Rocket Love, from Stevie Wonder's 1980 Hotter than July album. Sweat! "You took me riding in your rocket, gave me a star, but at a half a mile from heaven, you dropped me back down to this cold, cold world…"
The Harder They Come, Jimmy Cliff, for warmth and justice. "So as sure as the sun will shine, I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine…"
Lovers in the Cold, Springsteen Born to Run outtake. "Tonight we're lovers on that road, oh-oh-oh, running past the graveyards in the snow, oh-oh-oh, walking in the street with nowhere to go, oh-oh-oh…"
Ranks with the best Bruce covers ever. Our beloved Once kids play the always-a-stunner Drive All Night at Radio City Music Hall, with guesting sax Jake Clemons, nephew of E Street's Clarence. Story. (Via SPL.)
Seeing Bruce's We Shall Overcome on the Haiti telethon, what came to mind was something Jim Musselman had said at the fall's symposium.
As head of Appleseed Recordings, a tiny label with social justice goals, Musselman had prompted Springsteen's folk recordings in the 1990s, including We Shall Overcome. While many of the recordings eventually turned into the Seeger Sessions, the We Shall Overcome cut became a public-facing Sept. 11 song and, as I noted in the fall, a privately wild rights battle. But just as interesting to me was another controversy Musselman explained, about Springsteen's word choice in the song.
Years later, Musselman remembered the concern "darling" stirred. The chorus traditionally went, "Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome some day." Springsteen changed the first line to "Darling, here in my heart." The switch was small in print but huge in meaning.
One of the greatest collective songs of the 20th century had become personal. A civil rights touchstone had become applicable to individual cares and assumed greater and lesser social range. A song that lived in America might now live in your bedroom. Was such a shift decent?
If you don't believe in the power of word choice, you can ignore this blog post. Best I could tell in listening to Musselman, this debate and discussion ensued at the label levels, not in the public. A Google News search found nothing. So, if you don't care, you're in good company.
But I'm going to credit the word choice for the song appearing Friday night and, judging by my feeds, moving many people, myself included. I'm sure, since the line's shift, "Darling, here in my heart" has crossed minds for reasons lower than social change or rescue. Fair enough.
You can pre-order the Hope for Haiti Now telethon music on iTunes.
1. What's wrong with Grey's Anatomy? Sara Bibel and Fancast take a hard look at the season and raise 10 issues, all of them right on. "Lexi Is Still Grey's Version of Cousin Oliver" may be my favorite. The quicker the show can answer any of these concerns, the better.
2. What Springsteen songs should Glee do? Key lines: "If you’ve read the Glee cover story in the latest issue of EW, you know there’s one artist above all whose music the Fox series’ brain trust is aching to take on: Bruce Springsteen. 'I think Bruce is our next holy grail,' Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy told EW. 'My musical tastes begin and end with him basically,' added co-creator Brad Falchuk." Read the comments for lots of suggestions, with The River and Hungry Heart among the best. Others on my mind: Backstreets, I Wanna Be With You and Lift Me Up.
Hadn't dreamed about work in a while. Last night I dreamed the paper published a letter from a reader who argued I wrote too much about Springsteen. The reader asked how I could spend so much time writing about Springsteen when there so many other musicians to cover. The hed and body of the letter misspelled "btrpkc" in two different ways.
This letter was, of course, only a dream. I have never written about Springsteen at work. The Editorial department would never publish a letter making that mistake. Nor would it misspell a username in two different ways. But, notably, the dream did have the letter's hed and body in the correct typefaces. And the letters appeared to run on a right-hand page, which meant we'd sold a full-page ad in the back of the A section. Which was terrific but, of course, only a dream.
When you play an album, you can get lost in the music. When you play a double album, you not only can but do get lost, all choice aside. And when the double album is two albums past the one where you realize how great the world can be, and one album past the one where you realize how bad the world can be, you must need that double shot to comprehend or express how the world can be both at the same time.
After opening with Wrecking Ball, a definite farewell to Giants Stadium turned possible farewell to E Street, we got The River. The first eight songs were as fans of recent tours know them. Then we got to Crush on You, and it sounded great. Bruce mocked it. I loved it. Play it every night. Why I'm a Rocker gets more respect is still beyond me. I Wanna Marry You was standard but gave the Springsteens a chance to dance. The title track was one of the best renditions I've heard live — pieces of different takes from different tours coming together. Stolen Car was perfect. The Price You Pay got such a good reception and found such life in the band that I wouldn't be surprised if it stuck around in the setlists in these final dates. Closing the album, Drive All Night and Wreck on the Highway grappled with love-as-devastation, good or bad, as they do.
I kept getting lost in the music, just like I always do with the album — the way we expose, the way we hide, the way we get loud, the way we get quiet, the way we leave work, the way we take responsibility, the way we can't fall asleep or don't want to fall asleep, good or bad.
Twenty-one songs in, there were still 11 to go, and they were a party. The classics were the classics, lights up, crowd on it, even the terrified boy pulled on stage for Waitin' on a Sunny Day managed to sing, and oddness like Born to Run into Seven Nights to Rock was surpassed by a request of Sweet Soul Music, two flag-waving Spaniards sprinting from our high-up opposite end of the Garden during American Land to just beside the stage, fans at the same time briefly capturing the riser mid-pit, Can't Help Falling in Love turning out better than anyone expected — who knew everyone in the building knew the words? — and Higher and Higher taking a surprise strut back to the riser, before the show ended and Springsteen, ushering off the band, stayed last to wave.
