Paying the cost to be the Boss

So I was feeling pretty proud of myself for getting a hot tip via Twitter and snagging tickets to Bruce Springsteen. My fervor for what man does was reignited by the exhibit "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land" at the National Constitution Center. 

But shortly thereafter Jay-Z had to steal the spotlight by announcing the Made in America concerts on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Nonetheless it was not going to keep me from enjoying my first Bruce concert.

Why the long hold out, you ask?

Since the turn of the century, I had questioned whether the price of a Bruce Springsteen ticket was worth it. Surely the 62-year-old Springsteen didn't have the same touch that made his concerts of the '70s and '80s the epic stuff of legend. That assumption was quite incorrect, and I could tell simply by following Bruce's Twitter feed @springsteen. Augmented by a formidable horn section, The E Street Band can still play for four solid hours without stopping, even after the deaths of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici.  Bruce still fearlessly crowd surfs while singing several times during the show and directly engages his fans like nobody else you have ever seen, while continuing to release new music.

I was also surprised at the depth of the devotion of his Philly fans, seemingly knowing every lyric, even off of the new "Wrecking Ball" album.

The lone chink in Bruce's ironclad performance came while drumming up support for Philabundance and explaining the origins of the new song "We Are Alive." He repeated himself during the monologue to the point where someone near my section blurted out: "Get on with it!"     

SET LIST FROM BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WRECKING BALL TOUR SEPT. 2, 2012 AT CITIZEN'S BANK PARK, PHILADELPHIA:

Summertime Blues
Out in the Street
Sherry Darling
Hungry Heart
We Take Care of Our Own
Wrecking Ball
Death to My Hometown
Lost in the Flood
My City of Ruins
Spirit in the Night
Good Rockin' Tonight
Cadillac Ranch
I'm on Fire
Candy's Room
Mona/She's the One
Jack of All Trades
Human Touch
Working on the Highway
Shackled and Drawn
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Jersey Girl
The Rising
Badlands
Land of Hope and Dreams/People Get Ready
ENCORE:
We Are Alive
Thunder Road
Born to Run
Rosalita
Dancing in the Dark
10th Avenue Freeze Out
You Can't Sit Down
Twist and Shout

In case you missed the link, here's some *wow* Philly concert photos:  http://brucespringsteen.net/news/2012/jo-lopez-shares-photos-from-philadelphia.

Philadelphia Folk Festival's inner sanctum

Most people see the Philadelphia Folk Festival from this side:

Chris Kasper and some of his former bandmates from The Lowlands at the 2012 Folk Fest.

And this side:

 Folk Fest volunteers Bryan Edwards and Lindsay Kuzara dance to the band Cabinet.

While I was interviewing the charming pair mentioned above, up comes a professional acquaintance from the PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce and Moyer Indoor/Outdoor. He was rather reluctant about being quoted in a story (Perhaps they don't know about his Folk Fest side outside of work?), but was excited to show me this area backstage where I had never been in all my years of covering the Folk Fest.
"Prepare to have your mind officially blown," said one of the backstage gatekeepers on the Dulcimer Grove side of the stage. 
To be more exact, it's under the main stage. This is the secret domain of the Philadelphia Folksong Society's Archive Committee, where audio and video recording of the main stage concerts takes place.

Dig those lava lamps in the back! The woman in the back is Joyce Lieberman, a sound mixer from WHYY.

To hear Hatfield resident James Fox tell it, there are gobs and gobs of archival reel to reel tape recordings going back to the earliest days of the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which is now in its 51st year. There are even recordings and photographs that pre-date the Folk Fest. The Folksong Society was founded in 1957.

Sadly the archive, which includes one-of-a-kind Folk Festival live jam sessions led by instigators like David Bromberg and Tom Paxton, is kept under wraps and can not be accessed by the general public for fear of bootlegging, or drawing the ire of music publishers ASCAP and BMI. However, access has been granted to Godfather of Folk Gene Shay and authors researching singers Stan Rogers and Steve Goodman.

"We had the only live video recordings of him," Fox said of Rogers, who passed away in 1983.

Fox said the society is working on getting a grant to digitize the analog audio archives, which promises to be a very time-consuming and expensive venture.

Thirty-year festival attendee Gary Schuman of Reading shared that he also had a serendipitous backstage access experience 20 years ago at the Folk Fest when he met The Holmes Brothers, who are back at the festival this year.   

Musikfest: A Most Happy Place

I first started attending Musikfest in Bethlehem when I returned to the area in 1998. It is the biggest free, 10-day music festival in America, according to the Musikfest organizers.
It's a large-scale party held around the beginning of August that shuts down the major thoroughfares of the City of Bethlehem, and is something that has to be experienced to be believed!
 I've seen Starship with Micky Thomas (a surprisingly good concert), The B-52s and Robert Hazard there.
As my fiancee and I were waiting to gain access to a port-a-potty (an inescapable reality of the festival), a stranger remarked how impressive it is that alcohol is served on this grand of a scale and everybody gets along. Well that's the unifying power of music for you.
An exciting development that's come along is ArtsQuest's takeover of the festival. Within the breathtaking remains of Bethlehem Steel, the platzes (stages) have been reorganized so there are now South Bethlehem venues at Steel Stax, the magnificent new ArtsQuest performing arts center. The Eric Steckel Band played an electrifying set at the Americaplatz stage, which is now at Steel Stax.
A jaw-dropping difference since the last time I attended Musikfest is the relocation of the main stage. In the old format, it was hidden away in a creekside location prone to lots of bugs. Now located on the Steel Stax campus, you can clearly hear the music and glimpse the video screens of the main stage concerts without actually having to pay for a ticket. The bit of Boston we caught as we waited for the yellow school bus to take us back to North Bethlehem was rather cool. 
Perhaps the biggest Musikfest buzz was the armless guitarist (!) that opens for The Goo Goo Dolls joining the band to perform "Iris."
One suggestion for ArtsQuest that arose when I brought my fiancee there for her first Musikfest experience: Have somebody sell batteries. This Talk About the Passion post would have been so much better if she could have taken pictures. The batteries in her camera mysteriously died.
Here's what she managed to take with her phone:

Oh and the one stage on Main Street needs much more seating. An entertaining group called Gangstagrass was playing there on Aug. 12 and there was no place to sit down.

Why female singers rock

One of Talk About the Passion's most avid readers, Joe Digney, appeared with his band Trigger Happy recently at the Blue Dog Family Tavern in New Britain, which has live music Saturday nights. Seeing is believing -- having a woman singer allows a band to do some nifty songs, such as Pink's "Get The Party Started." Check out my video. Apologies for the dark lighting, but the it's the audio that really counts.
How many of the songs you can name? ID them in the comment section, if you please.
Also, see if you can spot my fiancee inadvertently walk into the shot  - ha ha.

Live music @ the YMCA

The North Penn YMCA in Lansdale, 608 E. Main St., has never been very good with publicizing when they're having concerts. So I'm giving you the heads up straight from the Lansdale Local Facebook page. Doors open at 7 p.m. Saturday April 28 for a show with Dugout, SkumPunch, Meddling Kids, NCA Irish Punk Rock, Wake Up Call and Not That Average. Cover is $5. The Y's number is (215) 368-1601.
While these guys would likely not playing their songs on acoustic guitars, I'm hoping to get a series of Reporteronline acoustic online performances of area musicians from The Reporter's Community Media Lab at 307 Derstine Ave., Lansdale. Available from noon to 1 p.m. Thursdays? E-mail me at bbingaman@thereporteronline.com. 

Originator of rock journalism @ Montgomery Mall

Rolling Stone magazine's first chief photographer, Baron Wolman, was in the right place at the right time a lot during the classic rock era.
A story from my conversation with him is coming to The Reporter soon.
Wolman will be signing copies of his remarkable book "The Rolling Stone Years" from 1-5 p.m. Saturday March 31 and Sunday April 1 at the 102.9 WMGK Classic Rock Art Show & Sale at the Montgomery Mall, Routes 309 and 202, Montgomery Township. It's by the Sears lower level entrance, in the spot where Eastern Mountain Sports used to be.
The show opened March 23 and is on view free during mall hours through Sunday. Warning: it's a feast for the eyes, but the merchandise is (of course) pricy.
Here's a sample of how awesome Wolman's work is. There are prints of many of these images for sale.

AC/DC's Angus Young (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane/Starship ... in Girl Scout attire? (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

Ike & Tina Turner (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

Wow! Johnny and June Cash in a candid moment (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

Miles Davis (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

The Who's Pete Townshend in deep thought with a beer (COPYRIGHT Baron Wolman)

They Made a Monkee out of Me

That was the title of Davy Jones' tell-all autobiography from the '80s.



Shortly after Jones died from a heart attack at the age of 66 on Feb. 29, Peter Tork bade a fond farewell to "the Manchester Cowboy" in a statement on Facebook.
Micky Dolenz had a sleepless night the previous night, which he took to be a sign that something very bad was going to happen.
Heck, even Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick had something to say.


Mike Nesmith - who's looking especially grandfatherly these days - posted a very thoughtful and heavy metaphysical response on Facebook:

Michael Nesmith

All the lovely people. Where do they all come from?
So many lovely and heartfelt messages of condolence and sympathy, I don’t know what to say, except my sincere thank you to all. I share and appreciate your feelings.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
While it is jarring, and sometimes seems unjust, or strange, this transition we call dying and death is a constant in the mortal experience that we know almost nothing about. I am of the mind that it is a transition and I carry with me a certainty of the continuity of existence. While I don’t exactly know what happens in these times, there is an ongoing sense of life that reaches in my mind out far beyond the near horizons of mortality and into the reaches of infinity.
That David has stepped beyond my view causes me the sadness that it does many of you. I will miss him, but I won’t abandon him to mortality. I will think of him as existing within the animating life that insures existence. I will think of him and his family with that gentle regard in spite of all the contrary appearances on the mortal plane.
David’s spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people, who remember with me the good times, and the healing times, that were created for so many, including us.
I have fond memories. I wish him safe travels.
Check out this equally interesting e-mail conversation that Nez had with Rolling Stone.
While it's a no-brainer to pick "Daydream Believer" as one's favorite Davy song, what's kind of amusing in this video is Nesmith's indifferent body language. Maybe the rock hipsters that he mentioned in the interview were getting to him at the time?


But even the holier-than-thou hipsters don't have a discouraging word to say about Davy Jones, who had homes in both Florida and Beavertown, Snyder County.