Bruce Springsteen New Album Announced

Bruce Springsteen has announced he will release a new album this March, with the first single, ‘We Take Care Of Our Own,’ available now via Amazon.

You can see a clip for the song here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Bz0d2xm7U&feature=youtu.be

The album Wrecking Ball will be made available on UK iTunes from March 5 and will be his first album release since 2009′s Working On A Dream.

The album features appearances from members of the E Street Band, as well as Rage Against The Machine guitarist, Tom Marello and former Pearl Jam drummer Matt Chamberlain.

His manager, Jon Landau, describes it is a “big-picture piece of work.”

He told Rolling Stone magazine: “It’s a rock record that combines elements of both Bruce’s classic sound and his Seeger Sessions with new textures and styles.

“It was an experimental effort with a new producer. Bruce and Ron [Aniello, producer] used a wide variety of players to create something that both rocks and is very fresh.”

Landau also said the album has “social overtones” and a “very pronounced spiritual dimension.”

Another source who has heard the record said it is the singer’s “angriest” to date.

The source said: “It extends and deepens the vision that has animated all of Bruce’s work. He gets into economic justice quite a bit. He feels it’s the angriest album he’s ever made.”

The title track was played at a concert late last year at Giants Stadium and is said to refer to the demolition of the fabled stadium.

“I was raised out of steel here in the swamps of Jersey, some misty years ago,” he said that night, eliciting loud cheers while strumming an electric guitar alone. As he reached the chorus, Springsteen seemed to be taunting the eroding force of time itself: “Bring on your wrecking ball/Come on, take your best shot/Let me see what you got/Bring on your wrecking ball.” When the full band kicked in a few moments later, Giants Stadium went wild for one of the last times ever.

Wrecking Ball:

01 We Take Care of Our Own

02 Easy Money

03 Shackled and Down

04 Jack of All Trades

05 Death to My Hometown

06 This Depression

07 Wrecking Ball

08 You’ve Got It

09 Rocky Ground

10 Land of Hope and Dreams

11 We Are Alive

12 Swallowed Up (Bonus Track)

13 American Land (Bonus Track)

 

R.E.M. – A Personal Reflection

When R.E.M. made the typically dignified announcement that they were disbanding after 31 years, my first reaction was almost a sense of relief that they had managed to complete their career without ever embarrassing themselves, and by extension, without embarrassing me and the other fans that had made the journey with them.

Even allowing for one album that maybe didn’t reach the highest of standards that they had set themselves (Around The Sun, although it still has a couple of golden moments), they never really went through any extended slumps or released a series of albums that had me questioning the validity of my support. That’s a remarkable achievement in three decades of any creative pursuit.

My second reaction was a kind of bemused comprehension that I had been a fan of this band for over 28 of those 31 years. That was kind of scary.

Even as a card-carrying, rock music, fan-boy tragic, and someone for whom the “music industry” (or some version of it) has arguably provided a career for around twenty of the last thirty years, it came as a jolting realization that almost thirty years had passed since I had first become enthralled by the mysterious murmurings of Michael Stipe’s vocals and the irresistible chiming of Peter Buck’s guitar on those formative early records, Chronic Town (EP), Murmur and Reckoning. And it’s even more remarkable that my fascination is no the worse for wear.

My introduction to R.E.M. came at Monash Records, the on-campus record shop at Monash University, Clayton, where I was studying Economics and Law. I spent way too much time in that record store and way too little time in the library, although the subsequent path my life took probably makes a lie of that statement. It was at Monash Records that I bought those first three releases (at the urging of the black haired dude, who wanted so much to look like Robert Smith) and by the time 1985 and Fables of the Reconstruction had ticked around I was taking my first tentative steps into music writing with the Monash student newspaper Lots Wife.

In response to Fables of the Reconstruction, this is what I breathlessly came up with: “It is an album of magic and enchantment. Michael Stipe’s lyrics are spawned from the tales and fables of the mystical deep south and follow a thread that winds through America’s proudest and most honest history leading through times of betrayal and off into the unknown. Fables is overwhelming: from the disturbing melancholia of the haunting Rickenbacker guitars, from the intrinsic acknowledgement of the power inherent in the lyrics mythological roots.”

I ‘ve got absolutely no idea what that last line means but it was clear that I had found what might have been the love of my musical life! In that year I named Fables as one of my five best albums of the year. To carbon date that time emphatically, you’ll be interested to know that Paul Kelly’s Post was another of that select group. I still find myself talking about Fables of the Reconstruction. I recently interviewed the albums producer Joe Boyd who is about to curate a couple of shows celebrating the music of Nick Drake in Australia, and I couldn’t help but devote part of that interview to his work on that album.

The fact that I discovered R.E.M. when I was at university mirrored the experience of thousands of college kids all around the world. In America R.E.M. was the quintessential college band and in fact have been credited with stimulating the rise in significance of college radio, and with it, the rise of independent labels and the whole indie rock scene. “But for R.E.M. …”, has been the opening line of many an obituary and tribute in the last couple of weeks.

Parallel to the emergence of the indie scene, both in America and here in Australia came whole cottage industries of street press, community radio and other self-starting mediums that realized that you didn’t have to wait for the permission of corporate giants in order to dare to exist. Sound familiar?

There may not even have been InPress magazine if it weren’t for R.E.M. When I was writing for Lots Wife, I realized that I wanted to write about music on an on-going basis. I wasn’t going to let a pesky thing like such as a career as a lawyer stop me. My all-time favorite artist was Bruce Springsteen, but, by 1985, people like Dave Marsh and Griel Marcus and Robert Christgau had pretty much mined that territory, and really anything that came after them was simply piggy-backing on their words, and offering re-assessment. But R.E.M. came along and provided the perfect music for the nascent street press. They were the perfect soundtrack to the generational change that was sweeping across music and the media that rode that wave. This was music that was “mine” and I felt like it was my time to set the agenda and that my efforts as a tastemaker were grounded in a notion of how a new band stood up when compared to R.E.M. Starting InPress was my expression of my own little indie revolution and it’s no accident that the news pages of InPress eventually came to be titled “What’s The Frequency?”

R.E.M. also managed to soundtrack elements of my personal life as well. I vividly remember being on the wrong end of a painful (well, as a 20 something year old, it felt painful) relationship break-up and responding by changing my answering machine message to the chorus of The One I Love – to the extent that the song actually had a chorus. I felt like I was the only one in the world who realized that the first R.E.M. song to actually use the word “love” was in fact a bitter, anti-love song – and that they key line in the lyric was the brutally dismissive “another prop has occupied my time”. Of course I wasn’t the only one who realized that and all across the globe there were inner city romances disintegrating to the sound of Stipe anguished “Fire” refrain. I’m not sure whether the object of my angst ever realized that she had been smote with such a cruel sword. In all probability she never even called and even heard the message, let alone divined its hidden meaning! It wouldn’t have been near as effective by SMS!

But that ushered in a period where my romantic world was divided into two distinct camps – girls who liked R.E.M. and those who didn’t. For a period of time, only the former would have any hope of achieving a relationship of substance with this little black duck. I’ve seen other writers reflect on similar positions since the news of the bands break-up broke, and I have to wonder if the band themselves realised that they were responsible for drawing the emotional battlelines for a generation of young men trying to find a roadmap through the rocky paths of their indie-rock eighties relationships. It sounds like the kind of thing that Craig Finn, of The Hold Steady would write a song about – if he hasn’t already!

When R.E.M. signed that monstrous deal with Warner, that made them at least notionally the “biggest band in the world” there was a pervading sense of validation amongst the ‘street press’ generation – their heroes had come in from the cold, they had won and they had done it on their terms with their precious and hard-earned credibility intact. When R.E.M. won, we all had won. See, there was a way to beat the system by working within it. I don’t think its any accident that the bands last album Collapse Into Now was the final album of that deal. By choosing to disband after delivering that album, albeit to a much smaller buying public than that which had voraciously consumed Automatic For The People, Green or Out of Time, the band have again showed their sense of honor. They signed on, they delivered what they agreed to and they duly completed what was expected of them. I’m sure with the seismic shifts that have occurred within the industry in the last decade it would have been easy to try and remove themselves from a system that they could have declared to be broken and ‘go underground’ like Radiohead did, but it seems there was a morality about seeing that deal to its conclusion that informed their process.

R.E.M. have become synonymous with doing things correctly, tastefully and respectfully. In a business littered with glorious flame-outs they have become a beacon for longevity and respectability – not terribly rock n’ roll to be sure, but many young bands and their managers could still do worse than asking themselves “What would R.E.M. do?” when faced with difficult career decisions.

I met Peter Buck a couple of times. The first time was when the band toured Australia for the second time. In Melbourne they played at the Myer Music Bowl. I had interviewed Peter on the phone prior to the tour for InPress and in the course of that conversation he had expressed his love of Brisbane band the Go-Betweens and his interest in acquiring their early singles on vinyl. I had befriended Peter  Leak,the manager of R.E.M.’s touring support band Grant Lee Buffalo, and I’d given him my copies of the Go Between’s releases to pass onto Peter. Backstage with Peter after the show I was introduced to the R.E.M. guitarist, who politely thanked me for my gift and we chatted about music for a few minutes. Buck would always be comfortable chatting about music. Many years later I met him again as he leaned on the bar at the Central Club in Richmond waiting to play with Robyn Hitchcock, one of the many artists that he consistently plays with. He still had the Go-Betweens singles (amongst his collection of 10000). Nice bloke. Music Fan.

I’ve never met Michael Stipe or Mike Mills. Particularly in the case of the former I feel like I’ve known him for a long time from his songs….and not known him at the same time. Such was the intrigue of their music that there was always another nuance to be found, even on songs you’d listened to a hundred times. One frequently overlooked element was the humor of Stipe’s lyrics. Some of his asides and references were incredibly funny to me and the fact that he was able to come up with these gems and on the same album tear your heart out with a song of alienation or activate you with a statement of social or political discontent was a huge part of their appeal. Their evolution from the awkward but endearing guitar-pop shimmer of Murmur to a band capable of songs as subtle and majestic as Everybody Hurts, All The Way To Reno, Imitation of Life or Walk It Back is extraordinary.

There was always something completely genuine in the way the band and their support organization conducted themselves. From the mature way they dealt with the loss of original drummer Bill Berry, to their continued activism in their own local community and on selected global concerns, to Peter Buck’s frequent musical contributions to other favored artists (which showed he was still a record collector and a fan at heart) to Michael Stipe’s championing of independent filmmakers and his passion for the work of his multi-generational peers such as Patti Smith and Kurt Cobain, R.E.M. seemed to grow older with grace, aplomb and without a hint of desperation. They became adults in a youth oriented world but they did so without becoming parodies of themselves. Even when audience numbers dropped away, as was inevitable they would, there didn’t appear to be a need to panic. It was what is was and they would simply get on with it. The civilized way that they dealt with questions about Stipe’s sexuality was a example of their enlightened ways that should be a precedent for those who followed.

R.E.M. simply never let us down, and there’s not many band’s that can claim that over an extended period. And thankfully it didn’t take somebody dying to make us realize the significance of their body or work and the spirit in which it was made. That’s why their break up leaves me with only slightly mixed feelings. Their final album, Collapse Into Now was one of their best and it showed that they had plenty left in the tank; it wasn’t the album of a band staggering towards the finish line like a marathon runner with the jelly leg wobbles. The album left me wanting more, but isn’t that the most legitimate and best founded showbiz tradition? It was a clever album too- when I first heard it I thought it sounded like a self-tribute – there were songs on it that seemed to draw inspiration from just about every previous album in their catalogue. Whether this was intentional or not, it now works supremely well as a parting gesture. On All The Best, Stipe sings, “Let’s sing and rhyme/Let’s give it one more time/Let’s show the kids how to do it/ Fine, fine, fine/Fine. When the final song, Blue, draws to a close the guitar motif from the album’s opening track Discoverer returns closing the full circle on the album, in the way that the album perhaps closes the full circle on their career. A Perfect Circle indeed.

So now there is a full stop on this long, rambling, beautifully constructed and always meaningful sentence. They’ve chosen to stop at a time when stopping made perfect sense. There’s a Greatest Hits package due to arrive in November, and I’d imagine that for the record collector in Peter Buck there will be a temptation to mark the anniversary of certain albums with re-releases and the uncovering of lost recordings, demos and alternative versions.  There’s some wonderful live recordings available as audio and visual releases and I’m sure all three active members will remain active in other configurations. And if they don’t, that’s OK too.

I still want to name a racehorse Cuyuhoga, because I like the sound of the word and I still want It’s the End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) played at my funeral, whenever that might be. Those friends that show up to hear it will look kinda silly bouncing around on their walking frames. But that’ll be their problem.

 

Simone Felice Interview

Simone Felice is a storyteller. He’s a storyteller in song, as has been amply demonstrated by his work with The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King. But most recently he has come to attention as a novelist, with his debut book Black Jesus. It’s a harrowing and yet warming story, written in a startlingly fine way, by a writer who is certain to gain great recognition for his work. Felice will be in Australia soon for a series of shows that will combines Writers Festival events and music. We chatted to him just before he got on the plane to depart his home in the Catskills region of upstate New York

HHMM: I’m glad to hear you are going to leave the idyllic surroundings of the Catskills to come down and see us. You are doing a combination of musical gigs and Writers Festival events. How do you find touring and doing both things on one tour? Do get on stage and wonder whether you are supposed to talk or sing?

SF: You know, I’ve been doing this quite a bit over the last year and on my book tours I play some songs and I read a bit from the book, so there is a lot of storytelling, and its something that comes very natural to me. Before I ever started The Felice Brothers, with my brothers, like ten years ago, I was a poet, like a travelling poet and a stand-up poet in New York City. I used to read with people like Saul Williams and guys like that in the old days before the Twin Towers came down. So it’s like coming the full circle for me in a way, like, being able to do both. I like for the songs and for the readings to intertwine and to complement one another. It’s a lot of fun honestly Andrew, it’s a lot of fun.

HHMM: I guess there’s not a lot of people that have been able to do both over the time. One obvious example that jumps out to me is Jim Carroll.  Is he someone whose approach you have always admired?

SF: I honestly only just read The Basketball Diaries this year. I was inspired to do so by reading Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids.  I met Patti Smith in the wintertime this year. I was at a Christmas party with her and she met my baby daughter who was about six months at the time. She came up and talked to my baby and sort of blessed her. My baby’s name is Pearl, which was Janis Joplin’s nickname. When Patti heard that my babies name was Pearl she laid a really nice blessing on my baby. So then I read her book and I became curious about Jim Carroll from reading about him in her book. So I’ve really only got turned on to his artwork this year although Basketball Diaries has obviously been a cult classic for a long time. But I absolutely love his writing and he’s from New York as well.  I haven’t gotten into his music yet, but I look forward to it.

HHMM: Another guy who is in parallel with you who recently has been releasing some amazing books to go with his musical career is Willy Vlautin. His books are in a kind of similar genre to Black Jesus. Is there an emerging genre of people with a musical background writing books?

SF: I don’t know, nobody told me that! I have gotten Willy’s one book called Motel Life, but I am yet to read it. My editor who I worked with on Black Jesus is from Faber and Faber in London is a really great young editor and he has also worked with Willy Vlautin and he turned me on to Willy. I have books of Leonard Cohen from the 1950’s both of his prose and poetry so I think it has been a tradition for a long time. Tom Waits is both a writer and a songwriter. Same with Nick Cave and Patti Smith. Bob Dylan just wrote a phenomenal memoir. I feel like songwriting and storytelling are one and at the end of the day its all really poetry whether its in a book or on an album.

HHMM: The character of the soldier returning home from Iraq, Lionel White is almost like a next generation version of the character in Springsteen’s song Shut Out The Light.

SF: I don’t know that song. Tell me what its about.

HHMM: The character is a soldier coming home from war after being both physically and emotionally damaged and it’s about him trying to fit back in and find somewhere he can feel safe. It’s kind of like the micro version of the big picture painted in Born In The USA. Those songs were all inspired by Ron Kovic’s book Born On The 4^th July.

SF: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Springsteen seems obsessed with that theme. Even in Born In The USA, if you really listen to the verses that’s what its about – the horrors of war and the scars it can leave. I wanted to write a story…I had a friend who I grew up with who fought in Iraq. He went over there and signed up for the marines, just to go to college which is what most kids sign up for these days.  But first of all they got to fight for oil in the desert.  He came back wounded but with the kind of wounds you cant see. So I wanted to write a story about a boy who had come back from war blinded, but he finds out that maybe he was blind all his life. And that the country that he lives in would rather he was blind than could really see.  I wanted to tell a story about the age old truth that one of the most potent medicines when you’ve been damaged or wounded any way is love.  And after the thousands of years of us hacking each other to pieces for gold or land or oil, one of the most potent medicines that we still have is love.

HHMM: Reading the book, you find yourself rooting for almost all the characters, except maybe Ross, and even with him, he finds some kind of escape. It’s interesting that all these characters are so damaged but you entice the reader to be completely on their side.

SF: Aren’t we all damaged though Andrew, in some way. Some of us hide it better than others, but its not easy being on earth.

HHMM: It’s interesting you say that because one of the things I noticed about the characters is that they don’t mind admitting their failings. There’s a brilliant passage in the book when Joe asked Gloria “Are you OK?” and she simply replies, ”No”. Your comment is “And the sound of this one word alone, a three act tragedy”. Such a beautiful line.

SF: Oh thank you so much Andrew. This is my first time I’ve really written something that has gone out to the wide world, in the medium of prose, beyond song. This week has been the first week I’ve really been talking to anybody about it that has read it and the fact that it has moved you and moved other people really means a lot to me. I wrote the first lines of this book in 2005, so this story has been with me and been inside of me for the past six years of my life, which have certainly been the most transitional, heavy, scary, magical, beautiful, fucked up years of my life. Even though I don’t talk about myself in the book, the tapestry of my life and my emotions are woven in there in some subtle way and I just feel blessed to be able to share it with people. And to hold that book in my hand when I got it a couple of weeks ago from my publisher, it really meant a lot to me.

HHMM: Gloria gets one of the best lines in the book when she says “ I guess my right and wrong detector has been out of batteries for a while”. I love the line but what makes it even better is realizing that she’s not able to recognize right and wrong in other people but all the characters in the book, including her, have their own sense of what’s right and wrong very accurate and can be honest with themselves about what they do and think themselves.

SF: Yeah, that’s a great observation. I’m not really sure what to say about that. These characters, in general, are inspired in some way by people I grew up with or little parts of my own self. I wanted to tell a story that was true and something that was really coming from my heart. This little town Gay Paris, NY is basically the little town I grew up in with different street signs and a different name.  I heard something a long time ago which was advice by a great American writer who said “write what you know” That really burned into my brain. Write what you know. That’s what I tried to do in this book.

HHMM: The sympathy or empathy that you show for the people that the American dream missed isn’t something that you can fake through technical skill or whatever. You either have that empathy or you don’t.

SF: Yeah, I suppose so. It’s hard for me to know any other way. That’s how I grew up and obviously I’ve ben around the world and met some fancy people and I’ve been on boats and I’ve seen a lot of money come and go. But at the end of the day I’m still sitting there the same guy I always was.

HHMM: The other thing that comes through is that black humor is a really strong survival mechanism. Is that something you’ve drawn from your life as well.

SF: I come from a family of Irish immigrants and black humour was prevalent on the house that I grew up in, or morticians humour as some call it. So it’s just something I grew up with. Laughter is a medicine that is equal with love and life is hard in a lot of ways and if we can laugh a little bit and love a little bit then it’s a lot easier to get through the day.

HHMM: Musically what is the next step for you?

SF: I’ll share a little secret with you. I’ve been recording my first solo album for the last ten months and I just finished it. It’s a very lonesome album, although there are a handful of songs where I bring some good friends together, those friends being my brothers and the guys from Mumford and Sons. It’s going to come out early next year and it’s my debut solo album that I’ve been waiting to make for many years. I feel like it’s the best work I’ve ever done and I cant wait to share it with you and everybody.

 

 

 

Northcote Social Club – September 14

The Palais at Hepburn Springs – September 15

Meeniyan Town Hall – September 16

 

Clarence Clemons – “The Big Man” Dies.

The sad news came through today that Clarence Clemons, saxophonist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band died at the age of 69.

An integral part of both the music and the spirit that informed the career of Springsteen, Clemons was a larger than life character, a fine musician and vital piece of the jigsaw that made the E Street Band the greatest ensemble rock n’ roll band I’ve ever heard in my life.

“It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away,” Bruce Springsteen said on his website, adding the cause was complications from Clemons’ stroke last Sunday.

“Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family,” Springsteen said on Saturday night. “He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him … He was my great friend, my partner and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music.

His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.”

Clemons bought more than his saxophone to the E Street Band. He literally was a shoulder for Springsteen to lean on – musically, figuratively and most famously on the cover of the Born To Run album. On stage he was a colossus and was often the Ying to Springsteen’s Yang – the pair bought a sense of fun and a sense of the absurd to moments in the live show, when that’s exactly what they needed.

His importance to the recorded music shouldn’t be under-rated either. On Thunder Road when Springsteen announces, “It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win” – the album’s clarion call – the music then resolves into a triumphant play-out – lead by Clemons saxophone. And when we wonder where the singer might being going in pursuit of that victory we get an immediate answer – the next song, introduced by the saxaphone (of Clemons, and of Becker and Sanborn) is Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. If there was any doubt where salvation was going to come from it’s erased by this song. Springsteen even name-checks “the Big Man” in the song.

When the change was made up-town

And the Big Man joined the band

From the coastline to the city

All the little pretties raided their hands

I’m gonna sit back right easy and laugh

When Scooter and the Big Man bust this city in half

In Clemons memoir Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales,” co-written with Clemons friend Don Reo, Springsteen talks about the symbolism of the picture that adorns the cover of the album that changed the face of rock n’ roll.

“When you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic,” Springsteen wrote. “Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing? A friendship and a narrative steeped in the complicated history of America begins to work and there is music already in the air.”

The story of Springsteen and Clemons meeting has become part of folklore for Springsteen fans, largely due to it featuring as a ‘story’ in any number of live shows.

In his definitive Springsteen biography Glory Days, Dave Marsh describes it such: “Saxophonist Clarence (Big Man) Clemons had appeared one night out of the mist, entering a Jersey boardwalk club as a gust of wind ripped the door off in his hand. He stuck around to play the King Curtis riffs that were one of the signatures of Springsteen’s early sound and serve as Springsteen’s most important stage foil.”

In a number of interview’s refereed to in Clemons Wikipedia entry he tell’s the story himself.

“One night we were playing in Asbury Park. I’d heard The Bruce Springsteen Band was nearby at a club called The Student Prince and on a break between sets I walked over there. On-stage, Bruce used to tell different versions of this story but I’m a Baptist, remember, so this is the truth. A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band were on-stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. And maybe that did make Bruce a little nervous because I just said, “I want to play with your band,” and he said, “Sure, you do anything you want.” The first song we did was an early version of “Spirit In The Night”. Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for. In one way he was just a scrawny little kid. But he was a visionary. He wanted to follow his dream. So from then on I was part of history.”

Another story that featured Clemons was one that featured during Growin’ Up, primarily on the 1984 tour that made it to Australia. It tells the story of Springsteen and Clemons, at the behest of a career guidance advisor, seeking out the gypsy lady, who in turn, sends them out to the woods, where after an encounter with the Jersey Devil, they meet two bears who present them with a guitar and saxophone.  From there “we knew everything was gonna be alright”, says Springsteen towards the end of the story.

The story, and Clemons role in it, pretty much sums up the Big Man’s role in the E Street family. Clemons was the one who would be by Springsteen’s side when he was embarking on an adventure where the destination was uncertain. It made for a remarkable journey.

Arguably Clemons greatest impact was on the Born To Run album, and there’s no doubt that his saxophone solo that punctuates Jungleland is one of the most poignant pieces of instrumental work in the whole of Springsteen’s recorded history. That solo yearns and aches and somehow emerges triumphant  as Springsteen’s most epic street opera builds to it’s conclusion. Clemons reportedly spent 16 hours working on that solo, a story that’s probably true in the context of the making of that album.

Clarence Clemons also played outside the E Street Band. The most well known of his solo work are the 1985 vocal duet with Jackson Browne on the hit single You’re a Friend of Mine and his saxophone work on Aretha Franklin’s 1985 hit single Freeway of Love.

Clarence Anicholas Clemons was born on Jan. 11, 1942, in Norfolk, Virginia. His father owned a fish market and his grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, and although he grew up surrounded by gospel music, Clemons was quickly attracted to rock and soul.  Clemons’ got his first saxophone, an alto, at age 9 as a Christmas gift; later, following the influence of King Curtis he switched to the tenor.

Clemons attended Maryland State College on a scholarship for football and music. He tried out for the Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns, but a knee injury ended his hopes for a football career.

Clemons’ death is the second of the E Street Band and it comes three years after organist Danny Federici, Springsteen’s longest-serving musical partner, lost a three-year battle with cancer.

Clemons had been in ill health in recent years, suffering back and hip problems. He had double knee-replacement surgery in 2008, and managed to get back on his feet for the first time in three months when Springsteen and the E Street Band played the Super Bowl early in 2009.

Rest In Peace Clarence Clemons – and thanks, thanks a lot.

Bobby Long Interview

Bobby Long is one of the most interesting new songwriters to emerge in recent times.  Along with artists like Joe Pug, previously featured on this site, Long represents a literate, intelligent side to new music that brings it’s appeal back to the simple combination of words and music.

The 25 year old Englishman, who now lives in New York, recently released his debut album A Winter Tale is currently touring Australia, playing at Bluesfest and doing a couple of small solo shows in Melbourne and Sydney. I’d strongly recommend you see him in those intimate venues because he’s not likely to be in small venues for long. I had the chance to chat to Bobby before he opened the show last week for Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

HHMM: I’ve got a thing about listening to debut albums – and I know you had an recording that you sold at shows before A Winters Tale – but I’m treating A Winters Tale as a debut album.  You get that feeling from the album, and debut albums in general, that you have a sense that “Wow, I may never get to do this again, and I’m going to pour everything I’ve got into this album.’

BL: There’s always that insecurity.  Even now A part of the work ethic and the reason you are on tour the whole time and you don’t want to turn anything down is that you want to make use of the situation. There is always that slight worry that this is going to be it, this is going to be my one chance.

HHMM: It’s kind of like when you listen to Greetings From Asbury Park – you can actually hear Springsteen seizing that moment in case he doesn’t get that chance again. As it turns out he got to make another twenty albums!

BL: That’s what I hope happens for me. My whole thing is that this is a career base. That was what was in my mind as well. It wasn’t just about what I got on the page it was about what was the best way of me coming across right now and also how am I going to improve on this for the second one. I wanted to stick to my strengths, which were playing live and working with people who understood me. I also had a mind on the future but, as you said, there was definitely an insecurity that this might be it!

HHMM: One of the things that happen in that situation is that lyrically, everyone tries to get every thought and every idea they’ve ever had somewhere on the album. To your credit you already appear to be a very good self- editor and you managed to avoid cramming the songs so full of ideas that they stop making any sense.

BL: Thanks. Before you put anything out you already pulling at it. It’s funny you should say that because I’m finding that the songs I am writing now are much more concise. That’s a thing of being young – you have so much to say and when you have a platform… I had a tendency when I first started playing that every song was like eight minutes long! There was like this machine gun fire of words and I have learnt to self-edit more and be more concise. A Winter Tale was a big, sprawling opener, but then there’s songs like Who Have You Been Loving and In The Frost I learnt that there was no need for another explanatory verse and that the song was fine without it. That other verse doesn’t need to be there. It’s like a painting where you have a really nice painting and you know you could paint a really perfect chapel in the right corner – but it wont add anything. I did try to do that on the album, but I think I have improved on it since then.

HHMM: On your website there is a number of poems. One I really liked was titled Untitled No.2. , where you manage to get Bach, Van Morrison and Starbucks into one piece of work.  How do you decide when a piece of writing is going to be a song and when it stays being a poem.

BL: That’s a completely different hat.  When I write songs, I write songs. I have a tendency not to write lyrics unless the guitar is in my hand. When I do the poetry thing I’m aware that that is what I am doing right now and there is a real separation, and they are two completely different things.  At the moment I really into the poetry thing and I really want to explore that. I was doing some writing today and music is not even in my head.

HHMM: The thing I distinguished between the poems and the songs is that the songs seem to be more about putting the listener in a time and place, whereas the poems are very much about the here and now.

BL: Yeah, the poem thing is much more diary-like and the song is a transportation thing. I’m much more in love with the music side and much more critical of myself, whereas the poetry thing is much more personal and how I feel on a day and I write it more ‘blah, blah, blah…’ (indicates a spilling out motion). That poem you mentioned before I wrote like that, (snaps finger) and I had no qualms putting it up straight away. With a song there’s a lot more work ethic involved in that, before it gets to an audience.

HHMM: There seems to be an emergence of a whole new group of songwriters, people who are not afraid to admit that they have been to school and had studied writing or art. What do you feel that you gained from having a formal education?

BL: My education was really weird, because I did fucking awful at school! At the age of 15 you can make the choice about whether you want to go to 6^th Form college or not. You needed to get five C’s to go on to do A Levels and go to University. I got two C’s. But I was allowed in because I was a quiet kid who didn’t bother anyone and I did acting and art and music.  They obviously thought I had something.  I went to a very normal school, I didn’t go to a private school. I learned far more from self-education than I did from going to school. The books I read weren’t the books I was reading at school. I enjoyed Shakespeare and Brave New World and stuff like that at school though. I definitely benefited from education from the point of view of keeping me in one place and keeping me focused and not making me go out and do loads of drugs or drinking , but my education thing didn’t have a huge effect on what I’m doing now. But it helped me to be surrounded by a bunch of people who went to school and being in that environment. You hang around with a bunch of drunks then you become a drunk. You hang around with a bunch of kids who read, then you are going to pick up a book. That had a big effect.

HHMM:  With people like Joe Pug and yourself there almost seems to have been ten years of music that you have chosen to ignore and that’s the ten years between when you where say 10 and 20, which is normally the most impressionable years. Are you conscious of that?

BL: See, I love Radiohead, and I loved Oasis when they first came out, but I was like seven or eight then. It’s not like they inspired me to pick up a guitar or anything, but I though they were great. But I think you are right. Jeff Buckley and Elliot Smith I love, but Jeff Buckley died when I was like thirteen, so you are right. When I was in London when I was at University, there was a big thing for indie music that was like boy bands and leather jackets, and I didn’t want to hear it at all.  I couldn’t associate with any of that stuff.

HHMM: Do you think that the emergence of people like yourself is almost like a reaction to the era of Idol and X Factor, when music was populated by manufactured pop stars.

BL: I don’t think it’s a response but I remember when I was young thinking that all I was hearing was bad, fucking dance music.  But I think you are right that people are bored with this pre-packaged, compressed, digital stuff. But see, my girlfriend loves X-Factor and American Idol and I’ll watch it with her. I’m not going to vote or anything, but it doesn’t make me want to write a song to counter-act it. It’s just this whole other thing. It’s like watching a soap opera, and these people aren’t really affecting me and what I do. But hopefully it might make people think that music is cool, and then after a little while they might realize that it doesn’t have to be this glamourized television stuff, but music is actually something that real people do every day.

HHMM:  You actually wrote a thesis on the Social Impact of American Folk Music. I’ve read that you mainly did that as a means to get your degree, but having said that you probably worked out pretty quickly that American folk music consisted of more than Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Do you consider some of your influences like Leonard Cohan and Neil Young and The Band as folk music?

BL: Oh yeah, definitely influenced. I don’t even think that what I do is all that folky when you put it in with people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Folk music really is like a form of documentation of and a voice of social discontent and I’m not really that. And I’m not making political comment.  But I love those three artists and they are definitely carrying that torch on and so I think that’s a natural progression from people listening to Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and early Dylan. But The Band wrote a lot about Civil War didn’t they?

HHMM: To me, by that definition, Ray Davies is a folk artist.

BL: Ray Davies is like one of the best writers of social observation, as is Randy Newman. Randy Newman is fucking amazing. Ray Davies, for English life, there is not one  better writer out there for that. Stevie Marriott was good too with the Small Faces. But Ray Davies is killer. You hear a song and it sounds like England, and it takes you back and you recognize stuff.

HHMM: Do you have any idea how cool it is for someone my age to be talking to a guy who is 25, about Ray Davies and Randy Newman, and The Band and Leonard Cohen.

BL: The thing is, that I just think it is good music and it’s worth talking about it. I was also kind of force –fed it by my dad. When we were in the car and he’d be playing Dylan and The Beatles. Lucky I fell in love with it!

HHMM: One thing you have inherited from the folk tradition is that troubadour spirit of getting out and playing a lot and taking your music to people in that way.

BL: I did another interview today when the guy said, ‘Oh you play so much’, and I thought it was just normal.  That thing of getting out and playing every night is just the way to do it. I love the idea of Bleeker St in the 60’s where  you’d have Dylan playing every night and The Beatles in Hamburg would play four shows a night.

HHMM: The difference now is that you can travel rom town to town but the internet has got there before you, so there is usually some sort of an audience already waiting

BL: It is important but it can be frustrating from time to time too because you really have to fight to maintain any kind of mystery. You have to isolate yourself from it and at the same time you use it. I have a Twitter account but I don’t put anything personal on it. So I tell people about shows and stuff. It’s not flyers and magazines anymore, it’s Twitter.  It’s weird to do a show and then there are videos on You Tube the next day from five different angles! I might say something on stage and if I say it again a few nights later in a different town there will be someone who says, ‘you already said that’. So there is good and bad elements to it.

Joe Pug Interview

Joe Pug is a young Chicago based folk/country flavoured singer and songwriter, about to embark on his second Australian tour. He’s also one of the more interesting new artists to emerge in the last year. His songs are outstanding – suggesting influences such as Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen, and reflecting his early literary education. But he’s also got a punk rock, DYI approach to his career. He built a fan base by giving his music away and playing incessantly. Recently he’s introduced the concept of no-fee tickets to shows, taking up a position that bands like Pearl Jam did in a well-publicized way a few years ago. He’s taken an approach to the industry of music that has made him a hero to the ‘anti-industry’ movement. He’s an interesting bloke.

HHMM: Let me congratulate you on two things. Firstly your songs and music and secondly the way you’ve dealt with the process of getting that music out to the people. Are you proud of both things?

JP: Thank you. I think I am very comfortable with the way we’ve gotten the word out there. I think we’ve been very fair with our fans like it was a relationship or a friendship or something like that.

HHMM: I guess it was a case of doing it by instinct more than any grand plan?

JP: We’re still doing it by instinct because there is no result of how its all gonna shake out or how its gonna work. How much have we benefited from giving the records away or how much have we benefited from doing “no fee” ticketing here in the States? I don’t know. I think it will make itself clear as time goes on.

HHMM: People in the independent scene see you as some kind of hero for taking an “anti-industry” approach to music. Was there a sense that you were re-writing the rules?

JP: You have no real choice because there are no rules right now and you have no choice but to write your own.  If I had come along ten years ago I might have chosen to go a more traditional route, but I didn’t really have that option. I would love to take a lot of credit for striking out on our own but it was kind of the only option we had.

HHMM: Do you kind of see yourself as a punk rocker playing folk music in terms of attitude?

JP: Well the first music that made me fall in love with music was Nirvana. Clearly Kurt Cobain had a very fraught relationship with fame and he yet he benefited more from it than any person has before or ever will. It’s a strange. I’ve never much identified with the folk community, but I’ve never much identified with the punk community either, if those things even exist.

HHMM: So do you identify more with Woody Guthrie or Kurt Cobain.

JP: Well we travel the country like Woody used to do, although I guess we are riding in the lap of luxury compared to the way he used to travel. I identify with both. I think they’re actually very similar.

HHMM: The other album that comes to mind when listening to Messenger, more in terms of attitude, is Springsteen’s Nebraska. Is that a big album in your musical lineage?

JP: I’ve definitely listened to Nebraska before and I definitely liked it, but I wouldn’t say it’s on my Mt. Rushmore of records, but I really do like it.

HHMM: What would be on your personal Mt Rushmore?

JP: Oh wow. You could put any one of Nirvana’s records up there. You could put Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home up there. Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy. I’d put a John Hiatt record on there like Bring The Family or Slow Turning. Lucinda Williams. There’s a bunch of records that would have a legitimate claim to a spot up there.

HHMM: I want my record collection back.

JP:  Yeah, really.

HHMM: Do you think the fact that you actually studied writing has helped you economise your lyric writing at a young age. By that I mean- most songwriters in their early twenties try to squeeze every phrase and every idea into every song, like they are scared they’ll never get a chance to write another song. Your writing is very mature in that you economise with words. Is that the product of training?

JP: Well yeah. It’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I’m about half way through writing the new record right now and I feel like I’ve gotten more disciplined in paring it down. I’m just seeing how much I can take out, how many walls I can take out, before the whole thing comes crashing down. The problem is, once you start slashing stuff away, you can make a song so simple that it actually turns the corner and becomes really trite and stupid. So you have to leave just enough in there to make it idiosyncratic and meaningful.

HHMM: Listening to the record again, it kind of creeps up on me that there is a lot of Raymond Carver in there. Is that a fair comment?

JP: Oh, yeah. I’m a massive Raymond Carver fan, although I had not read a lot of him when I wrote those records.  Someone passed although firstly Cathedral and then What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. So probably there is his influence on a lot of the other writing that I was influenced by.

HHMM: The way that people have connected to the Messenger album – does that give you a greater sense of responsibility for the next record, knowing that there is an audience out there with expectations?

JP: It’s sort of a weird territory that I am trying to navigate right now, because I’ve never been in this position before. So I don’t know how to handle that. In one sense I’ve got to go forward and do exactly what I want to do and try and keep it between myself and the canvas, but at the same time I’m working hard on it because people are spending hard earned money on these records and I feel a responsibility  to be the best that I can.

HHMM: And in between times you manage to fit in your second trip to Australia in a few months. When you come through a town the second time is there a different feeling about it?

JP: The first time is always fun because there there’s a sort of exuberance, but I like coming back to a town because I get a chance to really develop a relationship with an audience and maybe play different songs I might not have played at the first gig and get a little bit deeper into my catalogue.

HHMM: Do you ever project ahead and think about going back to a town for the 30^th time? Are you a life prisoner of the troubadour life?

JP: There is no question I’ll be touring for a long time. This is how I make my living. I think it’s very important to what I do. I get sick of it too, like you get sick of any job. It’s so intense when you are on the road playing the same songs, but I think ultimately it informs my songwriting. I couldn’t imagine writing songs and not being on the road and taking it to people.

HHMM: The final song on Messenger, Speak Plainly, Diana, is the most sonically confronting song on the album. It’s almost Crazy Horse-like sonically. Can you see a whole album being made like that one day?

JP: I just gotta find the right players and I don’t think I’ve found the right players yet. But once I do I’m looking forward to trying some new directions.

ALL TICKETS ON SALE NOW • AVAILABLE ONLINE AT www.lovepolice.com.au/tours

FRIDAY 11 MARCH • NOTES, Sydney, NSW

SATURDAY, 12 MARCH • PORT FAIRY FOLK FESTIVAL

SUNDAY, 13 MARCH • PORT FAIRY FOLK FESTIVAL

WEDNESDAY 16 MARCH • MOJOS, Fremantle, WA with Justin Townes Earle

THURSDAY 17 MARCH • MOJOS, Fremantle, WA with Justin Townes Earle

FRIDAY 18 MARCH • FORUM THEATRE, Melbourne, VIC with Justin Townes Earle

SATURDAY 19 MARCH • MOSSVALE PARK, NEAR LEONGATHA, VIC

SUNDAY 20 MARCH • THE TOFF IN TOWN, Melbourne VIC

See My Friends – Ray Davies (Universal)

It’s interesting to observe the different approaches currently being taken by various legendary artists to keep their legacy alive and breathing. Just today, in a JB-Hi store, I was confronted by the number of box sets, greatest hits compilations, re-packaged and re-mastered albums. There’s duets albums, tribute albums and albums matched with books, DVD’s, bonus downloads and t.shirts. It feels like just about every angle is being covered in the quest to wring every last drop of blood from great catalogues.

As an aside, I wonder how many of todays new artists will be given the opportunity to build such catalogues. I suspect very few. But that’s another debate.

Of all the re-workings of great catalogues this contribution by Ray Davies surely feels like one of the most joyous. He’s taken the “duets” route – re-recording some great songs from his extensive repertoire with fans and admirers who have been impacted by his work.

This isn’t the place to extol the virtues of the Ray Davies songbook – if you are not already aware of the depth and importance of his songs then you probably wouldn’t have been moved to read this far anyway! Suffice to say he has a multitude of truly great songs at his disposal and they have been well selected here.

The album opens with Better Things, a song that could easily have been written for or buy Bruce Springsteen. The two voices are contrasting, Springsteen’s gruff, robust vocal combining well with Davies thinner, reedier and needier approach. The song works, but its only an entrée to what is to come.

There are some absolute gems sprinkled across the album. Jackson Browne contributes to an incredibly gentle rendition of Waterloo Sunset. It loses the urban, London jauntiness of the original and becomes a delicate, very soulful acoustic ballad.  The late Alex Chilton combines with Davies and LA band The 88 to re-produce Til The End of The Day, a song that Big Star had already covered and the approach reflects that style. Davies lets Chilton dominate the vocal.

Who would have thought  Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora would actually elevate Celluloid Heroes? They do a great job, giving the song some added muscle without detracting from its extraordinary pathos. The same could be said for Lola – its probably the bravest choice on the album because its just so iconic in its original form, but British soul singer Paloma Faith does it justice and then some. She sings the song superbly, but more importantly she brings another type of understanding and perspective to the lyric. It’s not a song you can just ‘sing’, you’ve got to inhabit it  and that’s exactly what she does. And Davies subtle vocal parts provide a brilliant balance to Paloma’s inspired efforts.

But even that is not my highlight. That comes from another unexpected source – Billy Corgan. Destroyer was a song that Davies himself plagiarized from his own catalogue, borrowing the riff from All Day And All Of The Night and adding a wonderfully kooky, paranoid lyric.  Here they actually merge the two songs with Corgan doing a memorable job with the partially spoken word lyric.  He sings almost in character – with a wink and sneer and another wink that reveals how accurately he understands both songs of this hybrid.

There’s not a bad track on the album – proving that great songs can be approached in different ways and still be great songs. Other honourable mentions go to Frank Black who reads This Is Where I Belong as a country oriented ballad and Gary Lightbody who provides a fragile vocal to Tired of Waiting.

The overall impact of this album is joyful celebration of a masterful songwriter and it’s a long way removed from being a cynical exercise in mining a catalogue.

Springsteen’s ‘The Promise’ Might Be The Release Of The Year

I know what I’m getting myself for Christmas.

Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story’ will be released on Nov 16. The Deluxe Package comprises over six hours of film and more than two hours of audio across 3 CDs and 3 DVDs.

The media contents are packaged within an 80-page notebook containing facsimiles from Springsteen’s original notebooks from the recording sessions, which include alternate lyrics, song ideas, recording details, and personal notes in addition to a new essay by Springsteen and never-before-seen photographs. Containing a wealth of previously unreleased material, ‘The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story’ offers an unprecedented look into Springsteen’s creative process during a defining moment in his career. ‘The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story’ will additionally be released as a 3CD/3 Blu Ray disc set.

The set will be available as ‘The Promise,’ an edition which consists of only the unheard complete songs on two CDs or four LPs, along with lyrics and the new essay by Springsteen.

The Deluxe Package includes ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town,’ digitally remastered for the first time.

CD 1: REMASTERED ‘DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN’
1. Badlands
2. Adam Raised A Cain
3. Something In The Night
4. Candy’s Room
5. Racing In The Street
6. The Promised Land
7. Factory
8. Streets Of Fire
9. Prove It All Night
10. Darkness On The Edge Of Town

“‘Darkness’ was my ‘samurai’ record,” Springsteen writes, “stripped to the frame and ready to rumble…But the music that got left behind was substantial.” For the first time, fans will have access to two discs containing a total of 21 previously-unreleased songs from the ‘Darkness’ recording sessions, songs that, as Springsteen writes, “perhaps could have/should have been released after ‘Born To Run’ and before the collection of songs that ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ became.”

Highlights include the extraordinary rock version of “Racing in the Street,” the never-before-released original recordings of “Because the Night,” “Fire,” and “Rendezvous,” the supreme pop opus “Someday (We’ll Be Together),” the hilarious “Ain’t Good Enough for You,” the superb soul-based vocal performance on “The Brokenhearted,” the utterly haunting “Breakaway,” and the fully orchestrated masterpiece and title song “The Promise.” All 21 songs have been mixed by Springsteen’s long-time collaborator Bob Clearmountain. According to long-time manager/producer Jon Landau, “There isn’t a weak card in this deck. ‘The Promise’ is simply a great listening experience.”

CD 2: THE PROMISE (DISC 1)
1. Racing In The Street (’78)
2. Gotta Get That Feeling
3. Outside Looking In
4. Someday (We’ll Be Together)
5. One Way Street
6. Because The Night
7. Wrong Side Of The Street
8. The Brokenhearted
9. Rendezvous
10. Candy’s Boy

CD 3: THE PROMISE (DISC 2)
1. Save My Love
2. Ain’t Good Enough For You
3. Fire
4. Spanish Eyes
5. It’s A Shame
6. Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)
7. Talk To Me
8. The Little Things (My Baby Does)
9. Breakaway
10. The Promise
11. City Of Night

The Deluxe Package also features “The Promise: The Making of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town,’” a documentary directed by Grammy- and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny. The ninety-minute film combines never-before-seen footage of Springsteen and the E Street Band shot between 1976 and 1978–including home rehearsals and studio sessions–with new interviews with Springsteen, E Street Band members, manager Jon Landau, former-manager Mike Appel, and others closely involved in the making of the record. Advanced word on the documentary is so strong that it was invited to debut at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival on September 14 and will make its television debut on HBO on October 7.

DVD 1: “THE PROMISE: THE MAKING OF ‘DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN’”

In addition, the set features more than four hours of live concert film from the Thrill Hill Vault, including the bootleg house cut (the footage that appeared on-screen at the concert) from a 1978 Houston show, and a 2009 performance of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ in its entirety from Asbury Park. The special performance in Asbury Park was shot in HD without an audience and successfully recreates the stark atmosphere of the original album.

DVD 2: DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (PARAMOUNT THEATER, ASBURY PARK, NJ, 2009)
1. Badlands
2. Adam Raised A Cain
3. Something In The Night
4. Candy’s Room
5. Racing In The Street
6. The Promised Land
7. Factory
8. Streets Of Fire
9. Prove It All Night
10. Darkness On The Edge Of Town

THRILL HILL VAULT (1976-1978)
1. Save My Love (Holmdel, NJ 76)
2. Candy’s Boy (Holmdel, NJ 76)
3. Something In The Night (Red Bank, NJ 76)
4. Don’t Look Back (NYC 78)
5. Ain’t Good Enough For You (NYC 78)
6. The Promise (NYC 78)
7. Candy’s Room Demo (NYC 78)
8. Badlands (Phoenix 78)
9. The Promised Land (Phoenix 78)
10. Prove It All Night (Phoenix 78)
11. Born To Run (Phoenix 78)
12. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (Phoenix 78)

DVD 3: HOUSTON ’78 BOOTLEG: HOUSE CUT
1. Badlands
2. Streets Of Fire
3. It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
4. Darkness On The Edge Of Town
5. Spirit In The Night
6. Independence Day
7. The Promised Land
8. Prove It All Night
9. Racing In The Street
10. Thunder Road
11. Jungleland
12. The Ties That Bind
13. Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
14. The Fever
15. Fire
16. Candy’s Room
17. Because The Night
18. Point Blank
19. She’s The One
20. Backstreets
21. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
22. Born To Run
23. Detroit Medley
24. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
25. You Can’t Sit Down
26. Quarter To Three

Ray Davies New Album Sound Very Cool

Ray Davies is rightly revered as one of the great songwriters in rock n’ roll history as well as being one of its more interesting characters. Thus it comes as no surprise when it came to recording his new album a fascinating cast of guests have been happy to appear.

Various confirmed and unconfirmed stories seem to suggest that some of these suggestions are close to the truth.

In 2009 Davies recorded a version of Better Things with Bruce Springsteen, while Bon Jovi contributed to Celluloid Heroes. An American magazine has reported that Billy Corgan has been working on the new album, with the Smashing Pumpkins singer contributing to a new version of  Destroyer from the under-rated Give The People What They Want album. If you know the song you can just hear Corgan sneering his way through that one with Davies playing the paranoid role!

Big Star frontman the late Alex Chilton is said to have recorded his contribution prior to his death earlier this year while Lucinda Williams also due to appear.

That would be worth the price of admission alone.

But to add to that there’s a few more contemporary stars said to be lurking around the studio.

Mumford and Sons,  Paloma Faith and Amy MacDonald are all expected to appear although a rumour of The Killers being involved is false.

Work on the new album is continuing with recent visitors to the studio including members of Spoon and possibly even Frank Black.

New Springsteen DVD In June

Bruce Springsteen has a new DVD set for release and it’s a cracker. It’s title is London Calling: Live In Hyde Park

Captured in London at the Hard Rock Calling Festival on June 28, 2009, the 172-minute film documents 27 tracks of live Springsteen that begin in daylight and progress through a gorgeous sunset into night – all in HD.

London Calling: Live In Hyde Park conveys both the experience of being on stage and the vast crowd experience of the festival environment. Viewers are able to see Springsteen spontaneously directing the E Street Band and shaping the show as it
evolves. The set list spans from “Born To Run” era to “Working On a Dream” and includes rare covers and fan favorites. Brian Fallon from The Gaslight Anthem joins the band as a guest vocalist on Springsteen’s own “No Surrender.”

The concert earned rave reviews. The London Times called it “epic” and “a revved-up, three hour power drive through Springsteen’s America.” The Independent concurred: “Springsteen’s intensity was staggering from first powerful vocal to final
thrashed-out chord.”

GRAMMY® and Emmy Award®-winning producer and editor Thom Zimny and director Chris Hilson – both members of Springsteen’s video team dating back over a decade – oversaw the film which will be available everywhere on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on June 28, 2010.

London Calling: Live In Hyde Park Tracklisting:
———————————————–
London Calling
Badlands
Night
She’s The One
Outlaw Pete
Out In The Street
Working On A Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
Good Lovin’
Bobby Jean
Trapped
No Surrender
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Promised Land
Racing In The Street
Radio Nowhere
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born To Run
Hard Times (Come Again No More)
Jungleland
American Land
Glory Days
Dancing In The Dark
Credits (Raise Your Hand)

BONUS MATERIAL:
The River: Glastonbury Festival, 2009
Wrecking Ball: Giants Stadium, 2009

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