Tag: CD

Norman Lear Reminds Us Why We Love Music (and Why We’re Right)

 

Leave it to Norman Lear, founder and early funder of People for the American Way and creator of All in the Family and Maude, two of the most successful sitcoms in American television history, to produce the remarkable Playing for Change.  Musicians – street musicians, from all over the world, recorded and filmed separately and combined into a multi-national, multi-ethnic concert, recorded (with high-tech equipment) on city street corners and the red dirt of townships, Congo, New Orleans and right in front of the White House.
The message, as Lear freely admits "sounds like claptrap" but somehow it can't help but sink in: music, the universal language, reminds us how much we have in common across the barriers that separate nation and race, faith and gender. It won't change anything by itself, certainly, but it's a lovely reminder of what could be.

Magic – Bruce Tells the Truth – Where’s the Rest of It?

MagicLife is complicated.  One day things are great; the next day someone you love breaks an ankle and faces weeks on crutches; another battles heartbreak and  demons. One day you’re lifted high in celebration; the next, angry and resentful.  One day you’re lost in silence – the next you’re listening to Bruce Springsteen warn you to "carry only what you fear" then enchant you with a wistful "Girls in Their Summer Clothes."   

I would have bought Magic sooner or later — if it has Bruce’s name on it, it’s on my iPod.  But my son’s endorsement sent me straight to Amazon right after its  release.  When The Seeger Sessions came out I played it for hours – over and over.  It just lifted you up out of your chair (or the driver’s seat.)  Magic needs more attention; it’s got a lot to say.  No courting froggies or underpaid sailors here.  What there is instead is a mournful, painful set of stories: political and personal.  They describe feelings I’ve struggled to express: anger, disappointment, anxiety over the future. 

Not much more to say except that I once saw Springsteen tell Bob Dylan "You were the brother that I never had."  He is the diary I never had.   In Bruce’s real-life anthems, you can find huge parts of my life. I was a lawyer’s daughter in a steel town.  The football heroes and Dairy Queen cowboys of my teen years were the boys of Springsteen’s New Jersey.  All so familiar: the longings of Thunder Road, the nostalgia of No Surrender . 

Every time I hear the lines "Now I’m ready to grow young again, And hear your sister’s voice calling us home, Across the open yards" I can see it.  The yard outside our house, the hill up to the neighbors and their tire swing, dusk in the summer when my sister really did call and we tore down the hill, sweaty, dirty and happy as hell. 

I don’t want to feel just as connected to these angry, disappointed words, but I do. It’s not just aging, knowing that childhood summers are long gone.  It’s the reality of the times he’s describing – so much the way I’ve experienced them without the capacity to express what I feel.  Not the only thing I feel — but as usual he’s speaking for a part of me.  This time though, instead of being grateful, I’m just so so sad.