Rush Mixes it Up (to a point)

I imagine that being in a band with twenty albums of material is burdensome at times.  With that much history behind you, pleasing all of your fans while attempting to please yourself has got to be a daunting task.  For years, Rush has fallen into the routine of playing whatever album they’re promoting, along with what I like to call “the first song on the album syndrome.”  If they played an album from Signals, it was “Subdivisions.”  If they played a song from Power Windows, it was “The Big Money.”  Hold Your Fire?  “Force Ten.”  Roll the Bones?  "Dreamline."  It became very predictable, and I often wondered why they didn’t allow themselves to dig a little deeper into their extensive repertoire.

On Saturday at the United Center in Chicago, Rush mixed things up to a degree that undoubtedly left some people beside themselves with joy and others scratching their heads at yet another missed opportunity.  I was somewhere in the middle, but ultimately I have to applaud Rush for finally shaking the dust off of some tunes that hadn’t seen a live performance in over a decade.  Rush has always thrown a surprise or two in their setlist – “Presto” on the Time Machine tour, “Between the Wheels” on the R30 tour, “Circumstances” on the Snakes and Arrows tour – but this time around they performed at least six unexpected tracks.

If you liked 80s Rush – not their crowning back-to-back albums Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures – but from the subsequent synth-heavy releases, you were a happy camper.

Kicking off the 2 ½ hour show with “Subdivisions,” Rush didn’t leave the 80s until the 8^th track, and not before surprising the audience with two songs I’d been hoping to hear for the past twenty years: “The Body Electric” from Grace Under Pressure, and “Territories” from Power Windows.  In fact, PW won the contest for most songs (aside from Rush’s new release, Clockwork Angels).  Who would have figured that one?  “Analog Kid” from Signals was another great addition and a crowd favorite.  Less effective was “Grand Designs” from PW, and why the rock trio can’t perform something other than “Force Ten” from Hold Your Fire is a mystery.  It’s never been a showstopper, so why continue to grind through yet another performance of a tired song?

Geddy Lee was in fine form on Saturday, his voice as strong as it’s been in years, hitting the higher register on most songs – especially those from Clockwork Angels – consistently.  Sure, he can’t sing “Temples of Syrinx,” but who can?  Geddy couldn’t even hit those notes twenty years ago.  Neil Peart made the wise choice of performing three mini drum solos this time out rather than one extensive solo.  The result was an effective interlude between songs, rather than an extended piece that – to my ears at least – had sometimes grown tiresome.  Especially effective was Neil’s electronic solo prior to “Red Sector A” (yet another surpriing choice).

Still early on their US tour, Alex occasional forgot to lip-synch the prerecorded vocal tracks he’s supposed to pretend he’s actually singing, but the result was the same.  He also forgot to press his acoustic simulator at the beginning of “The Garden,” so the first two or three chords came blazing out of his guitar before he recognized his mistake.  Still, he and his bandmates were – as always – masterful at their instruments and a pleasure to watch.

Equally masterful was the addition of a seven-piece string section that accompanied the band throughout the Clockwork Angels selections as well as three other songs.  The highlight for me, aside from a beautifully pulsating introduction of the “The Garden,” was the addition of strings on “YYZ,” in which they doubled the guitar parts at key moments, lifting an already unbelievable song to new heights.

Some of the new material went over very well.  “Caravan” has already become a fan favorite after its introduction during the Time Machine tour, and the driving “Headlong Flight” electrified the audience.  Other songs went over less enthusiastically, and it wasn’t hard to conclude that Rush probably played two new songs too many.  Nine was a lot to digest.

Ending the set with the typical trio of “The Spirit of Radio,” “Tom Sawyer” and a medley of selections from “2112,” Rush left the audience on a high note.  But it’s easy to understand some of the disappointing posts I’ve read on-line.  Of Rush’s twenty albums, ten had no representation whatsoever.  Furthermore, they performed only one song from the 70s, (2112), one song from Permanent Waves (The Spirit of Radio) and two songs from Moving Pictures (Tom Sawyer and YYZ).  It would have been nice to have heard “Free Will,” “Limelight,” “La Villa Strangiato” or a track off of Presto (“Superconductor,” anyone?).

Nonetheless, my son, my brother and I left the show happy to have heard a great band playing at a high level after all these years.  In fact, I attended my first legitimate concert with my brother back on October 9, 1982, when we saw Rush perform at MECCA in Milwaukee.  The Brewers were in the World Series, and Geddy and Neil both came out sporting Brewer garb during the opening number of “The Spirit of Radio.”  When Geddy was supposed to sing, “one likes to believe in the spirit of music,” he substituted “music” with “baseball.”  A more auspicious introduction to concert viewing in the eyes of a fourteen year-old boy there has never been. 

Now, almost exactly thirty years later, and I saw Rush with my ten year-old son.  How cool is that?  And who the heck would have thought back in 1982 that the Canadian trio would still be pumping out solid material to well-attended concerts?

Rains Don't Detract at Wrigley: Springsteen's Second Night

You gotta hand it to Springsteen.  A few years ago when I was asked why I think so highly of the aging rocker, I said, “Because he pores every ounce of his being into every performance.”  Saturday night’s show at Wrigley Field was no exception, as Springsteen and his ever-growing E Street Band withstood the elements – namely, a steady rain for much of the show – to lead 40,000 fans in song for close to three hours.  At sixty-three, The Boss has lost none of the energy he possessed when I attended his concert at Alpine Valley in 1984, and it begs the question: if a 63 year-old guy can still put this much exuberance into a show, why do so many other performers phone it in?

In addition to high energy, the other element Springsteen brings to a show is surprise.  Of the 27 songs performed on Saturday night, fourteen hadn’t been performed the night prior.  So sure, I wish he’d performed “Atlantic City” and “The River,” but instead I got “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Ties that Bind,” an unexpected “Because the Night,” and an even more unexpected “Rosalita,” which was presented almost as a gift for the die-hard fans who by that point were as drenched as Springsteen himself.  So who could complain?

Wrigley is a terrible place to see a concert, but that was to be expected; visual obstructions, an overpacked concourse and lines to the bathrooms are part of the drill at the century-old ballpark.  My daughter and I sat about ten rows behind a pole in section 239, but we were especially pleased to learn that despite no shelter overhead, the rain left our area dry and landed about five seats to our right. 

For the hard-core fans on the field, there was no escaping the elements.  Many had brought ponchos, but most just continued to dance and cheer and sing in unison to Springsteen’s repertoire.  The rain prompted Springsteen to play an acoustic version of CCR’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” but it wasn’t answered until a half hour after the show.  Aside from the main console, which was sheltered under a tent, nothing else was protected, and it left me wondering about the condition of Steve Van Zandt’s guitar and Soozie Tyrell’s violin.

The new tracks from Wrecking Ball, when interspersed throughout a long set, played better than they do on the album.  “We Take Care of our Own” sounded powerful and fit in seamlessly on the heels of “Hungry Heart,” and “Wrecking Ball” and “Death to my Hometown” worked well despite their repetitiveness.  One of the evenings highlights was “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” a raucous, balls-to-the-wall version with a spastic guitar solo by Tom Morello that left the crowd erupting.  Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder returned for the second Wrigley show, adding effective vocals to "My Hometown" and "Darkness."

After Clarence Clemons died last year, I wondered if Bruce would continue to play "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out," and was pleased to hear the song's return with a newly added pause after the line "the big man joined the band," during which a minute-long photo montage of Clemons appeared on the video screens.  It was a nice touch, and a moving one that drew applause from those in attendance. 

After the last chord of "Americanland," my daughter and I could see the various band members walk behind the stage toward the ballpark exit.  Springsteen, rather than running out as quickly as he could, spent several minutes backstage before making his way toward the right-field corner of the outfield, where he pumped his fists in appreciation for an audience who toughed it out.

I was sixteen when I first saw Springsteen, and if you had told me then that I’d one day attend another show of his with my fifteen year-old daughter, I’d have flipped.

How cool is that to share a little bit of my past with a big part of my present?

Simplicity to a Fault: Springsteen's Wrecking Ball

Some of the greatest rock and roll songs ever have also been the simplest.  Whether you’re a fan of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, The Clash and The Ramones or Green Day and Nirvana, sometimes the simplest songs capture emotions with a charge unattainable by more complex arrangements.  Are you telling me that “Baba O’Riley” doesn’t still give you chills?  Come on.

In two weeks, I’m attending my first Bruce Springsteen show in thirteen years, this time with my fifteen year-old daughter.  In preparation, I thought it made sense to purchase The Boss’s latest effort, Wrecking Ball, but while digesting the material over the past few months, I keep coming to the same conclusion: the album is simplistic to a fault.  There isn’t a chord or a note on the entire album that surprises me, that gives me pause or a reason to take notice.  By track six, I’m so bored, I inevitably turn it off and wait to digest the final five songs at a later listening session.

To confirm my instincts, I tracked the chord changes of each song on the eleven-track album.  Here are the results:

• Every song is in a major key.
• Not one song changes key.
• Every song but one is in 4/4, with an occasional 2/4 measure thrown in.
• On the entire album, there are a total of five chords, with an occasional altered root note: I, IV, V, vi minor and ii minor.  That’s it.   And the ii minor chord only appears on one song, so 10 songs have at most four chords in them.

Now, I’m not dissing simplicity.  Give me a good Johnny Cash album or Green Day album or classic Stones album, and I’m a happy guy.  But Springsteen’s latest album is nothing short of a bore.  Just as Yes and Genesis became too complex for their own good in the 1970s, Springsteen has become so simple that there isn’t any reason for listeners to care.

One could counter my conclusion by saying that Springsteen has always been simple, so why start complaining now?

But it wasn’t always this way.

Take a song like “Hungry Heart.”  Simple?  Yes.  But what really makes the song work is the unexpected key change leading into the organ solo, and then changing keys again for the final verse.  Nothing fancy, but just enough alteration to make the listener take notice.  The song “Born to Run” is also a relatively simply song (though the chorus alone contains more chords than the entire Wrecking Ball album), but what really lifts the song from good to great is the interlude that contains an odd key change, a chromatic descension and a four measure pause before resolving back to the one chord in an achingly satisfying way.

So much of Springsteen’s new album could have benefitted from a bridge with a different chord, a key change, a pause, a tempo or meter change, a something.  Tracks like “Wrecking Ball,” “Shackled and Drawn,” “We Take Care of our Own” are fine for a while, but listen to them successively and sleepiness sets in.

I’ve no doubt that hearing “Death to my Hometown” or “Easy Money” will be great fun when shared with 40,000 fans come September 8^th, but I’m afraid that after the Wrigley Field concert, Wrecking Ball will no longer make it into my regular rotation. 

(I should note that “Land of Hope and Dreams,” which appears in studio form for the first time on this album, is on par with Springsteen’s greatest songs ever.  As I said, sometimes simple is good.)

Musical Cliches - guilty as charged

Two summers ago, I posted twoblogs on musical cliches and highlighted one in particular: the descending major scale in the bass line, used by virtually every rock band since the early 60s, me included.  It's an oldie but goodie, but there are plenty of other cliches out there, and when someone as unmuiscal as my wife notices one, it might be time for an artist to change his tune.

Last week, after a year of work, I finally completed my new album Warts and All, and while we were in the car listening to the beginning of track four, "There is no Reason"my wife turned to me and said, "Wow, you sure like that theme."

What she was referring to, and what I'd hoped noone had actually noticed, was a recurring theme I've used in multiple songs, whereby I play an octave in my right hand along with a minor or major third below the upper note, and then generally ascend up the scale for a bit and back down again.  For whatever reason, this phrase appeals to me, and I've used it in no fewer than four songs to date.  Give a listen...

Those were snippets from four songs: "Car Alarms" from 1996, "File It Away" from 2000, "What You've Done" from 2003 and "There Is No Reason" from 2012.  An oldie but goodie, indeed.  I also have an unfinished tune that I'm intending my daughter to sing that employs the same tecnnique.  But how that my wife has discovered my secret: that I have very few tricks up my sleeve and that I need to "lean on old familiar ways" (if you guess where that lyric comes from, you win a free copy of my new album), then maybe it's time to put that particular theme away for a while.

But the biggest cliche ever?  Check out the Axis of Awesome performing forty songs with the exact same chord progression:

That chord progression has GOT to be on my next album.

The Hush Sound Blows the Top off the Bottom Lounge

The Hush Sound may have disbanded in 2008 to pursue other musical opportunities, but on Saturday night at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago, they played the second of two reunion shows to a sell-out crowd that may have left wondering if a full-blown reunion might be in the cards. 

With Bob Morris and Greta Salpeter taking turns at lead vocals, the band ripped through a 70 minute set to an enthusiastic crowd, most of whom knew many if not all of the words of the seventeen songs.  Leaning a little heavier toward their last of three albums, 2008’s Goodbye Blues, the five-piece band played well despite the hiatus.  Opening with “I Could Love You Much Better,” the band settled in after tackling a few technical issues.  Singer and guitarist Bob Morris took the role of band representative between songs in an easygoing and lighthearted tone, joking before one song, “I want to encourage understanding relationships, because none of my songs represent that.” 

Morris’s singing contributions had dropped considerably on the band’s last album, and as such he sang mostly earlier material, including several from 2005’s So Sudden.  Many of these garnered the greatest audience response.  “City Traffic Puzzle,” “Crawling Toward the Sun,” and “Echo,” electrified the listeners, as did “Sweet Tangerine and “Intertwined” from Hush Sound’s second album, Like Vines.

On the other hand, Greta, who’s red skirt matched her keyboard, stuck to songs primarily from the band’s last album, and one gets the sense that as her voice matured from So Sudden (when she was only seventeen), she became more comfortable with her singing and songwriting.  Her voice cut through the band's instrumentation brightly and strongly on standout tunes such as “Molasses,” “Medicine Man” and “Honey.” 

As a keyboardist, Greta remained stationary throughout most of the set, coming out of her allotted space only when playing acoustic guitar.  Bob played a more visible role, coaxing the fans to clap along repeatedly.  Drummer Darren Wilson and bassist Chris Faller laid down the rhythms steadily and proficiently without stealing attention away from the two lead singers.  Mike LeBlanc backed up on guitar, keyboards and bass.

“Did you know Bob and I went to prom together?” Greta asked the audience at one point.

I did, and it is my great misfortune of not having taken advantage of the opportunity to see the band play in its embryonic state at my neighbor’s garage early last decade.  Little did I know then that the rumblings from next door would lead to three masterfully done albums, and – last night – a masterful live performance.

Here’s hoping it’s a sign of things to come.