21-blogs, bruce, lefsetz, ratones paranoicos

a couple of weeks ago the champion blogger bob lefsetz drew his fans, of which i am one, to a bruce springsteen blog about getting ready for his and the e street band's recent half-time performance at the super bowl.



i clicked onto bruce's blog and i was very impressed for many reasons; here was the john garfield of american music sharing with his fans the difficult choices he had to make about wearing new-ish boots or old faithful round toe'd boots, describing his dilemma with relish and detail that for sure would have elton john curling up on a las vegas couch calling out, "david, see, bruce has the same problem i have," or perhaps have sharon osbourne yelling lovingly to ozzy across the mansion, “see i told you to stuff the boots, to stop you falling over, you daft c___," or some other midland english term of endearment.

i was also impressed with the fact that bruce wrote this blog and that he continues to do so consistently. mr. lefsetz pointed out that the duty of the blogger is to write continually. this is something i have not been doing, and i apologize to both you and my work ethic.

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i could tell you that i have been traveling to buenos aires and recording the ratones paranoicos. here are some pictures from those sessions:









also here are a couple pictures that were on the wall of the studio i was recording at with the ratones. they are of the rolling stones having a night off being silly the last time they were in south america:







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i have also been to los angeles to see if my two books, stoned and 2stoned, might make it to a screen in your cabled home.

i’ve been wrapping up the umpteenth edit on my third book; walking my dogs and spending a whole lot of time in my new internet-less jungle abode; recording a fine young colombian writer named juan galeano here in bogota; being with you daily on my shows for little steven's underground garage sirius xm; reading every book written by gay talese ; reading "the women" by t.c. boyle and danny goldberg's terrific book on his life in our biz called "bumping into geniuses" ; and finally, working on the rough sketches of a latin-influenced rolling stones songbook with master guitarist gary lucas.

but even all that will not set the record straight. i think bruce works harder, yet he still manages to bring his sleigh to blogsville on a regular basis.

i'm thus inclined to resign, because if you ain't hacking it you should have the decency to fess up and let thy people go.

perhaps it's because of the growing level of communication this recent sirius/xm merger has brought to everybody who works at the underground garage; perhaps my blogging was just a one night stand. we'll see....

in the meanwhile, candles lit and prayers said for the souls of two great dames of music who passed in recent weeks: estelle bennett of the ronettes, and the jazz diva blossom dearie.

hopefully this little spurt will get me hooked again. if not, over to the boss......

blog 11-atlanta, bruce springsteen, athens, BRMC

we just had a wonderful time in america, north america. we always do. this time
my family and i flew up from bogota to atlanta to get together with SVZ and catch the april 25th phillips arena, bruce springsteen & the E street band show. this was bound to be a moving experience, as it would be the first time that bruce and the Estreeters would be in concert since the passing, burying, and paying of respect to founding keyboard, zane gray and maven, maestro danny federici.



before the concert....food. we met SVZ in the lobby of the four seasons hotel
and SUV'd around the corner to a local wop-hop eatery. the food was wunderbar, the host and service very cage de follies. the host was so graceful that when we'd finished chopping, noshing, dishing and wishing ray davies waterloo sunsets and pete townshend a great now that he's old,SVZ WAS TOLD THAT HIS MONEY WAS NO GOOD AT THE INN BUT THAT HIS THOUGHTS AND SIGNATURE ON A RESTURANT plate would be more than appropriate for the food consumed.

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the evening before the atlanta bruce concert, we drove down to athens, ga to
catch BRMC at the 40 WATT venue. i'm interested in any town that produced REM. BRMC are a group i've loved for a long time. their records are great, i just
wondered what was it? the group, the management, the vibe, the timing, record company... that had stopped them breaking on through.

i had thought it might be the record company as to how could the big machine stay on top of, stay on the street with, and support BRMC as they hoe'd the road. they are terrific on stage, really, but they take so damn long abut it. Their audience is faithful and full of bravo, but if they ever want to appeal to those of us who 9 to 5 they had better get the chops down and moments up. do not get me wrong, i loved them, as did the audience, they are awesome. but to tease us with the high end of their collective talents only once, and on the very last song, is impudent to say the least.

on their very last song of their show you heard the totality of their power,
instrumentally and vocally. you heard the national anthem they could
become, but after two hours, or what seemed like two hours it's just not enough.
it's just a subjective opinion, no one else seemed to object, but when i like
something, i want it for the world.

a big hail to BRMC member robert who said a nice hi, glenn was a charmng
host and robert's dad, mike, who said hi after manning he lights for the band.
athens...nice pizza town. all of you lucky enough to be schooling in athens are
blessed. use it well.

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had breakfast the next morn with my old new york pal, sid maurer. after years in
the art and music trade in new york, sid has settled in atlanta to attend to his
first love (after barbara) and that is to paint. we had not caught up for nigh
on 15 years and brekky was great. we'll have more news about sid in the next
blog.

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bruce was magic. i have not seen him since the bottom line in ' 75 (thanks jon
tiven for taking me there back then) and then an amnesty international MSG gig at the end of the 70's with jackson browne (thanks bob krasnow for that one).

the atlanta show kicked off with some great halibut and broccli backstage with the
crew; thanks to the lady-in-charge for super duper food. said hallo to max
weinberg. after charlie watts there’s ringo, jim keltner, jim gordon and max..... and hal blaine and is it gary chester that was the drummer on gene pitney's "every breath i take" ?

SVZ did his wunderbar meet and greet with the UG people and fans and that was quite a cirque du soleil with good vibes. then it was showtime....



it started with a moving video tribute to danny federici then just went slam dunk, slam run, we ran all the way home and out in the streets, the shore, the life, the movement, the reason, the angst, and the spirit and joy. it is an american
heartfelt experience. i could call it a religious experience, it's not, it's a
social experience with soul on. clarence, steven, max all the E street loonies
just keep laying out those tunes and pouring out those magical charts with so much heart and knowing.

2-mick and bruce.....

mick jagger is promoting his "very best of mick jagger". i will not get into whether the very best of mick jagger is with the rolling stones. suffice to say that it's better the boy is a workaholic as opposed to a winehouse or alcoholic. and, with the stones off the road "sir laddie" obviously still needs to get up in the morning and go to work. so he's got this solo adventure out. as way of promotion mick did a thing with the BBC whereby fans or foils could write in and ask mick questions. the answers popped up on the BBC website a few days ago. i thought a lot of the answers were a bit naff - dorian grey without the picture. i also thought he was a tad dismissive of both pete townshend and led zep. then i realized that the text was from a filmed BBC interview with some worn out old BBC troll. it's still mick and it's much better with picture. less naff, almost actual so here it is.

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bruce springsteen is magic already in europe. here are a couple of great pieces with and on bruce from two UK rags. sometimes the awe that america and it's music are held in from the UK and europe lend themselves to a fuller bite of the springsteen apple. we get to hear of the wonders of america as opposed to just the blight. here's a piece from the UK times and another from the guardian. enjoy bruce and philip roth......

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one of the great press ladies i've met is elise brown, who was until recently, PR at sirius. she has moved on to new pastures and i have not (as of now), had the pleasure of meeting her replacement. in the spirit of the best jobs lingering on and the contacts made; elise knew of a rock writer, mr. jonathan valania , who was heading to colombia to meet our country and his relatives. she put us in touch and attached is the beginning of our exchange.

My Motorcycle Diary: Tea And Sympathy for the Devil

BY JONATHAN VALANIA

SOUTH AMERICA CORRESPONDENT

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Today I saw Andrew Loog Oldham standing in his kitchen making me a lovely cup of tea, high above the streets of Bogota’s ritzy financial district in his tastefully upscale bi-level condominium, where he has lived on and off since 1975. If you have to ask who Andrew Loog Oldham is, you’ll never know — unless you click here, go on, we’ll wait. Psych! OK, now that we lost the dorks, let’s back up: A couple days before leaving for Colombia, it was brought to my attention that ALO currently resides in Bogota and broadcasts his daily Sirius show from there. Calling in a favor from friends in high places, I secured his email address and wrote him that I was a music journalist and I would be in “Bogata” in a couple of days and would love to do an interview. He wrote back “Fine, but you better learn how to spell Bogota before you get down here.” So much for first impressions.

From there I dashed over to Borders to get a copy of his Stoned, a 1998 total recall of his early days in pre-Swinging London grooming the stylized thug mythos of the motherfucking Rolling Stones. Turns out the book is out of print and the only copy I knew I could get my hands on before my flight belonged to none other than Philebrity Jones himself, Joey Sweeney. Back before our partnership/friendship went south, Sweeney lent me Stoned with the proviso that I must ABSOLUTELY return it because not only was it one of his favorite books but Andrew Loog Oldham was the coolest thing on two legs to ever walk the Earth, or something along those lines. So I rang him up and, knowing it was me, he answered with a tentative ‘Hello’ delivered in that wary Is This A Trap? tone you might expect, given the circumstances. I told him I had a modest proposal for him:

ME: Loan me your copy of Stoned and I will get it signed by Andrew Loog Oldham.
SWEENEY: What?!?
ME: I know this sounds like I am putting you on, but I am serious as cancer, Jack. I’m leaving for Bogota, Colombia in the morning and have made arrangements to interview him.
SWEENEY: What? Colombia? Are you serious?

I was going to counter with “Obviously you are not keeping up with your daily Phawker,” but decided getting the goddamn book was more important than winning the latest round of our ongoing snark war.

So fast forward to this morning and I am standing outside ALO’s apartment building trying to figure out how to tell my cab driver to wait for me and that I will be back down in an hour. He speaks no English, and my rudimentary Spanish does not encompass such a relatively complicated exchange. The two door men are laughing at our communication breakdown and I ask them ‘tu habla ingles?’ to which they nod their heads no and go back to laughing. I feel like a fool with a paper ass, coming to somebody else’s country and expecting them to speak my language. How arrogant and intellectually-lazy, such imperial hubris. Thankfully ALO knows enough Spanish to get my point across, and five minutes later I am standing in his kitchen while he boils water for tea. Since the interview will, god willing, be published elsewhere, I can only give you a teaser of our conversation. Topics covered: heroin, Scientology, cocaine, shock treatment, Her Satanic Majesty’s Request, Sirius, Monterey Pop, Catholicism, mod sex, clinical depression, Martin Scorsese and whether or not his friend Phil Spector is innocent. An exchange:

ME: So is it true that you and Jagger don’t speak to each other?
ALO: We speak. When I last saw him [in 1994] he said ‘Hello, Andrew’ and I said ‘Hello, Mick’ and then he walked away. See, we talk.
ME: When did you last speak to him prior to that?
ALO: 1968.
ME: What do you make of Keith Richards snorting his dad’s ashes?
ALO: Hey, back in the 60’s I used to say I wanted my friends to smoke me when I’m dead.
ME: Phil Spector, innocent or guilty.
ALO: I have no earthly idea, but I must say upfront that Phil wrote me a lovely postcard when my mother died a few years ago. However, 67-year-old men in high heels and wigs should not be out drinking after midnight, especially when they are heavily armed.

Suffice it to say, we got on thick as thieves, in no small part because of the truth in the old maxim that you cannot bullshit a bullshitter — and today that cut both ways.