I saw this photo online earlier. It’s from the great San Francisco based photographer Fred Lyon who is still active at age 91. His photos of San Francisco from the 40’s and 50’s are wonderful. This image, called Foggy night, Land’s End, San Francisco, 1953, really captured my imagination. It just seems filled with all sorts of stories that are begging to be told. Magnificent shot. See more of Fred Lyon’s work at his website by clicking here.
I wanted to come up with a song that might come out of this photo and I settled on Because the Night. It was written by Bruce Springsteen for Patti Smith in 1977 and she had her biggest success with that song. Great version. But I personally prefer the Springsteen version. This particular performance is from Largo, MD in 1978. Hard to believe it’s been that many years.
I also just wanted to take a moment to talk about the refugee controversy in this country. I know you’re probably sick to death dealing with everything that is going on but I just wanted to remind ourselves that the thing that have long separated us from other countries around the world is not based on power, It was never about military strength. It wasn’t about our wealth and the privileged few that control it.
It was about us. It was about our music, our films, our literature which reflected our entrepreneurial spirit– that every person had a value and a purpose and was free to make the most of it. The freedom with with we expressed these things was the rare thing that made us the desired landing place for the disenfranchised people around the world.
You see it in our films. Think about just about any Frank Capra movie– who was an Italian immigrant, by the way. Those values he so lovingly extolled in his films are the very things that have defined America around the world. The people who rail against refugees and immigrants out of fear, ignorance, selfishness or hatred go against these values, the very things that have made us special.
It’s the freedom to define yourself, to mold yourself into what you think you should be.
It’s still there and it is still the beacon, the light in the darkness, that draws people to our shores. Fear and ignorance can end that freedom, extinguish that light. And when we no longer attract the world, we have lost our real power, our real strength.
Sorry. You most likely don’t need to hear any more diatribes but sometimes they need to be said if only for the speaker’s sake. And I needed to say that.
Give a listen and have a good day. And keep your eyes open!
It would be easy to go on and on about the day and the meaning of love but sometimes words just do not do the subject justice.
So I will keep it short today and share a poem from the Nobel Peace Prize winning Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet, along with this Sunday’s musical selection, a cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s Drive All Night from Glenn Hansard (best known for his songs from the film and stage production Once) with backing vocals from Eddie Vedder. A very good cover of one of my favorite songs from The River album of 1980.
Have a good Valentine’s Day…
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I love you like dipping bread into salt and eating Like waking up at night with high fever and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth Like unwrapping the heavy box from the postman with no clue what it is fluttering, happy, doubtful I love you like flying over the sea in a plane for the first time Like something moves inside me when it gets dark softly in Istanbul I love you Like thanking God that we live.
I wrote earlier this week about the 40th anniversary of Springsteen’s classic LP, Born to Run. Just a day or two later came another anniversary of another landmark album, this one marking 50 years since Highway 61 Revisited from Bob Dylan was released back in 1965. It has remained a critical favorite over the decades, coming in at #4 onRolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Of course, lists like that are pretty subjective but in this case, I tend to agree.
It was Dylan’s first all electric outing after making the transition from purist folkie to rock star with his prior album, Bringing It All Back Home, which was part acoustic folk and part electric rock. With Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan went all in and made an album that was a real document and catalyst for the turbulent times in which it was made. It is said that the 1960’s, as we have come to remember them as an era, started with this album.
I know it has long been a favorite of mine. It’s an album that has been with me for so long that it doesn’t seem to be of any time, regardless of its age. It just is. Every song holds up and each is like a full and rich meal. It’s filled with a meaty mix of words and textures and meanings that just fills you up.
So, for this week’s Sunday morning music, what could be more fitting than the title track from this classic from half a century ago? It’s a song that never gets to get my blood moving. It’s been covered by a multitude of other artists and I don’t know that I ever heard a bad cover of it. Here’s the original. Have a great Sunday!
Born to Run turned 40 years old yesterday and I am somehow surprised, even though I am well aware of time passing. Maybe because it remains so in the present for me to this day. Actually, my first artistic foray involved selling Bruce t-shirts out of the want ads in the back of Circus magazine. They were a little crude, screen-printed with a logo for the E Street Band that I had designed on the front and a verse from Born to Run on the back. Sold a few, mainly to fans in Europe including one in Northern Ireland who remains a friend to this very day, but not enough to call it a success or even break even.
But Springsteen, and Born to Run in particular, had a huge influence on my life as well, well beyond that failed attempt at marketing. I was knocked out by his commitment to his passion, his need to keep true to his own vision for his work and his need to do all he could to get that vision across to his audience. It may not always be your style or taste, but his work is as true to his vision as any artist in any medium.
Here’s a blog entry from back in 2009 where I documented my first encounter with Bruce:
When I was seventeen years old I left high school early, in January. I guess I graduated. I had enough credits, had fulfilled all the requirements. Never went to a ceremony, never received a diploma. I had had enough school at that point. I was adrift in my life. No real goals to speak of. Oh, I had desires and dreams but no direction, no guidance.
At some point, I decided i would move to Syracuse and work for my brother, putting in above-ground swimming pools, but that wouldn’t start until April so I had several months to kill. Free time. I spent most of my time reading or watching TV or just driving around. One day in February, I stopped in at the local OTB (that’s off-track betting, by the way) and bet my last eight dollars on the ponies at Aqueduct.
Good fortune was with me that day and I won, hitting the daily double and walking away with a couple of hundred dollars. I called Cheri, my girlfriend (and now my wife) and asked if she would be interested in going out. There was a guy playing tonight at the Arena in Binghamton who I had heard a little about. I had his first two LPs and they were alright. Might be interesting and I had money burning a hole in my pocket. His name was Bruce Springstone, Springstein- something like that.
So we went to Binghamton. We got there about an hour before the show and it seemed so different than other shows we’d been to at that time, the mid-70’s. It was so quiet. People were lined up but it was almost silent, like there was this heavy air of anticipation stifling all sound. We still needed tickets so we headed to the box office. I asked the lady behind the glass for the best seats she had and after a moment she slid me two tickets. I looked at them then asked if she had anything better. She laughed and said no, these were pretty good.
They were in the third row, just left of centerstage.
I did say that I was seventeen, right?
Inside, there was a quiet stillness as we took out seats. There weren’t the screams of drunk kids nor the pungent clouds of pot smoke. No beach balls bouncing through crowd–just that heavy air of anticipation. As we waited, the people around us kept nervously looking at the stage, which was close enough to touch, as a well dressed older man tuned a grand piano. We had no idea what to expect but our interest was being piqued. Finally, the roadies cleared the stage and the arena went black. The first Bruuuces filled the air.
The lights came up and there they were, only feet away. Bruce was in a white collarless shirt buttoned at the neck and a vest with a woolen sport jacket. Miami Steve ( Silvio for those of you who know him from the Sopranos) was dressed in a hot pink suit with a white fedora. And directly in front of us, resplendent in a white suit that seemed to glow in the lights was the Big Man himself, Clarence Clemons, his sax glinting gold.
It was overwhelming for someone not knowing what to expect, like mistakenly walking into a revival meeting and coming out converted. It was unlike anything I had ever seen to that time. It was pure sonic nirvana with the thump of Mighty Max’s bass drum rattling my sternum and the Big Man’s sax flowing high over jangly guitar and tinkling piano lines.
But more than that was the sheer effort that was put out by Springsteen. It was the first time I had seen someone so committed to what they did. It seemed that all that mattered at that moment for him was to get across that space to the people in that arena. He dove across the stage. He clambered onto speakers. He gave everything. By the end of the show, some three and a half hours later, he appeared to have been dragged from a river. He was soaked from the top of his boots to the top of head and when he played his Telecaster, his hand on the neck of the guitar would fill with a pool of sweat.
His desire and commitment to please us was something I carried with me.
Several years later I ran into a person who had been at that show and when I told him my luck at getting such great seats he turned green with envy. His seats were much further back in the hockey arena. We then both agreed that our favorite moment was when they did a cover of It’s My Life from the Animals. We didn’t really know one another but we both gushed about how that song had moved us, had changed our lives in some small way. I still carry that image and when I hear that song I am suddenly 17 years old again. And ten feet tall with the world at my feet because it was my life and I’d do what I want…
That’s my first Bruce story.
Here’s She’s the One from the year before the show I was at. Enjoy.
I am coming into the last week of preparing my solo show, Heart+Land, which opens July 17 at the West End Gallery. It’s at this point every year, after the second show in a matter of a couple of months, that I begin to feel a bit worn down. I really see it in trying to write the blog. A lot of mornings I find myself sitting here just staring at the screen and feel that my mind is blank as well, as though the wheels in my mind feel like they will never turn again. I am preoccupied with with those pieces that still need work and other tasks that are waiting for me just out of my sight. Out of sight but not out of mind.
So, I thought I would start the holiday a day early with a little music and one of my favorite Springsteen songs. Some know it as Sandy from the name of the girl to which Bruce’s character is singing but it’s actually titled 4th of July, Asbury Park from his 1973 (yes, it was that long ago) album The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. It’s a song that immortalized the Jersey boardwalk culture of that time, like the fortune teller Madam Marie whose real life shop is shown above, with its bittersweet lamentation about lost love and outgrowing the lures of youth’s easy pleasures.
So, I am giving it a listen then heading back to those tasks that are beginning to tap their toes with impatience. Have a great 4th of July.
I am in the midst of preparing a group of work to take with me when I go to Alexandria this coming weekend for my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery on Saturday. It’s like a mini-show with some new paintings fresh from the studio including the piece shown here, Moonshadows. It’s a smaller painting on paper, a 6″ by 9″ image, that moodily focuses on the moon and the shadows cast from it by the Red Tree and the Traveler on the path. It’s a simple and quiet piece, one that invites thought.
I have also narrowed down the field for the painting that will be given away in a drawing at the Gallery Talk. There are two pieces that I am going back and forth on, both having real meaning for me. As I pointed out before, it’s important to me to give away work that is real and alive at these events and I think either of the two pieces I am considering easily meet that requirement. I will reveal the piece in the next day or two so check back.
Being Sunday it’s time for some music and in keeping with the theme of the painting I chose an older song, Open All Night, from Bruce Springsteen’s great 1982 acoustic album, Nebraska. I find it hard to believe that this album is over thirty years old but when I consider how many times I have ran these lyrics through my head as I’ve been driving somewhere, I am less surprised.
On my way to deliver some new work to the Kada Gallery in Erie, I was driving across the empty part of western New York yesterday, a couple of hundred miles of very sparse traffic which leaves you lots of time to let thoughts just randomly weave in and out of your mind. It’s funny, the things that settle at these times. People you haven’t thought of for many years. Things that you haven’t done since you were a kid. Sometimes people and things that have little meaning for you. Plans and things you want to do in the future.
Yesterday, I was thinking about the circus for some unknown reason. Maybe it was a thought of one of the circus paintings from Pablo Picasso. like the one shown here, or the ones from Seurat that I wrote about here in the past. There’s something very visually interesting in the circus, with it’s costuming and showmanship.
But more than that it made me think of how I have viewed the circus over the years. Growing up, the circus and circus style acts were big staple of television in the early 60’s and, I’m sure, the 50’s. Aerialists, jugglers, clowns of every shape and size, lion tamers and a variety of other animal acts were often part of many variety shows. I can’t quite remember all the details, but there was even a show that was devoted to circus acts.
As a kid, I was enthralled by these acts and performers. Even my first date with my wife involved going to a circus that was appearing in our local minor league ballpark. It was one of those things that was sort of engrained in my young psyche. But over time, the gloss faded from the illusion of the circus for me. I no longer found the idea of performing animals charming in any way. In fact, it bothered me deeply. It also became apparent that the lives of many of the human performers were not easy either. Their moments in the spotlight in their shiny outfits were short and masked the hours spent in second rate motels and restaurant while crisscrossing the backroads of this country.
The illusion was gone for me.
But still, the idea and ideal of the circus in the mind brings forth strong imagery. The tension of a daring performance and the anticipation of the crowd. The aura of the spotlight and how all eyes were focused hard on whatever was going on in that center ring. It was a great illusion and was part of my childhood memories.
That was part of my drive yesterday. Don’t know exactly why. Maybe someting will appear in my own work. We’ll see.
Here’s one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, one that fits this post to a tee. It’s a 1973 performance of his image filled Wild Billy’s Circus Story.
Watched the new documentary on HBO called The Promise. It concerns itself with Bruce Springsteem and the making of his album Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1977-78. It gives a real inside look at the creative process behind the album, highlighting the immense amount of work and effort that went into its creation.
I was intrigued by several things that were said in the film and was able to easily identify with the process that Springsteen employed in making his album. They talked about wanting to create a cinematic feel and sweep with the music, one that evoke a visual image with the sound. Sound pictures, they said. I immediately understood what they meant in that I have always viewed my paintings in the reverse of this, as being visual music. As though the message or feel he (and I) wants to get across is caught somewhere in between the two mediums.
They used the word feel often in describing how the songs came around, how Sprinsteen depended on an intuitive sense of rightness in finishing and assembling his songs. Again, I immediately understood what they meant, even the terminology they used which surprised me because I often struggle with words to describe the process. His obsessive-compulsive mania for his work also seemed somewhay familiar.
All in all, I found it pretty interesting and if you have an interest in the creative process or Bruce’s music, it’s well worth a watch. There’s a lot more I could write but I’ll let the film speak for itself.
Here’s the title track from a show in Passaic, NJ right after the album came out:
I was going to either write today, on our Fourth of July, about a film I saw back in 1982 called The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters. It was from humorist writer Jean Shepherd, of A Christmas Story fame, and was a very funny depiction of a celebration of the Fourth in a 1940’ssmall midwestern city featuring all of Shepherd’s usual wonderfully caricatured characters.
Or I was simply going to show a video of the Bruce Springsteen song 4th of July Asbury Park. Like Shepherd’s story, it is the depiction of the Fourth in a small American town, except this is the 1960’s and 70’s New Jersey shore. It always brings back that feeling of the viewpoint of youth for me, the carefree attitude mixed with the feeling of every emotion like a nerve laid bare.
I opted for the Bruce. This is a great version of the song from back in 1975, at Hammersmith Odeon in London. The quality of the filming is exceptional and it’s great to see Bruce in his early form. Take a moment from your own Fourth, if you can, and take yourself to a different time and place. I can almost smell the fried dough…
They showed the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors on television last night. It’s always an interesting show, highlighting the careers of some of the most enduring and venerable performers and entertainers. A virtual who’s who of our culture over the last half century.
For me, this years group of honorees was as good as it gets across the board. You had high culture with operatic hero Grace Bumbry, jazz culture with the ever hip piano of Dave Brubeck, rock and roll with Bruce Springsteen, the world of comedy from Mel Brooks and the ultimate in dramatic acting from Robert De Niro. What an incredible group.
One of the highlights for me was the absolute look of joy on Dave Brubeck’s face as his four sons joined in to play a medley of his compositions. The night fell on his 89th birthday and he seems to be a testament to the longevity of those who are able to follow their passion. I don’t know squat about jazz but what I feel is that Brubeck’s work has appeal across the spectrum of listeners out there. There’s enough stellar playing and complicated rhythms to satisfy real jazz fans yet it’s incredibly accessible to the less savvy, like me. Great stuff.
Of course, the other was the tribute to Bruce Springsteen. I’ve been a big fan for well over 30 years and it’s been interesting to see how he has transformed into an elder statesman of popular music. I think that Jon Stewart hit it right on the head for me when he spoke of Bruce’s willingness to empty the tank for his audience every night as being the thing that most struck him and influenced him as a young fan. I know seeing Bruce when I was younger made me hungry to find something, anything, that would make me feel that same passion and commitment in my own life. Something where, like Bruce, I could give everything I had. The medium wasn’t important. It was all about the spirit of the effort, the total dedication to your own vision. That is always in the back of mind when I see him, even today.
I remember writing a letter in the 70’s (long before e-mail) to Dave Marsh, the Rolling Stone editor who had just written an early bio of Bruce, describing how the music affected me. I was working in a factory and couldn’t see anything on the horizon but when I listened to Bruce I was no longer a loser, a factory drone. I had hope. It was very much how Jon Stewart described his own experience. Marsh responded with a lovely handwritten letter, that I still prize today, telling me how he was moved by my letter. That, too, served as inspiration to search further, to give more.
Thanks, Bruce, for the inspiration. You deserve this honor…
Here’s nice version of My City of Ruins from night’s show, performed by Eddie Vedder. Enjoy.
Sunday morning. Time for a little music.
Valentine’s Day.
Redtree Times 