Showing posts with label E Street Band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label E Street Band. Show all posts

Friday, November 16, 2012

The Boss, a soap box & 'that f***ing Obama'


In case you were wondering, this is where Mrs. Favog and I were for several glorious hours last night.

As is the norm for The Boss, it was a hell of a show at the CenturyLink Center Omaha. He hasn't lost a thing performing live since I saw him at the LSU Assembly Center on Nov. 11, 1980. Funny how you remember the actual dates you saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, isn't it?

Anyway . . .  ever seen a 62-year-old man crowd surf? I have now. Complete awesomeness.

And I totally got teary eyed when Jake Clemons, the late Clarence Clemons' nephew, did The Big Man's solo on "Thunder Road" and struck The Pose. He even looks a lot like the young saxophone god -- except for Jake's big hair.

That said. . . .


DURING the course of the show, we had to endure Mr. Obama Lover getting up on his damn political soap box.

Can you believe he made an impassioned pitch for us to give to the local food bank?! My Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat. It's somewhere in the back. Maybe the front. Whatever.

I was so outraged about all this political crap that I almost got up and walked out right there. I would have, too, if I hadn't thought that some layabout 47-percenter was waiting to take my seat. Concert welfare, don't you know?

Dammit, it's time to TAKE BACK AMERICA from the socialists . . . one rock concert at a time!

No retreat, baby, no surrender!























Cue Jonathan Swift.


It used to be that you didn't necessarily have to tell people you were being a sarcastic smart ass. We live, however, in an era that has killed satire, being that there's no more ceiling for bat-s*** craziness in politics or the greater culture.

So. . . .

Just so you know. . . .

Bruce's only soap-box moment in the entire show was a pitch for the Food Bank for the Heartland, of which I am fully supportive. What did put me off, though, was some a-hole in the men's room proclaiming "If he says anything about that f***in' Obama, he's gonna get booed off the stage!"

Yeah, that pissed me off. That and a whole world of hair-on-fire partisans who can't even let a man be entitled to his own political proclivities lest he be vilified, demonized and ostracized for them.

Bruce campaigned for Barack Obama. I didn't vote for the man (though, to be fair, neither did I vote for Mitt Romney). So what?

If you ask me, you don't have to be a communist to be quite Stalinist nowadays. Such is life in a country where we hate us, we really hate us.

Cue Jefferson Davis. Oh, wait. . . .

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Our loss is Gabriel's competition


When this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth got put in the proverbial can Friday night, the last thing we had heard about Clarence Clemons was he was -- thus far -- making a remarkable recovery from his serious stroke last week.

That didn't work out.

Clemons, the Big Man, the irreplaceable sax man of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died Saturday at 69. With him, one would think, went the E Street Band. With him, too, went a piece of an American generation's heart.

You can't replace the Big Man.

Bruce can't replace the Big Man any more than a widowed spouse can "replace" the one who, suddenly, no longer shares a home . . . shares a life. You strike out on a new path, with new dreams and a heart that always will be missing a piece.



FOR A GENERATION of us, restless Americans of a certain age now, Clarence Clemons' tenor saxophone -- sometimes joy-filled, sometimes mournful, always soulful -- filled our hearts as Springsteen's words filled our minds and gave voice, a soaring, wondrous musical voice, to our joys, our hopes, our struggles and our fears.

Decades down the highway, they still do. Sometimes more than we could have imagined in 1978.
Or 1980. Or 1984.

Only now those hopes, dreams, struggles and fears are quieter now. A little less joyful. A little less expressively mournful.

They now will be told with a lot less soul.


BUT WE REMEMBER a time when we were young, and when our proxies roared and wailed like a mighty beast. Before our advocates grew old, as did we, and the voice began to falter and fade.

In our memories, though, we still roar, and our heroes are still as young as our spirit, lurking as it is behind graying hair and expanding waistlines.

Hand me that old LP, will you. I damn time as I drink of the fountain of youth.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Merry Christmas from the E Street Band

If you don't have time for the whole concert, go to the 23:00 mark.

Bruce Springsteen.

Live.

A couple of weeks ago.

In Asbury Park.

"Blue Christmas."


As the Bear would have said:
My limited vocabulary doesn't permit me to say how damn awesome this is.

I'll just say this: The King is dead; long live the Boss.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Danny Federici, RIP

Terrible, terrible news this morning for those of us who, for all these years, have counted on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band to get us through.


Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band’s sound on hits from “Hungry Heart” through “The Rising,” died Thursday. He was 58.

Federici, who had battled melanoma for three years, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. News of his death was posted late Thursday on Springsteen’s official Web site.

He last performed with Springsteen and the band last month, appearing during portions of a March 20 show in Indianapolis.

“Danny and I worked together for 40 years — he was the most wonderfully fluid keyboard player and a pure natural musician. I loved him very much ... we grew up together,” Springsteen said in a statement posted on his Web site.

Springsteen concerts scheduled for Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Saturday in Orlando were postponed.
AND GO to the Springsteen site and watch this video (scroll down a bit).