Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

Finishing off my summer of aging-but-still-strong rock ’n’ rollers and jazzmen, I pilgrimaged to New Jersey, the state of my childhood and adolescence, to see Bruce Springsteen play Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands, one last gig before they tear the place down. I’ve seen Springsteen a few times before: my very first concert back in 1980, and a couple of times in the mid-1980s for the “Born in the USA” tour. In fact, the last time I saw him was in Giants Stadium itself, just about (and scarily) 25 years ago. This time, we — thanks especially to my wonderful father who has come relatively late to Springsteen’s rock ’n’ roll — had great seats (but I only had a terrible phone-camera, as you can see from the photos — does anyone have any pointers to better photos from that night, September 30, 2009?).

In memoriam of its coming demolition, Springsteen opened the show with the new “Wrecking Ball” written just for the occasion, and followed with several of his concert standards from throughout his career. He then got to the centerpiece of the show: all of “Born to Run” in order, from “Thunder Road” through “Jungleland”. This was the record that started the hype in the 70s — Jon Landaus’s infamous quote “I have seen the future of rock ’n’ roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen” (although perhaps this version is apropos given my previous concertgoing experience) — and it still holds up as a rock ’n’ roll masterpiece, showcasing Springsteen’s ability to craft epics out of quiet desperation, managing to be anthemic but not pretentious. With rave-ups like “She’s the One” alternating with the slow “Meeting Across the River”, we got a few chances to catch our breath, although Bruce and the E Street band hardly let up.

For most performers, a full album would be the bulk of a concert, but given Springsteen’s reputation for marathon shows, we also heard plenty more, from some of his earliest music — “Growin’ Up”, “The E Street Shuffle” and “Rosalita” — through quite a bit of his amazing post-9/11 record “The Rising” and beyond, including his recent stomper “American Land” and Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times”, which brought out obscure New York rocker Willie Nile and was prefaced with a much-needed and I hope well-received reminder of the perhaps naive but worthwhile sentiment that “nobody wins unless everybody wins” (although I did get the impression that some of the people around me didn’t share these political sentiments). Still, he spent most of the night receiving something between adulation and worship from the tens of thousands in the audience. The rest of us can only wonder what it’s like to feel that on such a scale, night after night, year after year. Does he get used to it? Is it addictive? Or just a job?

One of the great things about living in (or, depending on the details of geographical definitions and your political philosophy, on the outskirts of) Europe is just how short a distance it is to other countries. Last week, I took advantage of this and made a last-minute trip to Barcelona to see Leonard Cohen perform at the Palau Sant Jordi.

Today is the thirty-second anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. It was recently brought to my attention that I am now older than he was on that day. But rather than sit in the bathroom and eat cheeseburgers, I’ll just leave you with this:

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
And put on a shirt his mother made and went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
And he shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby,
Like you never seen

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
How he took it all out of black and white
Grabbed his wand in the other hand and he held on tight
And he shook it like a hurricane
He shook it like to make it break
And he shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
He was all alone in a long decline
Thinking how happy John Henry was that he fell down and died
When he shook it and he rang like silver
He shook it and he shine like gold
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul

He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul, what’s wrong with me?

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made and he went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
He shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby
Like he never seen

—Gillian Welch, Elvis Presley Blues

Now, go watch the ‘68 Comeback Special, or listen to Suspicious Minds.

The summertime British music scene is taken over by a series of festivals up and down the country; the biggest and most famous is Glastonbury, but the same weekend London’s Hyde Park holds the somewhat scaled-down (no sleeping over in tents) “Hard Rock Calling”. I arrived too late for the Pretenders, whom I had last seen play Radio City Music Hall in New York in, I think, 1984. The acts on offer meant that the crowd skewed toward the gray and/or bald, which put me reassuringly away from the upper age envelope. (Although it was a refreshing change to see people wearing Ramones t-shirts who could possibly have seen them live!) I made it in for Seasick Steve, fun in his cartoony way, and Ben Harper with his more antiseptic blues, We drank beer out of plastic bottles, huddled under umbrellas during the brief storm, and Fleet Foxes were lovely but a bit overmatched by the surroundings.

But Neil Young can handle a crowd of a few hundred thousand. Especially Neil Young with Crazy Horse, the hard rock version. So we got loud and crunchy with “Hey Hey, My My”, “Everyone Knows this is Nowhere”, “Cinammon Girl”, “Mansion on the Hill”, and an acoustic set with “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man”. Unlike The Who or the Stones, he hasn’t made himself irrelevant through a combination of prostitution and crappy music; with the exception of some 80s meanderings, his career doesn’t fit neatly into a few phases like Dylan; and unlike the members of the Beatles (more on them in a moment) he’s continued to produce great music even until now — although he probably hasn’t produced a masterpiece since Ragged Glory, his latest Fork in the Road shows him at his surly best. And after all these years, like his fellow headliner (in London and Glastonbury) Bruce Springsteen, despite all the complications, Neil Young still seems to believe in the power of rock ’n’ roll.

After a too-short main set proving the point with the anthemic “Rockin’ in the Free World” (with a half-dozen false endings for us to sing along to), I was hoping for an encore of “Powderfinger” (does anyone know what that song’s about, by the way?). But instead we heard the familiar opening to the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” which I then remembered that he had been playing for the past year or so. Despite the context, it still surprised all of us when a figure joined Neil on stage for the middle eight: Paul McCartney. I’m pretty jaded about rock ’n’ roll by now, and the guy (McCartney) hasn’t written a great song in about 35 years, but the fucking hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

The annual Meltdown festival took over London’s South Bank Centre this week. I saw Yo La Tengo’s rock ’n’ roll Q&A, and unfortunately missed a performance by David Murray, one of my favorite saxaphonists.

But the highlight was curator Ornette Coleman himself, in an evening dedicated to his “Shape of Jazz to Come”, the record which marked the transition from the era of Bird and the “cool” Miles Davis to the much wilder 60s.

Coleman shuffled on stage in a shimmering suit, playing from his 50 years of songs, and reaching back to an amazing version of the the famous prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite, as well as a take on “Rite of Spring” via his own “Sleep Talking”. He played with the current incarnation of his quartet, his son Denardo on drums, and Tony Falanga and Al MacDowell on acoustic and electric bass. Bill Frisell joined them on guitar for most of the evening, and rock goddess Patti Smith sang/spoke/chanted on Ornette’s 80s track, “In All Languages”. The Master Musicians of Jajouka (Not to be confused with “Joujouka”) came on for an almost unbearably intense jam on Lonely Woman, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating about “unbearably” — the droning Moroccan wind instruments put out a pretty ferocious but wonderful noise.

The performance reminded of a morning almost exactly twenty years ago. I was living in New York City, and my friend Marc and I got up before dawn to take the subway down to Battery Park, the southern tip of Manhattan. There, we got to hear Sun Ra and his Arkestra along with trumpeter (and one-time Ornette Coleman sideman) Don Cherry greet the sun for the 1989 Summer Solstice. I don’t remember much from the event, just Sun Ra and the Arkestra playing and chanting “the sun…. the sun… the sun…” and Don Cherry sitting down, leaning against a wall, playing his pocket trumpet. I must have spent the day in a sleepy attempt at working at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies where I spent a year studying the Antarctic ozone hole, and I vaguely recall ending the night at Central Park’s Summerstage dancing away to Tito Puente.

To mirror that evening, albeit with many more skinny, pasty-faced white people in ironic t-shirts, I went back to Meltdown the next night for some post-rock jazz with Kieran Hebden, Steve Reid and others. Actually, the post-rock moniker doesn’t do it justice. If Ornette was playing the future of jazz in 1960, this is the future we’ve got now: undoubtedly jazz, but taking advantage of technology and forms of music that were barely contemplated fifty years ago.

Sonic Youth on “Later with Jools Holland” reminds me of a US TV appearance by the band around 20 years ago, on a show called “Night Music” co-hosted by, in fact, Jools Holland and sax player David Sanborn. Sanborn’s solo recording career has largely (and not incorrectly) been tarred with “smooth jazz” brush; his broader musical tastes have never matched his own much less compelling output. On “Night Music”, he proved he could skronk along with Sonic Youth and even John Zorn.

I missed Sonic Youth’s London concert this week, but their performance of “Daydream Nation” in 2007 was one of the best shows of the last few years. It’s never quite the same on TV, but nonetheless S Youth were their usual magnificent selves, bashing away at a full three songs, from their upcoming “The Eternal” and reaching all the way back to “Teenage Riot”, in between the anodyne Depeche Mode and the (admittedly pretty good) Lily Allen. A couple of times the camera showed Andrew Marr and Elton John in the audience. I wonder what they thought of the loud guitars.

I went to see and hear John Adams’ recent opera Doctor Atomic at the ENO last night. One of my physicist-companions was my friend, fellow blogger and cosmologist Peter Coles, and he has already applied his greater musical knowledge to the task, so I won’t attempt an overall review.

In short, Doctor Atomic is the story of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who managed the Manhattan Project and, therefore, the creation of the American atomic bomb. The opera concentrates on the day or so before the first atomic test. But we can’t help knowing, indeed are supposed to know, what comes next: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first, and then the cold war during which Oppenheimer himself was subsequently blacklisted.

The Libretto by Adams’ collaborator Peter Sellars is almost entirely assembled from external sources: real Manhattan Project memos, poetry, and, famously, the Bhagavad-Gita, although it consciously eschews Oppenheimer most famous quotation, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”, on seeing the first explosion.

The centerpiece of the opera is the magnificent ending of the first act, Oppenheimer literally in the shadow of the device — “the gadget”, as it was known by the workers at the Manhattan Project — that his management has brought to being, trying to come to terms with it. “Batter my heart, three-person’d god”, he sings, from one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. At first, this is puzzling: as one of my operagoing companions pointed out, why would the (culturally) Jewish Oppenheimer sing this avowedly religious song? But wait: “three-person’d God” — Trinity, chosen, too, as the name of the site of that first test. Who or what is Oppenheimer addressing?

In addition to Oppenheimer, a couple of other physicists take important roles. Edward Teller starts out as a sympathetic character, puzzlingly so given his eventual rabid, almost violent anti-communism and his historical place as Oppenheimer’s nemesis, but by the end we see and hear the germs of a plausibly massive ego beginning to leak out from its purely scientific beginnings. And we see Robert Wilson idealistically attempting to get the scientists’ opinion counted in the political and military decision-making. Years later, Wilson would himself be the architect (literally) of Fermilab in Illinois. When it was being planned, he was asked in a Senate hearing what good the proposed particle accelerator would be for National defense. His reply: ”It has nothing to do with defending our country, except to make it worth defending.”

(And next week we’ve got something from elsewhere on the cultural landscape which features a character with a similar name.)

Happy 50th Birthday to Motown!

I visited the original Motown studios in Detroit once, now a museum, but preserved more or less as it was in the 60s before the company moved to LA. As soon as you walked in, it was obvious this had been just about the coolest place on the planet for about a decade.

Why? The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5, Rick James, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder. ‘Nuff said.

For some reason a lot of music books have percolated to the top of my bedstand pile recently. I just finished Alex Ross’ magisterial and definitive The Rest is Noise, a history of 20th Century “Western Classical” music. (Let’s pause for a moment and praise the genius of that title, by the way.) The book starts with Strauss, Mahler and Debussy and ends with John Adams and some of my recent obsessions: Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich and Olivier Messiaen, whose Quartet for the End of the Time is at the Proms next week. (For me, really a neophyte with this kind of music, the book was an ideal companion to Paul Morley’s Words and Music, which turned me onto this music by reimagining the history of rock’n’roll as if driven not by the blues but by the resolutely white-boy classical tradition: it starts and ends with Alvin Lucier’s minimalist “I am Sitting in a Room” and Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”.)

But the centerpiece of Ross’s book is three chapters on the way politics drove the musical agenda (or at least tried to) in mid-century Germany, America and the Soviet Union. The unspoken but eventually obvious point comes through, that the music can’t help be of its place and time, a product of the world around it, but that our duty is just to listen, not forgetting the history, but not paying it too much attention, either.

I’ve also been reading Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield’s music-tinged memoir, concentrating on the loss of his first wife, Renée, far too young. I’m lucky enough to have known Rob for more than 20 years, and that made the book both hard to put down and, when the going got tough, recalling for me the day when Rob phoned to tell me the terrible news about Renée, hard to pick up. But it’s a lovely, moving, book, managing to set down the emotional pull of music’s private meaning and the way it connects to the people listening with us, even on an iPod hundreds or thousands of miles away. (You can hear Rob reading some excerpts at the book’s site.; there’s a wonderful NPR interview with Rob, too.)

Now, I’m on to Simon Armitage’s Gig, also a memoir, this time by a music-obsessed British poet.

(By the way, does anyone have a definitive attribution for “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”? I’ve mostly heard Elvis Costello, but also Steve Martin.)

Glad to read that I wasn’t the only one to notice the Magnetic Fields homage in Bruce Springsteen’s “Girls in their Summer Clothes”:

Enter wry New Yorker Stephin Merritt, Mr Magnetic Field. Merritt is a pop auteur of great distinction, if not wide renown; he probably earns more comparisons to Cole Porter than royalties. He might be best known for his songs accompanying the Lemony Snicket series of children’s books rather than the Magnetic Fields’ triple album of 1999, 69 Love Songs. (But was ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’, on Bruce Springsteen’s Magic album, a Merritt tribute?)

—Kitty Empire, The Observer