To coincide with Bruce Springsteen‘s latest run of historic concert performances, Rock Town Hall will run a series of works of art commissioned specifically for Our Sacred Chapel of The Boss, located on the campus of RTH Labs. We hope that these images will aid you in praising Him and His E Street Band. At this time we ask you to cleanse your soul and prepare for the coming days’ blessings. Thank you.
I guess for being an all-around good guy eMusic rewarded me with 50 bonus downloads that I need to use by the middle of November. These are on top of my standard 30 downloads/month. I’ve enjoyed my eMusic subscription over the last 2 years for enabling me to build a collection of mostly instrumental and foreign non-rock music that I otherwise would rarely take a chance on. For instance, I’ve been able to download everything available by one of my favorite minimalist musicians, Terry Riley, whose music I’ve been collecting since the pre-digital age. As for stuff I otherwise would have been reluctant to take a chance on you may recall my excitement over new additions to my collections, thanks primarily to eMusic: that Ethiopian stuff, Amon Düül 2…
I’ve downloaded just about that entire 20-CD collection of Ethiopian stuff and all of the Terry Riley I could get my hands on that I didn’t already own. I may be crossing the line if I go any further than the four Amon Düül 2 (and one Amon Düül) records I’ve already dowloaded. The question for the Hall is, Where do I go next?
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Make this space your woman.
Famed wrestling manager and early ’80s rock cross-hanger on Captain Lou Albano died this week. A lot can be learned about a Townsperson by determining whether knowledge of Captain Lou Albano first came to you through his profession as a wrestling manager, his work with NRBQ, or his work with Cyndi Lauper.
NEXT: Rock Town Hall’s Official Eulogy…
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In the recent Car Crash thread, Townsman dbuskirk revealed that he used have Mick Jagger’s comment about busting a button on his trousers, from Get Yer Ya Yas Out, as his outgoing voicemail message.
At one point, I had Junior Brown’s intro to “Party Lights” as my outgoing message (a cappella “I’m a guy who likes to party”). While living in San Francisco, for about a week after the big earthquake in ’89, my outgoing message was “That’s great, it starts with an earthquake” from R.E.M.‘s “End of the World As We Know It.”
On a blog full of rock nerds, Dan and I can’t be the only ones who have sunk to this level of geekiness. Come on, now is the time to fess up: What did you have? I know at least one of you had to have “Hanging on the Telephone.”
I like The Boss a bit, but I generally can’t stand his long, romantic, working class-hero ballads: “Thunder Road,” “Sandy,” etc. When I saw Him and His E Street Band at the soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum in Philadelphia, on His tour supporting The River, I was strongly annoyed by most of the first 2 1/2 hours of his set, especially when he played the title track from his new release and all the Philly and South Jersey Boss fans in attendance stood on their seats and waved their lighters. Ugh.
Finally he played “Born to Run,” “Rosalita,” and that “Devil in a Blue Dress” medley. Finally the show was a lot of fun. For some reason, today, I was reminded of some fun Boss songs that never appeared on his real studio albums (if memory serves), like “Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)” (if that’s the actual title), and his versions of “Because the Night” and “Fire.” How much more would I have liked The Boss if he’d released more of that stuff, no matter how clunky it might have been produced, on his real albums rather than all those lighter waving make-out songs? The answer is At least a bit better. The more journeyman bar band songs by The Boss the better, as far as I’m concerned!
Do you have an artist you might like better if the unreleased and b-sides you’ve heard by said artist actually appeared on their studio albums instead of the more typical fare that never impressed you?
I’m getting a late start on my series-by-series analyses of the walk-up music used by teams in the 2009 playoffs. My apologies to fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox, and the Minnesota Twins for not being able to prepare you for your teams’ getting swept out of their Division series battles owing to inferior playlists. Red Sox fans, however, must have had a clue once it was announce that Rocco Baldelli and one of the coolest playlists in baseball was being left off the team’s postseason roster.
This evening the Philadelphia Phillies have a chance to eliminate the wildcard Colorado Rockies in frigid Colorado. The Phillies starting eight is not that different than last year’s World F’in’ Champions‘s lineup, so much of our focus will be on what noise the Rockies are bringing. We’ll dig into the Phillies’ playlist in more detail when – I’m sorry, make that if – the Phils continue to the NLCS.
Both skippers in this series, the Rockies’ Jim Tracy and the Phils’ Charlie Manuel, have made it clear that they’re managing with all hands on deck. We’ve already seen Manuel use three starting pitchers out of the bullpen/off the bench in Game 2, and in last night’s game, both Tracy and Manuel had their starters on a short leash. The walk-up music of the expanded, fluid bullpens will be key in this series, and the Rockies prepared for just this situation by acquiring former Dodgers’ lefthanded situational reliever Joe Beimel prior to the trade deadline. We know what Beimel brought to last year’s NLCS, and this year he’s back with a new, hip walk-up tune.
