A Sound of Sheer Silence

"Ring of Fire," by Johnny Cash (1963) Here's my experience with the music of Johnny Cash, and several people have told me pretty much the same story about their own encounter with Cash's music.  I'm going along, minding my own business, not thinking much one way or the other about Cash or his music.  He's a country guy, I guess?  And then, one day, for reasons I can't really remember I start listening to his stuff.  And that experience is a complete revelation, and I realize that he is one of the all time greats.  In particular, I come to realize there is a level of. . . "emotion"?  "depth?"  There is a level of something running underneath his music that transcends any sort of genre conventions or time a place.  You don't have to like blues or rockabilly to appreciate Cash.  It is almost like the only requirement is you have to be a person--it's like he is saying something universal, but you are just getting it for th...

"The Way You Look Tonight" by Tony Bennett et al. They calls songs like this "the Great American Songbook."  It turns out that this song was first recorded by Fred Astaire, as part of the soundtrack for the movie Swingtime .  It won the Academy Award in 1936.  Everyone and their brother has covered it.  As a result, a song like this can almost fade into the background, to the point you wouldn't really notice it. For whatever reason, though, this song has always stuck with me, and in particular the Tony Bennett version.  I think what I love about the song is its minimalism.  There are plenty of love songs out there that make grandiose declarations about the attributes of the beloved--he or she is the most beautiful, the most charming, the most whatever.  As flattering as such declarations no doubt are, exaggerating the attributes of the beloved suggests that only those with such enhanced attributes are worthy of love.  "I love you because ...

"Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" by Marvin Gaye (1969) Here's a way to figure out if someone is a great musician.  Listen to all of their cover songs, or songs that have been also done by someone else.  If having done that, you find yourself thinking "wow, it's not just that this person's version of some songs are the best version, but his version of every song is the best version," then you have found a great musician. We might call this the "Marvin Gaye" test, because Gaye's version of all of those Motown classics is almost always the best version--sorry Smokey, but he has the definitive version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."  And then on top of being the standards king, he produced a ton of his own unique and original music as well. People tend to divide Gaye's catalog into three phases: the early Motown phase, the middle, political phase (the era of "What's Goin' On?" and "Trouble M...

"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by the Beatles (1965) It's not exactly top-shelf analysis to point out that the Beatles were pretty great.  Music writer Chuck Klosterman once put together a list of the "properly rated" bands , and said this:  "[t]he Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time, because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these facts are true, the Beatles are rated properly."  That's pretty much the most succinct explanation of the Beatles and why they are important. There are at least a dozen Beatles songs that I could have picked ("Norwegian Wood," "In My Life," "I've Just Seen a Face," "Yesterday," "Across the Universe," "Revolution," and "We Can Work It Out" deserve consideration).  I went with this song, because I believe it is the best written song of all time.  "You've Got to Hide Your...

"Rave On" by Buddy Holly and the Crickets (1958) It took me a while to come around on 50s rock and roll.  When I was a kid, my parents listened to the "Oldies" radio station, which was primarily music of the 60s and some of the 70s.  All I really knew about the music of the 50s was Elvis Presley, and as I mentioned before I think Elvis is vastly over-rated .  My Dad really liked, and likes, Roy Orbison, but the only song that I remember hearing from him was "Pretty Woman" (which is not close to the best Orbison song, i.e. "Crying").  I was well into my adult years when I first got into Buddy Holly. What is mind-blowing about Buddy Holly is that his career lasted only 34 months (from April 1956 with the release of his first single until his death in the plane crash in February 1959), and that he was 22 when he died.  He did manage to produce three albums in that time, but everything we are hearing from him is his very earliest stuff.  It...

New Friday Fun series.  I wanted to do some earlier songs, and for no particular reason I decided that the cut-off will be songs that were released prior to my birth--February 1978.  That's entirely arbitrary, but there you go. A couple of ground-rules I just made up.  First, one song per artist or group, because otherwise it would be hard to justify not going with seven or eight Beatles songs.  Second, I'm going to come up with ten, but I'm not going to put them in rank order--it will just be ten songs that are from before 2/78. But, before we get to the real ten, here are some that I thought about and decided not to go with. The Crystals, "And Then He Kissed Me" (1963) If you know this song, it's probably because you heard it from the movie Goodfellas .  My memory of the song, however, comes from a different cinematic masterpiece, Adventures in Babysitting .  That movie is significant for me because it features my first celebrity/movie crush--E...

"The Rising" (off of The Rising (2002)) Concert Footage: Sao Paulo (Brazil), 2013 To understand why "The Rising" is the #1 Springsteen song for me, I have to tell you a story.  In the summer of 2002, I took a trip.  The primary purpose of the trip was a family reunion for my mother's side of the family in New Jersey, and I was joined by my mom and my sisters.  After that, the four of us took a memorable trip to Boston to look at colleges for my sister Katie.  I then put my family on a plane back to Florida, and took the train into New York City to see my friend Adam.  Adam and I went to college together, and we were (and are) good friends.  Among his rather diverse skill-set, Adam has a television production background, and at the time he was working for a company that was documenting on video the recovery/clean up efforts at the site of the World Trade Center. And so, on an absolutely perfect July day, he and I went to the site where the World Tr...

"Atlantic City" (original version off of Nebraska (1982), E Street Band Version [shown] first released on Live in New York City  (2001)) Concert Footage:  Hyde Park, London (U.K.), 2013 Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night Now they blew up his house, too. I maintain that the best opening to any song the opening to the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood"---" I once had a girl/or, should I say, she once had me. "  That's John Lennon at his songwriting best--men have a tendency to reflexively talk about "their" girl, when in many, many cases the shoe is on the other foot, and Lennon communicates this in his trademark economy of words. The second best opening to any song, in my opinion, is "Atlantic City."  It is like a punch to the face--you can't hear "they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night, now they blew up his house, too," and be indifferent to what is coming next.  The name "the...

"Adam Raised a Cain" (off of Darkness on the Edge of Town  (1978)) Concert Footage: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio (U.S.A.), 2014 The British Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton once famously called original sin, "the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved."  In other words, if you strip away the (somewhat convoluted) theological infrastructure surrounding the idea, you are left with the basic observation that we carry with us the baggage of those that came before us.  All of us are products of our environment, whether we want to be or not.  Some of those products are relatively banal, some are deeply wounding and leave permanent scars.  But all of us have them, and all of us struggle, to one degree or another, to get beyond them. "Adam Raised a Cain," my favorite Springsteen deep cut (or maybe "deep-ish" cut), is a song about original sin.  Indeed, it says so right in the title--one generation after eating from the Tr...

"Thunder Road" (off of Born to Run  (1975)) Concert Footage: Air Canada Center, Toronto (Canada), 2016 The three iconic songs off of Born to Run  are "Born to Run," "Jungleland," and "Thunder Road."  I go back and forth on which of those I like the best.  Musically, "Jungleland" is the most memorable because of the saxophone solo, originally performed by the legendary Clarence Clemons a/k/a "The Big Man."  "Born to Run" is the most anthemic song, despite not being particularly positive ("It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, we've got to get out while we're young," etc.)  In the end, I decided to go with "Thunder Road," mostly because I realized that I can rattle off every word of the song out of reflex. Most of Springsteen songs are storytelling songs, but "Thunder Road" is maybe the ultimate storytelling song.  It has no chorus or bridge, just a continuous nar...

"American Skin ( 41 Shots )" (first released on Live in New York City (2001), version shown off of High Hopes (2014)) Concert Footage: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio (U.S.A.), 2014 On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo was killed by New York City police officers in front of his apartment in the Bronx.  He was unarmed--the officers claimed that he was pulling a gun on them, when it fact he was reaching into his pocket to get his wallet.  The officers shot 41 times in total, hitting him 19 times.  The officers were tried on 2nd degree murder charges, and acquitted by a jury in Albany, New York. "American Skin (41 Shots)" was originally inspired by the Diallo killing, and debuted on 2000's E Street Ban Reunion Tour.  During the tour, which had ten shows in New York's Madison Square Garden, NYPD officers working security turned their backs to the band during the song, and a police association called for a boycott of the tour.  It faded away for a while, b...

"She's the One" (off of Born to Run (1975)) Concert Footage:  Madison Square Garden, New York (U.S.A.), 2007 That thunder in your heart at night when you're kneeling in the dark, it say's you're never gonna leave her But there's this angel in her eyes that tells such desperate lies and all you want to do is believe her And tonight you'll try just one more time to leave it all behind and to break on through Oh, she can take you, but if she wants to break you, she's gonna find out that ain't so easy to do And no matter where you sleep tonight or how far you run Whoa-oh, she's the one She's the one The message of "She's the One," if reduced to one cliched sentence, would be: "Women; can't live with them, can't live without them."  Like I said, it that is well-worn ground for songwriters, which is why it is cliched.  But there are treatments of cliched tropes that further the cliche, and the...

"Trapped" (cover song, originally by Jimmy Cliff) Concert Footage: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio (U.S.A.), 2014 Bruce Springsteen has sung a lot of songs in his career.  In addition to his own work (in the form of 18 studio albums), he often plays covers.  Some of the covers are of songs he wrote for other people that have gone on to become hits, such as "Because the Night" which was a hit for Patti Smith and then later 10,000 Maniacs.  But some of them are just straight up covers.  And because there are so many of them, they tend to cycle in and out of setlists--they will be a routine presence in his shows, then fade away, then come back. Such is the case with "Trapped."  "Trapped" was originally performed by reggae pioneer Jimmy Cliff.  After a bit of Google-fu, it turns out that "Trapped" was first covered by Springsteen on 1985's  USA for Africa  charity album (best known for "We Are the World"), and then ...

"Death to My Hometown" (off of Wrecking Ball (2012) Concert Footage:  Apollo Theatre, New York (U.S.A.), 2012 Bruce has a large number of songs in his catalog that relate to the collapse of American cities.  In fact, if there is one consistent thread running through all of his work, it might be that.  Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a half-dozen songs that have this as an element or a significant theme--"The River," "Born in the U.S.A.," "The Promise," "Johnny 99," "My City of Ruins," "Factory."  And there are many more. This is a controversial opinion, but I think his songwriting on this topic has gotten better as time has gone on.  I think many of the earlier songs can be a bit too formulaic, such that they all become variations on the same song ("is this the one where the factory closes down, or the one where there are no construction jobs, or what?")  The other problem is tha...

"Lonesome Day" (off of The Rising  (2002)) Concert Footage:  Rose Center, New York (U.S.A.), 2002 2002's The Rising is my favorite Springsteen album.  A large part of that has to do with very idiosyncratic and personal reasons, which I will get to in a future post.  But another big reason is that The Rising  is the most diverse album tonally and sonically.  You have very slow, punishingly sad piano ballads like "You're Missing," and you have aggressively upbeat, positive songs like "Waitin' On a Sunny Day."  You have songs about crumbling communities ("My City of Ruins") and songs about things getting made right ("Counting On a Miracle").  You have straight forward rock songs ("Mary's Place") and you have more experimental tracks ("The Fuse"). If there is anything that joins these songs together, it is their complete refusal to adopt a Manichean view of the world.  Every song on the album th...

"Glory Days" (off of Born in the U.S.A.  (1984)) Concert Footage:  Hyde Park, London (U.K.), 2013 Well, after a couple weeks off for the holidays, back to the Springsteen countdown.  We start our official top ten with a track off of the album that put Springsteen into the stratosphere, 1984's Born in the U.S.A.   I was listening to  Born in the U.S.A. last night, and I was struck by how great it sounded.  With the exception of two tracks ("I'm on Fire," and "My Hometown"), every single one of the tracks is a high-energy, expansive rock song.  It's all very "big," and in that sense it is not surprising that it resonated with people in the mid-80s, a time when uncomplicated excess was seen as cool.  All of the songs are also very fun from a musical perspective--the experience of listening to them makes you smile and bop your head along to the beat and sing along (the well-known "Dancing in the Dark" and the less well kn...

The last Friday Fun series went pretty well--I enjoyed it at least.  So, for this series, I am going to try the impossible and come up with a list of my top ten Springsteen songs.  The impossibility of the task is demonstrated by the fact that I couldn't keep to ten and had to add these two honorable mentions.  I am also not going to include two songs I have already talked about, "Reason to Believe" and "Land of Hope and Dreams."   I don't want to rehash what I said previously, which is why I am not including them in this list, but they are both certainly among my ten favorite Springsteen songs, and "Land of Hope and Dreams" is either #1 or at a minimum #2. As far as the song clips go, I am going to go exclusively with live concert footage, because that it is the only way to fully appreciate the Springsteen experience.  I've seen him twice (once in DC in 2012 and once in Columbus in 2014, which is the source of a number of the clips I am goi...

#1: "One" by U2 (off of Achtung, Baby (1991) The first album I ever owned was The Joshua Tree , on cassette tape.  I pulled out my CD collection the other day and realized I own ten U2 albums, which includes a couple of greatest hits collections.  That's partially a function of U2's enormous longevity, and partially a function of how much I like U2.  Even after the bad albums and weird marketing moves and Bono overexposure, I always come back to U2.  It's pretty much my musical first love. Upon (extensive) reflection, I think Achtung, Baby  is their best work.   The Joshua Tree (1987) begins with three songs ("Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I Am Looking For," and "With or Without You") that even non-U2 fans know and instantly recognize, and has a deeply underrated deep-cut ("In God's Country").  It is a tremendous album, and it made U2 immortals. That was followed by the album...

#2: "Drive" by R.E.M. (off of Automatic for the People (1992)) #2: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" by R.E.M. (off of Monster  (1994)) I've talked about R.E.M. before , and there is much more than could be said.  What is perhaps the most notable thing about 90s R.E.M. is that they were probably the most popular band of the decade, without producing particularly accessible music.  They released five albums in the 90s-- Out of Time (1991), Automatic for the People (1992), Monster (1994), New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), and Up (1998).  All five of these albums were enormous hits--the "disappointing" New Adventures in Hi-Fi  "only" peaked at #2 on the U.S. Billboard charts.   New Adventures in Hi-Fi  has to be one of the grimmest and most inscrutable albums to ever reach number #2 on the charts--nothing on it is remotely radio friendly, and all of it is depressing.  Nevertheless, it sold almost a million copies in the United State...

#3: Lucky Man by the Verve (off of Urban Hymns (1997)) The Verve is a criminally underrated band.  Everything Coldplay has done, the Verve did first and better.  They were experimenting with weird sounds and trippy music when Radiohead was writing straight forward rock songs like "Creep."  They are more interesting than Oasis, and I like Oasis. They are not well known because their career was rather short, done in by stereotypical band problems--interpersonal conflicts, drugs, financial disputes.   Urban Hymns , their best album, was also their last significant album.  In a sense, though, it is not tremendously surprising, as their music certainly conveys that they were dealing with some stuff. The song of theirs that you have heard is "Bittersweet Symphony."  It got them into trouble because it sampled an orchestral version of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones, resulting in all the royalties going to the Stones.  It is also famous for th...