So yeah, there I was, back from a sabbatical of sorts brought on by crappy circumstances…and ready to go. I was gonna blog more again, keep in touch with people, stay current on email, post a “song of the week” to share cool music, and even set up a site to serialize my early “hardboiled fantasy” novel, Skullduggery so folks could read it for free.
So. Yeah.
Then I disappeared. No more blog, no more music, no more Skullduggery. Definitely no staying current on email, either my personal account or through Facebook (which I haven’t looked at in months). Hardly any online activity at all.
What happened? I could say I bit off more than I could chew, but things being the way they’ve been, it’s probably more accurate to say I bit off more and I couldn’t chew at all. The past few months have been harrowing and stressful and lonely. So hey, good times.
I’m hopefully back for a while, and have things I want to talk about, and some things I really don’t. I’l be making a gradual assault on my email backlog, but if you’re in it, I can’t make any promises I’ll be able to reply. I will try to hit the important things, as out of date as they may be.
And here’s a Song of the Week, to reflect my broken brain and its place in the world…
I’m starting a new tradition here under the ol’ outlaw moon. Every week, I’m going to share a song with you. And I’m going to begin with one of my favorites, a song by the lovely Julie Miller called “By Way of Sorrow.”
This is a song that I’ve listened to hundreds of times over the years and it has never lost its power to move me. Aside from the elegant softness of the music and the gentle beauty of Miller’s voice, the song is like a shelter from the cold, a loving touch on a lonely night.
I suffer from depression, and just listening to Miller sing this song adds a bit of hope to my time in the abyss. This winter has been a time of crushing solitude and torpor for me (it’s become apparent that my depression is very cyclical, and the colder months damn near crack my bones spiritually), and I’m only just starting not only to see sunlight again, but to care whether I see it or not.
Julie Miller’s song helps me feel like perhaps there’s still someplace I’m headed besides base survival.
I already blogged about this (with multiple videos), but in April I saw the best concert I’ve ever seen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Phillips Arena. This wasn’t my first Springsteen show (and hopefully won’t be the last), but it was the best.
As Jon Stewart said a couple of years ago, “If you like joy, go see Bruce Springsteen.”
My ex and I started a new tradition last year. Every Christmas, we’re both giving our son some of the music we were listening to the year we were his current age. He’s thirteen now, so she gave him music from 1965 and I gave him music from 1977, the respective years we were thirteen.
I gave him Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and ELO’s A New World Record. I also put together a two CD package of assorted hits I liked that year, which allowed me to revisit the year I really started getting into music in the first place and rediscover just how many great songs came out then.
In an appearance on a panel at the World Science Festival, Bobby McFerrin uses his superpowers to turn a crowd into a huge musical instrument. Fascinating and entertaining.
Introduced the kid to BREAKFAST CLUB tonight to good reviews. So here’s an appropriate blast from the past. And hey, EVERYBODY goes with “Don’t You Forget About Me.”
If you’re not familiar with Michelle Malone, she’s sixteen tons of rock and blues melted down to a scalding boil and poured into a whiskey bottle. She’s a world-class talent I’ve been listening to since the mid-1980s, and a nice lady to boot.
Today’s her birthday. To celebrate, everybody should buy her new album, Debris. It’s an amazing work. Here’s a taste:
And if you likey the blues, you really need to watch this one:
Here are a couple of videos from Springsteen’s 1988 Tunnel of Love tour, which was the first time I saw him. Tunnel of Love is notable for being his last studio album with the E Street Band (until 2002′s The Rising, a 16 year gap), and it was during this tour that Bruce (who was married to Julianne Phillips) fell for his backup singer, Patti Scialfa.
In the first video, Bruce and Patti look like they’re on the verge of tearing each other’s clothes off on the spot, and in the second, Bruce explores a theme that clearly was very much on his mind at the time: wanting something you’re not supposed to have.
While we’re on the topic of Patti Scialfa, here’s a treat for those unfamiliar with her solo work:
Sunday night, my ex, mother of my child, treated me to Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at Phillips Arena. Pretty damn cool considering we’re still in the middle of a custody fight, but we still get along very well, overall…even though we’re still in the middle of a custody fight.
We were standing on the floor, about sixty feet in front of Bruce, and the show was phenomenal. I’ve seen him four times with the E Streeters, once with the Seeger Sessions Band a couple years ago (we actually drove up to Jersey for that one), and once solo acoustic on the Ghost of Tom Joad tour, and there is simply no one who puts on a better show.
Aside from being a volcano of energy and charisma, Bruce gives you a hell of a lot of rock and roll for your money. Back in the day, he would sometimes play over four hours a night (as he did the first time I saw him, on the Tunnel of Love tour), and Sunday he played for right around three hours. That’s with no intermission, too. The man clearly loves his job, and every minute is turbo-charged.
Also, no Springsteen show is ever the same. He changes the set list every night, and you never know what he’s going to play next. This tour, he’s taken this a step further: at one point in the show, he paced around the stage, reaching into the crowd and taking the signs people had made requesting songs, and he played those requests. Not only is the set-list ever-changing, it’s now dynamic. Even Bruce and the band don’t know everything they’re going to play in a show.
This led to one of the (many) highlights of the show. Someone requested “96 Tears,” the classic ? and the Mysterians tune. “96 Tears?” Bruce crowed. “You think the greatest bar band in the land doesn’t know ‘96 fuckin’ Tears?” There followed a very engaging discussion between him and his bandmates about what key they needed to be in, then a rousing cover of the song:
I just found a review of the Boston show last Tuesday, and the writer gave an account of a similar moment: “Even when the group didn’t know where they were going they kept the car on the road. When Springsteen plucked a request sign from the pile he’d collected that read ‘I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide’ by ZZ Top, he said, ‘The band doesn’t know this song. The band has never played this song’ and then he showed them the sign and away they went like the happy gang of musicians they obviously still are.”
The crowd at the show was truly an all-ages mix, with kids as young as five or six all the way up to people in their sixties or older. Bruce played with the kids at the edge of the stage, letting them sing into his mike and strum his guitar, and late in the show, one rugrat took it upon himself to try to replicate Courtney Cox’s role in the “Dancing in the Dark” video, leaping onstage to dance around Bruce and the others (who took it cheerfully in stride) for several minutes, until a security guy managed to coax him off the stage.
Bruce and the E Streeters have always been one of the most phenomenal bands in the history of popular music, just a symphony of ungodly talent, and they’re all still cooking with supreme gas. Just one of many Olympian bits of music in the show was Nils Lofgren’s virtuoso guitar work in “The Ghost of Tom Joad”:
My previous “Best Ever” concert was the Tunnel of Love show I saw many years ago. This show topped it. It was pure Bruce in classic mode, rocking and rolling and full of life most vital and revitalizing. Watching Springsteen at the top of his game (and I think he’s been at his peak for thirty-five or forty years now) isn’t just fun, it’s inspiring. He shows you the sheer potential coiled in human brain and muscle and bone and reminds you how wonderful living can be. It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive…
As Jon Stewart said a couple of years ago, “If you like joy, go see Bruce Springsteen.”
Saw Bruce Springsteen and the E. Streeters last night for my fourth time (I also saw his solo acoustic tour, and went to Jersey to see him with the Seeger Sessions Band…yes, you can touch me, especially if you’re cute). They were brilliant as ever. I’ll no doubt blog a bit more about it later, but in the meantime, here’s a great performance from the Seeger Sessions tour for you to enjoy…
It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well, perhaps, as I remember anything, the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. He fought with an odd stateliness. Always steady and never fast, but always faster than the man he was fighting.
Last year I saw a trailer for Appaloosa, the cinematic adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s western novel, directed by Ed Harris, starring Harris and Viggo Mortensen. This trailer got me very excited, as I’ve been a huge fan of Parker’s for a very long time, I love westerns, and Ed Harris is not only a damn fine actor but a superior director as well (proven in 2000′s Pollock). And Viggo’s no slouch either, nor is Jeremy Irons, who’s also in the film.
But Appaloosa had actually sat unread on my shelf for a couple of years because Parker’s previous foray into the old West, Gunman’s Rhapsody (a novel about Wyatt Earp, one of my favorite historical figures), had been a disappointment. I’d intended to get to it (thus the fact it was on the shelf at all), but hadn’t yet. Since I generally prefer to read a book before seeing the movie it inspires, I immediately rescued Appaloosa from its lonely spot and dove in. (more…)
The author of the Doc Wilde adventure series, Tim lives with his adventurous son and a treacherous cat near Atlanta, Georgia. He is often barefoot, prone to irony, and interested in everything. He knows how to tie a tie, but doesn't care to. He has been a soldier, game designer, independent filmmaker, and outdoor guide. He wants to be a kid when he grows up.
