Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band “Thundercrack” 2012 & 1973 (Bonus Video Friday)

I’m not a computer guy.  And I lack a certain discipline.  If either or both of those facts weren’t true, more of these blogs would get done.  It was much easier to retreat to my basement computer lair to write and compose when it was 35 degrees outside in January (hence 15 blogs that month) than it is in May when it’s sunny and 75.  (Actually I largely began the blog as a way to stave off my yearly brush with Seasonal Adjustive Disorder.  I don’t get suicidally depressed like some of my winter-hating brethren, but man it helped to have a project to take my mind off not being able to go outside.  And we had a non-snowy, really pretty warm winter this year in Ohio.  I take full credit for that in starting up Growing Old With Rock & Roll.)

But as usual, I digress…..

Today’s blog is about Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and about whiny-ass pussies in rock & roll, and how never the twain shall meet.  Your whiny-ass pussies in rock & roll would be your Gotye, your Bon Iver, your Mumford & Sons, your Fleet Foxes, your whoever is the next band I see on Saturday Night Live and/or Austin City Limits with wispy beards and acoustic guitars.  And yes, I totally understand that those bands are just the 21st century generations’ equivalent of my generation’s Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or James Taylor, but that doesn’t save them from being whiny-ass pussies.  (Even CSN&Y could rock an "Ohio" once in a blue moon when they put their minds to it.)  To paraphrase David Johansen of the mighty New York Dolls in 1973, "I don’t know how you kids get it up these days."

Wait, no, that’s not what today’s blog is about.  Today’s blog is about me not being a computer guy and having no discipline.  Often when I sit down at the computer to knock out a blog I instead find myself going on YouTube to watch rock & roll videos.  And what amazes me as a non-computer old guy is that virtually (pun intended) EVERYTHING is available online, and faster all the time.  Last Sunday I casually typed "Bruce Springsteen 2012" into YouTube and there are already complete current tour E Street Band shows online.

I’m not sure, as a non-computer old guy, how I feel about that.  I certainly like watching shows I’ve already missed and will never get to attend, but will it take something away from the experience when I DO get to attend a Bruce show, as I almost certainly will sometime later in this tour?  (I have been lucky enough to witness every Bruce Springsteen tour since 1975.  Some of those shows have been among the greatest of my life, I really don’t plan on stopping or dropping out now.)

Anyway, here are some of the questions brought up by the 2012 Madison Square Garden rendition of "Thundercrack."  1) How great is it that Bruce would have the E Street Band work up a version of that tune, which was written in 1973 and not released on record until the Tracks box set in 1998?  2) Do you think any of the whiny-ass pussies in the rock & roll Class Of 2012 are still going to be playing music, let alone at Madison Square Garden in 2051?  3) How would Springsteen know or divine or trust his audience enough to risk holding the mike down at the 6:37 mark of the video and hope that the person on the other end would have the knowledge and chutzpah to say "Baby’s back," in a Clarence Clemons basso profundo voice?

Classic.




Bruce Springsteen - Thundercrack Live 04/09/12 Madison Square Garden, NYC Complete

Bruce Springsteen-Thundercrack

ps. I fully realize that not everyone is going to have the time or inclination to watch 20 minutes worth of Bruce Springsteen singing "Thundercrack" at one sitting, but that’s why we have Bonus Video Friday. Have a rockin’ weekend.

pps. R.I.P. Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons

© 2012 Ricki C.