesting, or whether I'd ask for a refund of my $12.

Here's hoping you make the LC show in Chicago!

I just listened with headphones. It teeters dangerously on the edge of being a cacophonous racket

if you thought that was cacophonous I wonder what you might think of this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klDuSbA3nuk

Actually I probably would have agreed with you but one sunny afternoon I think it was 2005 I was walking along minding my own business when a stone fell and hit me on the head. When I woke up later everything was different, my musical world was turned upside down inside out.
It sounds cacophonous only because it challenges you to find some order in it and arrange it accordingly in your mind. Atleast thats my take on it.

Actually when I saw Vijay Iyer hunched over the piano it reminded me of Leonard Cohen, or rather of one his lines
"Like a monk bending over the Book" => "Like a maestro bending over the ivory"
BTW I just got the Live in London CD but yet to hear it...will get the DVD in the near future.

he says somewhere on Darkness, your mother calls you by your true name

That would be Adam Raised a Cain...I guess Love does call you by your Name

In the darkness of your room
your mother calls you by your true name
You remember the faces, the places, the names
You know it's never over it's relentless as the rain
Adam raised a Cain

Hi Diane and Kush,

I got to see the video of his mom at his and his mom's high school. She's
a likable lady. The letter she read from Bruce was poignant. I'd not be
surprised if he didn't want to be there for the presentation, and, therefore,
sent his mother as a surrogate for him. "outcast" and, I think, "outsider"
or "outsiders" were in the letter. Probably, the school didn't help to alleviate
and added to his having felt himself the outcast. The end of the letter is not
sugar coated in allowing for an admonition to the school officials about ignoring
the "outsider." I'm sure he thought quite seriously about what needed to
be said and how to say it.

Hi Steven,

Yes I thought the same thing....that his note was very very carefully worded and he probably did not want to be there himself. She does say something about him being busy with the new album (and this would be when he was recording Magic) but since he had perceived himself to be an outcast and misfit during his school years he probably was not too eager to be there. Glad he figured things out though, it could all gone differently.

Re. the school issue: I can get quite a bee in my bonnet about how schools only cater for "normal" people (although this situation is generally not as bad as it used to be) but I suppose that if you march to the beat of a different drummer, then really it's par for the course that the rest of society should try to make you conform, starting at school, and it's up to you to "bust out of class", so I imagine that nowadays Bruce is cool about how things were, and is stating, in that letter his Mum read out, just factually how things were. I can imagine him sitting in class, listening to the teacher talking about (whatever), looking out of the window and thinking, "Is there anybody alive out there?!"

Kush wrote:[Actually when I saw Vijay Iyer hunched over the piano it reminded me of Leonard Cohen, or rather of one his lines
"Like a monk bending over the Book" => "Like a maestro bending over the ivory"

The piano could grow on me. It's the sax that causes me problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klDuSbA3nuk

You have shown me a lot of wonderful music, so I would not dismiss anything that you like, no not even if it sounded like a cat's choir.

It sounds cacophonous only because it challenges you to find some order in it and arrange it accordingly in your mind.

And/or maybe it is already in your mind but you need to allow the filters to dissolve. Imagine if when you filter out at an early age many of the sounds you know when you are born (in the way that babies babble all possible human sounds then learn to exclude the ones they don't hear), you lose touch with some of your sweet soul music. You might have stuff within you that could only be said in 'those' sounds, or in 'that' scale. And if you do hear it again, maybe you recognise it, but because it doesn't fit into the musical scales of your culture's music, or the sounds of your language, you can't easily access it. That could be why it's a challenge. Or, c. it could just be cos it's junk (to you, but not to somebody else who does carry that particular music).

BTW I just got the Live in London CD but yet to hear it...will get the DVD in the near future.

Be interesting to know what you think of the LC cd, altho' I have no plans to get it at the moment. I'll go from memory. Padma reminded me of the Green Note day, and I was thinking about Leonard's amazing recitation of A Thousand Kisses Deep that we heard for the first time that night at the Barbican, and I've been listening to it this morning on the Moncton bootleg. So beautiful. Each time I listen a different line stands out.

If I could move I'd kneel for you
a thousand kisses deep.

I'd kneel for you. With the emphasis on "kneel", and with the word "you" said with a kind of reverence and tenderness. Wooow, it's not just the words, it's so much the way he says them, a thousand kisses deep.

Hi Diane,

I hope that "nowadays Bruce is cool about how things were..." It may
be the case, though, that he is wounded for the experience. One thing for sure, school
didn't kill his creativity. Harry Chapin had a song, "Flowers Are Red," where
that kind of thing took place. (Maybe it's on Youtube.)

Hi Steven. I just looked up the lyrics to that Harry Chapin song and will see if it's on youtube later - the words are very good, thanks for the alert (you mention Harry Chapin quite often, I must check him out). What I meant in my last post about Springsteen now being "cool" about how things were, was that he probably now takes the mature view that people don't 'do things' to you, but that you are responsible for your own reactions and your own life. Of course children do have things 'done' to them at school, if they don't fit the mould, because children are dependent upon adults to give them what they need. But I think he would have let go of that blame, the same as he would have let go of his resentment towards his father. "Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness/ It took me years to understand that this too was a gift," said Mary Oliver. Springsteen's struggles gave birth to his incredible career, quite a 'gift' by any measure. It could have turned out differently, as Kush said.

But yes, I imagine that he was wounded back then, although I haven't read any biographies or anything to know in exactly what way that may have been.

As I'm sure you know, there are a significant minority of people whose brains are not wired/whose neurons are not fired, in the same way as the majority. Depending on the type of difference, and the extent to which it causes problems in the 'system', sometimes these people might be labelled autistic or dyslexic or bipolar or having an attention disorder, because these brain differences can lead people to find certain mental tasks to be much more difficult than normal people do, and to have a natural inclination to think and behave differently from the norm. To be clear, I have never seen mention of Springsteen having any of these "disorders", but it is easy to guess that he does not have a mind that suits the 'left brain' approach to learning of our schools. A school system that tries to make these usually creative people fit the norm can be enormously frustrating for the person concerned, and sometimes, depending upon other personality characteristics, it can destroy their sense of who they are.

Kurt Cobain was another example of someone who had a lot of talent but who did not fit into school, according to a recent review of a biography I recently read. John Lennon failed all his O levels (formal exams at age 16). I'm sure there are many more examples. I personally know of people whose lives were made miserable by a school system that did not accept their limitations, and failed to support their talents.

Hope this makes sense cos I gotta dash.

And/or maybe it is already in your mind but you need to allow the filters to dissolve. Imagine if when you filter out at an early age many of the sounds you know when you are born (in the way that babies babble all possible human sounds then learn to exclude the ones they don't hear), you lose touch with some of your sweet soul music. You might have stuff within you that could only be said in 'those' sounds, or in 'that' scale. And if you do hear it again, maybe you recognise it, but because it doesn't fit into the musical scales of your culture's music, or the sounds of your language, you can't easily access it. That could be why it's a challenge. Or, c. it could just be cos it's junk (to you, but not to somebody else who does carry that particular music).

This was a little confusing but after re-reading it you are probably right. It just takes exposure and keepng an open mind.

Re' Live in London....I haven't heard enough to form an opinion. Some initial observations a) It sounds like a rerun of Live 94 album, deja vu b) Bob Dylan could take voice recovery lessons from Leonard Cohen and c) When he is speaking, LC says "about" in the typically Canadian way. I'd never noticed that before.

p.s. Just read about the amazing act of generosity by Charley Pride in flying to Canada from Dallas to reimburse a scalped ticket holder to one of his concerts. I especially liked his comment "I wouldnt pay that much to see me". It reminded me of the San Antone song of his...another one that I was quite addicted to when it was playing on the radio...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCSO0itu79U

I didnt know he was still active....

p.p.s Derek Trucks is playing Chicago this wednesday....$ 25 a pop. Why do all these bands play mid week? I am in bed by 10 pm.

Hi Diane,

Sometimes it feels as if my frames of reference aren't all that wideranging. I realize
I've been referring to Harry Chapin often. I've had his recordings on vinyl for
many years with no record player to hear them. About a year ago, I bought a
3 CD collection of his music. I can play those. I found that I recalled the
words to many of the songs, despite not having heard them for over 26 years.
I guess his music made an impression on me. Tonight, I saw a report on the
news, CNN I think, that reported on the earthquake that struck Italy. The
report said that a scientist there was ridiculed, called an "imbecile" and was
forced to take down a statement from a website that an earthquake was
imminent. -- Prior to the earthquake. Instantly, I recalled Chapin's "The
Rock," as having some similarity to this. Anyway, hopefully, there'll be
some Youtube footage of Harry Chapin for you to enjoy. I most appreciate
his "story songs." Some of those: "Taxi," "A Better Place To Be," "Cory's Coming,"
"The Mayor Of Candor Lied," "Sniper," "Mr. Tanner."