Happy anniversary to me
Posted: July 18, 2013 Filed under: Rock and roll | Tags: Bruce Springsteen 8 CommentsToday is the one-year anniversary of Nancy Bishop’s Journal. When I started this a year ago, I had no idea I would write so prolifically or find it so invigorating to do so. I’ve written 65 posts, most of them op-ed column length of 700-800 words. Topics have been divided fairly evenly among theater, movies and music, although I’ve been posting more theater reviews lately, since I’m also contributing to Gapers Block, the Chicago website.
Speaking of music, I haven’t written about Bruce Springsteen lately. (How can that be?) So I have a special anniversary treat for you. Bruce and the E Street Band are nearing the end of their European tour. His fans follow setlists on Twitter every night in lieu of being there to hear him live. Last night they played in Limerick and the Limerick Chronicle celebrated that as front-page news. Bruce’s heritage is Irish and Italian, so he has always been very popular in those countries. (Thanks to kbutler333 Kathleen Butler for the Twitter pic.)
When he played in Rome last Thursday night, his fans got a special treat and I’m sharing it with you to celebrate my anniversary. The song is “New York City Serenade,” a Bruce rarity that thrills his hard-core fans. This really isn’t just for Springsteen fans. It’s a beautiful ballad that starts with a great piano intro by Roy Bittan, the long-time E Street Band keyboard player and Bruce collaborator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAe0IPLqgjE
The song is buried as the last track on Bruce’s second album, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, released in 1973. It’s never been played very much and rarely played in concert. He played it the other night with the Roma Sinfonietta on stage.
Thanks to my nephew Brad for sending the link.
Two theater reviews, one inspired by Bruce Springsteen
Posted: June 19, 2013 Filed under: Music, Theater | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Gapers Block, theater 1 CommentTwo new theater reviews for your consideration. Both are excellent examples of why Chicago is such a great theater town. Homecoming 1972 only runs through this weekend but you can see Mine until August 11.
Homecoming 1972 at Chicago Dramatists
Chicago Dramatists is a fine, playwright-oriented theater company with a comfy small space at 1105 W Chicago Ave. Homecoming 1972 is a riveting play about the after-effects of the Vietnam war and its impact on those who served and those who stayed at home. As I note in my Gapers Block review, about halfway into the play I realized that it was based on the Bruce Springsteen song, “Highway Patrolman,” from the acoustic 1982 album, Nebraska. Frank, Joe and Maria? Those are the characters in the story Springsteen tells in that amazing song. Here are the lyrics, a summary of the play.
You’re probably thinking, “She’s obsessing again. Nancy thinks everything in life links back to Bruce Springsteen.” Well, I do think that. But in fact, the playwright Robert Koon is known to be a Springsteen fan too. I talked to some cast and crew members after the show and they confirmed that.
The Nebraska album is a mournful record of life in the late 1970s. Except for a few songs like “Atlantic City” and “Open All Night,” the album is basically a series of stories about downtrodden, lonely characters. Springsteen recorded it in his bedroom on a tape recorder, intending it to be a demo to be released with a full E Street Band treatment. But his manager convinced him to release it as his first acoustic album. Its initial reception was lukewarm but in the years since, it has been acknowledged as one of his finest albums.
Chicago’s Tympanic Theatre Company produced Deliver Us From Nowhere last year, a series of 10 short plays based on the 10 songs on Nebraska. It was an interesting attempt but less than successful theatrically.
You can read my review of Homecoming 1972 here. I strongly recommend it.
Mine at The Gift Theatre
The Gift Theatre performs in a tiny storefront on the northwest side. It’s a theater that I’ve been meaning to go to, since its work always gets outstanding reviews. I finally did that this week and reviewed a play called Mine that combines contemporary fears about parenting with reversion to medieval folklore. It’s a very intense and haunting play, made more intense by the small performance space. I often think when i see a play like this in a tiny space how much different it would seem if performed on a proscenium stage with a great deal of distance between players and viewers.
Read my review and try to see Mine — you have about six weeks to get there.
Quick cuts: Musical notes
Posted: February 14, 2013 Filed under: Music, Politics, Rock and roll, TV, radio | Tags: 2013 Grammys, Beethoven, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Greg Mitchell, Music, Politics, rock and roll 1 CommentBouncing all over the place this week on musical topics. Quick Cuts #2 to follow on stage, screen and Chicago.
The Grammys and MusiCares
Bruce Springsteen was named MusiCares 2013 Person of the Year for his humanitarian activities. The MusiCares event took place two days before the Grammys. Many famous musicians were to perform Springsteen songs, and at first the news was released that the concert would be broadcast. And then that information was corrected. But we obsessives were hoping for at least online streaming. (I can stream anything from my laptop to my HD TV set, so I figured I was set.)
That evening, I tuned in for the excruciatingly boring, fashion- and celebrity-obsessed red carpet coverage. Gag me, please. Optimistically, I hoped I would get to see some of the music. But it was not to be. So I will have to wait for a sure-to-be-released DVD version. (There is a very nice six-minute video tribute to Bruce as MusiCares Person of the Year here – the video is edited by the talented Thom Zimny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QhJYlaBuv8&feature=player_embedded)
The Grammys is a crazy attempt by the Recording Industry of America to shoehorn a zillion performances, tributes and award presentations into 3.5 hours. Madness. There were many interesting performances – some of them straight up like Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers of their own songs. And odd combinations like Maroon 5’s Adam Levine with Alicia Keys. That inspired David Carr of the New York Times to tweet: “Maroon 5 and Alicia Keys go together like the whipped lard and sponge cake in a Twinkie.”
And there were tributes to performers who died last year. A tribute to Dave Brubeck by three famous musicians lasted all of 30 seconds. But at least the tribute to Levon Helm, the multitalented musician singer-songwriter, was a full rendition of “The Weight,” made famous by The Band. Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes showed her powerful singing chops and quite kept up with Mavis Staples. Fabulous number.
I thought there was to be a tribute to the late Glenn Gould, the brilliant and eccentric Canadian pianist. Did I blink and miss it?
It wasn’t all a fabulous show but it was fun to watch. Social media activity was high. The Grammys claim there were 18.7 million social media comments. Twitter was on fire.
The Eric Clapton survival story
I just finished Clapton, Eric Clapton’s autobiography (Broadway Books, 2007). I love reading biographies and autobiographies. This is a fascinating story and well written – and no one tried to launder the Brit-isms out of it for the US market. I strongly recommend it to music fans.
But it is a heartbreakingly sad story. How did the man survive to be the revered guitar genius he is today? He went from being a guitar beginner, playing small gigs, to touring with the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith. Throughout those years and later, he was first of all on various kinds of dope, then became a full-blown heroin addict, went thru rehab to break the addiction, only to become a roaring alcoholic who apparently was rarely sober.
Throughout these addictions, he played all over the world and usually (although not always) played brilliantly. If I didn’t know the story would end well, I would have stopped reading because it is an incredibly sad book. Clapton makes no effort to sugarcoat his past. And the part about losing his young son Conor is wrenching.
Also there was an unbelievable string of women, girlfriends, lovers, wives, etc. I lost track of the number of wives. But in 2002, he married and apparently has stayed married. He and his wife have three children.
As he says in the epilogue, when he wrote the book in 2007, he was 62 and 20 years sober and “the last ten years have been the best of my life.” He puts his highest priority (even before his family) as “staying sober and helping others to achieve sobriety.”
The best part of the book is Clapton writing about how he came to love the blues and his love for listening to, writing and playing the music – and how he loved the American blues musicians who brought the music to England. Shockingly, it took musicians like the Rolling Stones and Clapton to bring the blues to the US, where musicians here finally came to appreciate it. To this day, it’s recognized for its huge influence on rock and roll.
Greg Mitchell mixes music with politics
You may never have heard of him but Mitchell is well known in music and in news publishing. Early in his career, he wrote for Crawdaddy, the influential pioneer rock magazine. (I wrote about Crawdaddy in September in my post on the Glory Days Symposium; it has been resurrected as Paste Magazine.) Later, Mitchell was editor of Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for the newspaper industry.
Today, he writes for The Nation and has written a number of books on history and politics. His latest post is written in sympathy for Marco Rubio’s apparent thirst during Tuesday’s Republican response to the State of the Union address. Mitchell, always the music lover, posts videos for five classic songs offering Rubio more water – songs from Otis Redding, Van Morrison, the Beach Boys, Leadbelly and Hank Williams Sr. It’s a great little setlist. Catch them here. http://www.thenation.com/blog/172862/marco-rubio-5-classic-songs-offering-him-more-water
Mitchell’s latest book is Journeys With Beethoven, coauthored with Kerry Candaele (Sinclair Books, 2012). The book is described as an “exploration of Beethoven’s musical, cultural and political influence today.” It’s available in print and as a $4 e-book from the usual sources. Check it out on his blog; link below.
His blog Roll Over Beethoven explores a wide range of Beethovenovia to support the book http://journeyswithbeethoven.blogspot.com. Mitchell posts fascinating items and videos about all aspects of Beethoven, as performed by classical, rock and pop performers, writing and film aspects of Beethoven, and even news of a year-long Beethoven-on-Hudson Festival in Nyack NY, which will include “dozens of concerts, film showings, a Marathon at the Mall, and (we hope) a massive choral sing-out in the park, a rocking Beethoven-palooza, dance, a theater piece, and events for and recitals by young folks.”
One question: Is a Beethoven-Palooza something like a Stooge-a-Palooza? (Hint: It used to run on WCIU Chicago.)
Guilt and trust in the Tunnel of Love
Posted: January 29, 2013 Filed under: Music, Rock and roll, Theater | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Court Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre 3 CommentsTwo Chicago plays, both riveting productions, explore the angst of relationships and the gulf between guilt and trust. Skylight, David Hare’s play at Court Theatre set in the Thatcher era, finds a couple meeting again after several years and trying to discover whether they are still the same people who once loved each other. At Steppenwolf Theatre, The Motherf**cker with the Hat (I’m spelling it as they do on the playbill) by Stephen Adly Guirgis, puts two couples in a contemporary setting about addiction, infidelity, trust and guilt. And of course, there’s a Bruce Springsteen connection.
Skylight, which I also saw at Steppenwolf about 15 years ago, is about a reunion of Kyra, a young woman who teaches in a tough part of London, and Tom, her former lover, a wealthy restaurant owner, whose wife died a year ago. (He seems patterned after Terence Conran.) She lived with his family earlier and left when his wife discovered their affair. They talk about their lives, their feelings about the past, and their profound disagreements about Kyra’s chosen way of life. Actually they talk far too much and both acts of the play drag to a 2.5-hour ending. (My motto: Everyone needs an editor.)
The Motherfucker With the Hat (all the reviews and the script itself spell out the word; I don’t know why Steppenwolf was so dainty) is a profane, fast-moving series of scenes in which men and women swear to stay clean and faithful and manage to do neither.
Jackie, the dealer and ex-convict, says to his AA sponsor, Ralph D: “Even though we’re fucked up, we got a code. It’s a fucked up code, but still, it’s a code.” However, the code is broken over and over again while the players profess love and trust and unashamedly acknowledge guilt. The Motherfucker does not need an editor; it’s tightly written and runs about 100 minutes.
I came home from this theater evening and picked up my copy of Bruce, the 2012 Springsteen biography by Peter Ames Carlin. I had put the book down in the middle of the chapter about the creation of the Tunnel of Love album, during Bruce’s first marriage. He acknowledged to interviewers that he was learning how to be married. Writing the songs for Tunnel of Love, Carlin says, “Bruce followed the knotted strands of his married life, working to string them into words and music.” The songs are about the difficulties of keeping a relationship together, about love and trust, longing and guilt – and possibly the lack of an escape route. I listened to the album while I read, knowing the story ended in divorce.
I didn’t care for the album when it was first released in 1987. For one thing, the E Street Band played almost no part in its production and that always turns off the true Bruce obsessives. However, I’ve come to really like Tunnel of Love. The songs are poignant and probably the closest things to love songs that Bruce ever wrote. (But they still rock, of course.) My favorite song on Tunnel of Love is “Brilliant Disguise,” which hit #5 on the singles chart in 1987. It sums up this discourse nicely.
Well I’ve tried so hard baby but I just can’t see
What a woman like you is doing with me
So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes
Is that you baby or just a brilliant disguise?
Wintry Mix: Recent plays, films and music
Posted: January 17, 2013 Filed under: Movies, Music, Rock and roll, Theater | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Movies, Music, Opera, theater 1 CommentWhat have I been doing lately? Not cocooning, when there’s lots to do and see in Chicago.
Homage to Molière. Put the actors on stage in froufrou costumes, both male and female, from the rococo era. Have them speak in Molière’s rhyming couplets, transformed into 20th century slangy tropes. That’s David Ives’ School for Lies, an adaptation of Molière’s The Misanthrope, now playing at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Ives, who wrote the brilliant Venus in Furs, which I saw in New York last year, pays homage to Molière in an outrageous way. The acting is excellent with some surprising characterizations (Kevin Gudahl as a lisping twit, Sean Fortunato, momentarily the queen, in a stunning blue dress) and the set is glorious.
Nancy’s rating: Catch it before it closes.
Theater for the fearless. Park somewhere on Cortland in the quiet area west of the Elston/Armitage/Ashland/Kennedy tangle. Have a little dinner at Jane’s Café, then walk down the narrow gangway next to the restaurant. Voila. You’re at Trap Door Theater to see the Vaclav Havel one acts, The Unveiling and Dozens of Cousins. Trap Door performs in a tiny theater space that enables you to get nose-to-nose with the actors. I like the Trap Door mission – to perform “challenging yet obscure works” usually of European, mainly Eastern European, playwrights. http://trapdoortheatre.com These two plays (total run time about an hour) are witty, head-spinning and somewhat fabulistic. You are never sure what or who is real and truthful.
Trap Door’s choice of plays reminds me of the late European Repertory Company, which performed some highly visual, startling and memorable productions. I have missed them for years, but Trap Door makes up for their loss.
Nancy’s rating: Both Jane’s and Trap Door are always recommended.
Opera at the movies. As you probably know, the Metropolitan Opera simulcasts performances live in HD to cinemas around the country. There’s an encore showing for each opera. We saw the encore of Verdi’s Aida last night and it was excellent. I really like the HD version of these operas, although some opera purists disagree. The sound quality is excellent. The opera is shot from multiple camera angles so you have closeups of the performers during the arias. (I wish they would do that during televised hockey games!) It seems to me you get a more direct connection to the opulent visual art and the music by this kind of viewing.
My favorite part of any HD opera is the long intermission when you really get a backstage view. During the Aida intermissions, the stagehands moved huge pieces of Egypt around and put the altars, thrones, sphinxes and statues back together for the next scene. The soldiers lined up with their spears and practiced marching. This cast included five horses (sometimes an elephant appears, but not in this production). During the intermission, you also see interviews with cast and crew members and the animal trainers.
The Met Live in HD is shown at four theaters in Chicago and many suburban venues; there are five operas left in the season. I still believe that live is always better (See “Live or Memorex” here https://nancybishopsjournal.com/2012/11/10/live-or-memorex/ but I’ll make an exception for the Met in HD. This is a great way to see opera and far less expensive than going to a live performance.
Bruce wins WXRT 2012 Listener Poll. XRT listeners voted Bruce Springsteen at Wrigley Field September 7 and 8 as the Best Concerts of 2012. The tour album, Wrecking Ball, was voted #6 on Best Albums list. Here’s what I wrote about the Wrigley concerts. https://nancybishopsjournal.com/2012/09/12/wrigley-x-2/
Leonard Cohen gives me another chance. I missed Leonard last time around in November but he’ll perform one of his great concerts Wednesday, March 13, at the Chicago Theatre. I recommend his latest album, Old Ideas, again. http://www.leonardcohen.com/us/home.
Film clips. Finally saw a few more of the Oscar and Golden Globe nominated films. My micro-reviews:
Argo was one of my favorite movies of the year. Very well acted; dead on with costumes, hair and hirsuteness, cars and props. Sharp dialogue, quick-moving direction by Ben Affleck. His character, as well as Alan Arkin’s and John Goodman’s, were a treat to watch. I’ll see it again when it’s out on DVD or streaming.
Silver Linings Playbook. Good film with fine acting, especially by Robert DeNiro as the Philadelphia Eagles fan who was banned from the stadium for overzealous behavior. I found some of it painful to watch as people with serious emotional problems tried to cope with their lives. But by the way, wasn’t it a little unrealistic for these wounded characters to be so beautiful and perfect-looking, even when they were supposedly in the depths of depression?
Beasts of the Southern Wild. A lovely magical film starring the sparkling child actor, Quvenzhané Wallis as the six-year-old Hushpuppy. You will weep for the disasters the changing environment wreaks upon the bayou community where Hushpuppy lives. But the film is ultimately about love and courage, not disaster.
Et Cetera. I’m about to see Django Unchained and I still want to see Amour, maybe Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty. I won’t see Les Miserables since it’s in my egregious singing and dancing category. https://nancybishopsjournal.com/2013/01/03/not-fade-away-soundtrack-of-the-60s/ I wanted to see Promised Land but other things kept getting in the way and I think now I’ll have to wait to see it when the DVD is released. It appears to be disappearing from theaters, as Not Fade Away has already done.
Wrigley x 2
Posted: September 12, 2012 Filed under: Rock and roll | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, rock and roll 6 CommentsOh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.
No, Bruce Springsteen didn’t perform the great pop-rock song “Drift Away” in his two Wrigley concerts. But I did get lost in his rock and roll for two nights and it was sublime.
You can find plenty of reviews of these concerts online, as well as complete setlists. http://www.backstreets.com/setlists.html and http://brucespringsteen.net/. Both were epic nights with setlists highlighted by songs like the 1978 version of “Prove It All Night” with its long instrumental opening, “Spirit in the Night” and “Blinded by the Light” from Springsteen’s first album, Greetings from Asbury Park. And rarities like “My Love Will Not Let You Down” and even “None But the Brave,” which really surprised me. Fifty-five songs in two nights — a total of 42 different songs in the two setlists.
On both nights, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman, of the late great Rage Against the Machine, joined Bruce on stage. Morello and Springsteen played the powerful electric version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” both nights. Morello’s frenetic solos on his old custom-made “Arm the Homeless” guitar produce sounds you rarely hear out of a guitar. I’m a big Morello fan.
Eddie Vedder performed two songs with Springsteen each night. Fine duets on “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Atlantic City” and “My Hometown.”
Photo at right: Bruce, Eddie, Tom and drummer Max Weinberg. (Photo by Lois Bernstein from backstreets.com.)
For our family, the highlights were Saturday night. My grandson James (he’s 14) went to his first Springsteen concert with me. And it rained. But most significant was the fact that my 7-year-old niece was on her dad’s shoulders when Bruce sang Hungry Heart and made his way down a platform out into the field seats. He was singing to the crowd and high-fiving fans as he walked. And he stopped and high-fived Juliana and said something like “you go” to her. It was a priceless moment.
The difference between the two shows, of course, was the rain. Friday night was clear. Saturday night was too, until about two-thirds of the way through the show when a light rain started. And continued. It never poured. It just rained and rained. But it didn’t spoil the show and everyone got wet, including the frontman, who spent plenty of time out in the crowd, performing on the platforms built out among the pit and field seats.
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away….
Great truck!
Posted: August 30, 2012 Filed under: Rock and roll | Tags: Bruce Springsteen Leave a comment
Springsteen fans on Twitter all wanted to hire this fellow fan for their carpet cleaning chores. Thanks to Steph Brown (@stephrah) for the great photo catch. (Click on photo to enlarge.)
The photo was taken in England, specifically Surrey, for those who have been trying to figure out the geography of the license plate or phone number.
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