Bruce’s new disc crackles from the speakers.
By: Hank Kalet
Bruce Springsteen’s new disc, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," is out and I can exhale. I preordered the disc a while ago, but had some misgivings who knew what kind of disc to expect. Admittedly, it has been rare when I have not liked something including "Lucky Town" and some of "Human Touch" (easily his weakest effort).
But here was a disc of covers of songs recorded by Pete Seeger during the folk revival a musical movement that was interesting and helped spawn Bob Dylan, but that was hampered by its commitment to a false authenticity that, in the hand of too many mediocre performers, sucked the mystery, tension and energy from the songs they played.
So what to expect from Springsteen playing Seeger? If it was a reprise of "Ghost of Tom Joad," that would have been fine, but no great shakes. Don’t get me wrong, "Tom Joad" is a powerful album, but not something that required a sequel ("Devils & Dust" borrowed elements from it, but was a very different record).
What we get from Springsteen this time out is something completely different than anything he’s done before. It’s not just that it is his first album of covers (he wrote every song on each of his studio albums). It’s the frenetic, improvisatory nature of the album, which was recorded in three separate session across more than a half dozen years.
The album crackles from the speakers with a joyful noise. It blazes with a joy and spins in unexpected directions. He turns mournful dirges into gospel shouts, pushes the band into surprising directions, mixing down-home country (who would have expected the Boss to record one of the best traditional country records of the year) with New Orleans jazz and folk to produce an intoxicating, mesmerizing sound.
"Pay Me My Money Down," an old stevedore’s lament, becomes a charged up hoot, banging and clanging its way along. "Erie Canal" and "John Henry," workingman’s songs we all learned in school, songs that had been stripped of their class consciousness and turned into children’s tunes, are reborn with a gospel edge.
And while Springsteen has downplayed the politics he’s avoided talking about it for the most part it is difficult not to notice that most of these songs are working class odes sung in response to working class concerns. The album’s title "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" connects both to the civil rights movement ("We Shall Overcome," performed here in a soft, respectful tone, was the unofficial anthem of the movement) and to a leftist/socialist tradition that Pete Seeger has never denied.
One of the striking things about the disc is that it also connects with Bob Dylan and The Band and their great "Basement Tapes." While the album is not on the same plane (few recordings are), it has that same sense of musical exploration, of musicians drunk with the history of American popular song. (Springsteen avoids the "weird old America" that Dylan and The Band visit.)
The 13 songs on the disc were all written no later than the Depression, but Springsteen somehow makes them sound fresh, revitalizes them which is the mark of a great performer, after all. In its essence, what Springsteen does on this album is what he tends to do on his tours update, revise and remake. Like the acoustic tour to promote "Devils & Dust" on which he trotted out new versions of old chestnuts, he remakes the American songbook in his own image and makes a vital and exciting album in the process.
The president has some ideas about lowering gas prices this summer. They are problematic at best and shortsighted at worst. Read the Times edit.
Knopf a division of Random House has been running its Borzoi Reader daily poems this month, in honor of National Poetry Month. Today’s poem, "Poem" by Frank O’Hara, is a marvel of economy and language. Check it out here.
Speaking of poetry, Voices of Reason the arts collective I’m involved with is doing an evening of music and poetry at the Gourgaud Gallery in Cranbury Town Hall on Friday, April 28, from 8 p.m. to about 9 p.m. (or so).
The group formed in late 2004 to raise money for antipoverty groups in central New Jersey.
The event is sponsored by Voices of Reason and the Cranbury Arts Council. Admission is free, but audience members are asked to bring a non-perishable food item to be donated to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and Skeet’s Pantry of the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury.
I’ll be reading and Steve Bates will be performing. Cranbury Library Director Howard Zogott, a pretty good poet in his own right, will also read.
The format will be informal, with music and poetry interspersed and questions encouraged from the audience.
So come on out.
I couldn’t resist passing this on (alerted to it by Alterman’s blog).
Um, huh? Mick Jagger? Television? Huh?

