Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 June 2006 12:24:32
I remembered about fun.
I've been watching a 1975 Bruce Springsteen concert DVD a lot lately having got it as a birthday present, and it's really good in a bizarre way.
I guess I became aware of Springsteen in about 84 or 85 when he toured Britain. There was a lot of press coverage suggesting it was his first ever time in the UK, while also emphasizing how much of a following he had, suggesting that he'd been around for a while. (What cunning salesmanship: tell the customer that this is their first ever chance to catch something that they really ought to have seen by now! And yes, it was on the news but even twenty years ago advertising was passed off as news.) At that time I guess I was put off by it being popular enough to be on the news.
A couple of years later I shared a flat with a big Springsteen fan, and although I shared and respected many of his musical tastes (he got me into the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band for example), I couldn't get into the Springsteen stuff. It just seemed so earnest, which the Jon Landau quote ("the future of rock'n'roll") reinforced. (And my cynical alarm bells rang really loud at that quote being bandied about so seriously given that Landau was Springsteen's manager - of course he's going to say good things about his act). It was not long since they'd released that 5 album box of live Springsteen and although some of the songs were good, the whole thing was so dry, so serious. Years later I picked the boxed set up when it was going cheap in a second-hand shop, but I only rarely listened to any of it, and probably some of it never got played.
So that's roughly how things stood until a few months back when I got a Whistle Test DVD which had a live clip of Rosalita on it. There's a lot of good stuff on that DVD, but that's probably the bit I like best and it just makes me smile every time I watch it because the band are simply having such a laugh. Yes, they're incredible musicians and they're playing really tight, but they are also having a ball. I've been to a lot of gigs in my time and although the music was always what I wanted it to be, the bands usually looked like they were either bored or so serious they were carrying out self-enemas. More recently I've started only bothering with gigs where I know there's going to be some humour or, dare I say it, fun. John Otway was possibly the first, Belle and Sebastian were definitely another, and King Creosote was one of the most impressive at simply giving me a good time, some entertainment. (I guess I never used to accept that music should be for entertainment - I thought it ought to have some "higher" purpose. What a twat.) Although I enjoyed them, at most of the other gigs I was watching the clock and waiting for things to end. With Otway, B&S and KC, I really didn't want the gig to end at all.
And I'd kind of assumed that that approach, of playing serious music with humour (as opposed to humourous music like the Bonzos), was a novel thing. Yet here was Springsteen doing it thirty years ago. And the DVD gives me two hours of it.
All of which is great except (I always have to have a "but") that it almost puts me back where I was twenty years ago - wanting to learn guitar, wanting to be up on stage having a ball. It reminds me that I don't get to play music with other people enough, and how much fun I'm missing as a result. It also reminds me of the difference between musicians playing together who are practised and know what they're doing and are almost telepathically in tune with each other, and musicians who aren't. If I'm not careful I find myself listening more to the latter than the former.