I've wondered for a long time if Richard Roberts would ever get his comeuppance for being the sleazeball he is. His former wife Patti detailed exorbitant spending and an extravagant lifestyle, among other less than Christian attributes, in her memoir from years ago. At the time, Richard wasn't the university President (what a joke), and his moral shortcomings were able to receive relatively little notice. (It was also in a day when cable television was not pervasive and there was no internet.)

Due to being Oral's only kid with a remote interest in entering the family business, I wasn't too surprised to see him turn up as university President as Oral's career wound down if for no other reason than for him to be a fund raiser. And lo and behold if he doesn't have some type of "healing" gift himself. What a surprise.

I hope, if for no other reason than for the good people I knew when I was there (both fellow students and faculty) that this scandal excises the Richard Roberts cancer and that the university can survive under legitimate leadership. I'm not optimistic.

From The Associated Press:
Scandal Brewing at Oral Roberts U.
By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS – 1 day ago

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home."

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."

At a chapel service this week on the 5,300-student campus known for its 60-foot-tall bronze sculpture of praying hands, Roberts said God told him: "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit ... is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion."

San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, a member of the ORU board of regents, said the university's executive board "is conducting a full and thorough investigation."

Colleagues fear for the reputation of the university and the future of the Roberts' ministry, which grew from Southern tent revivals to one of the most successful evangelical empires in the country, hauling in tens of millions of dollars in contributions a year. The university reported nearly $76 million in revenue in 2005, according to the IRS.

Oral Roberts is 89 and lives in California. He holds the title of chancellor, but the university describes him as semi-retired, and his son presides over day-to-day operations on the campus, which had a modern, space-age design when it was built in the early 1960s but now looks dated, like Disney's Tomorrowland.

Cornell Cross II, a senior from Burlington, Vt., said he is looking to transfer to another school because the scandal has "severely devalued and hurt the reputation of my degree."

"We have asked and asked and asked to see the finances of our school and what they're doing with our money, and we've been told no," said, Cross who is majoring in government. "Now we know why. As a student, I'm not going to stand for it any longer."

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school's involvement in a local political race.

Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university's nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

The professors also said their dismissals came after they turned over to the board of regents a copy of a report documenting moral and ethical lapses on the part of Roberts and his family. The internal document was prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, according to the lawsuit.

An ORU student repairing Cantese's laptop discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the professors.

It details dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Among them:

_ A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

_ Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."

_ The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."

_ Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.

_ Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.

_ University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.

_ The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.

_ The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

Tim Brooker, one of the professors who sued, said he fears for the university's survival if certain changes aren't made.

"All over that campus, there are signs up that say, `And God said, build me a university, build it on my authority, and build it on the Holy Spirit,'" Brooker said. "Unfortunately, ownership has shifted."

From The New York Times:
A Guitar God’s Memories, Demons and All
By ALAN LIGHT

IT is one of the most mythic romantic entanglements in rock ’n’ roll history. At some point in the late 1960s, Eric Clapton fell in love with Pattie Boyd, wife of his close friend George Harrison. Mr. Clapton’s 1970 masterpiece, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” (recorded with his band at the time, Derek and the Dominos), was an offering and a plea to her; they eventually married in 1979 and divorced in 1988.

The saga sits at the center of “Clapton: The Autobiography,” which is being published this week by Broadway Books. Mr. Clapton’s memoir follows the recent release of Ms. Boyd’s side of the story in “Wonderful Tonight” (named for a song he wrote about her), which in September entered the New York Times best-seller list at No. 1. Mr. Clapton said that he had not read her book but that he had seen excerpts in newspapers and noted discrepancies, both small and large, between the two accounts of their relationship.

On the phone from his home outside London, where he lives with his wife, Melia McEnery, and their three daughters, he singled out as far-fetched Ms. Boyd’s description of a night in which he and Mr. Harrison had a “guitar duel” for her hand. “We each have our different versions of our years together,” he said.

His description of his relationship with Ms. Boyd, though, offers few excuses for his emotional swings, substance abuse and extramarital affairs (including one that produced his oldest daughter) that defined much of their decade together. “Someone recently read the book and told me that I was really hard on myself,” Mr. Clapton said. ”I think that’s a misunderstanding of it. I just tried to take responsibility for all the different phases of my life.”

There is now a long tradition of rock biographies, usually the more lurid, the better. But as the luminaries of rock get older, they are beginning to write their own histories. The autobiographies of Bob Dylan and Sting have been best sellers in recent years, this fall will see the publication of books by Ron Wood and Slash, and Keith Richards recently received a contract for more than $7 million for his life story.

“Clapton” chronicles the many musical configurations of Mr. Clapton’s career. He has played in several monumental bands (the Yardbirds, Cream); accompanied giants from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf; and topped the charts and filled arenas as a solo performer. (An accompanying two-CD retrospective, “Complete Clapton,” is also being released this week.)

With his sturdy blues foundation, liquid tone and architecturally structured solos, Mr. Clapton, 62, is one of rock’s most influential and revered guitarists. Early in his career, the scrawled phrase “Clapton is God” was a common sight on the walls of London.

But Mr. Clapton’s life has also been defined by a series of tragedies and oddities. He was raised by his grandparents, under the illusion that they were his parents; he never met his father and, until the age of 9, believed that his mother was actually his older sister. He suffered through a lengthy, epic battle with alcoholism and drug addiction. In 1991, Mr. Clapton’s 4-year-old son, Conor, died after falling out of a hotel room window (inspiring one of his most popular songs, “Tears in Heaven”).

“I wanted to wait until I had an entire life to write about,” he said. “And though I don’t think I’m quite done yet, my memory was starting to play tricks on me. I realized that if I didn’t do it now, I might have to rely on other people’s memories, and it might start to lose some of the accuracy.”

Unlike some of his peers, though, Mr. Clapton has long been known as extremely private and press-shy. He said that he had thought about writing his memoirs for a long time, though always at the prompting of others.

He first attempted the conventional process for a celebrity memoir, with the use of a ghostwriter: Christopher Sykes, a longtime friend. But Mr. Clapton was unhappy with this version. “It looked very defensive, judgmental, full of self-justification,” he said. “It just looked dreadful.”

Charlie Conrad, Mr. Clapton’s editor, acknowledged that the early drafts were “a bit breathless.” He said, however, that even at that stage, “we were fully satisfied; we were actually surprised at how frank and forthcoming it was, but he felt it wasn’t truly him.”

So in the midst of a worldwide tour last winter, Mr. Clapton — who, in the book, describes himself as both lazy and a perfectionist — took over the writing himself. He put himself on a disciplined schedule, working in “self-imposed exile” in his hotel room every morning and afternoon.

“I found that I couldn’t wait to pick up the thread each time,” he said. “I really enjoyed doing it; it was really fun to learn how to put a sentence and a paragraph together.”

What is most striking about the result is the author’s distinctly measured tone, which never becomes hysterical or sentimental, even when writing about painful, dramatic or unflattering situations. (“I considered all of my previous irrational behavior to have been reasonably excusable,” he writes, fairly late in the story, “because it had been conducted with consenting adults.”) In at least one case, though, his voice was a cause for concern from his editors.

“They called me up and wanted to know why I was so detached about the loss of my son,” Mr. Clapton said. “I had to explain that it was impossible to re-enter that period of time. It’s so traumatic that I can really only talk about it from a distance, as if it were about someone else.” In the book, he writes that when he got the news, he “stepped back within himself” and then entered “a permanent daze.”

He added that it wasn’t a matter of being unable to summon his feelings. “It’s not difficult to revisit. The sadness is always there, it taps me on the shoulder and all comes flooding back. But it is difficult to write about it without sensationalizing it or falsely creating an emotional standpoint just because that’s what’s expected.”

Mr. Conrad said that both he and the book’s editor in Britain found the chapter about Conor’s death “kind of restrained” but ultimately accepted it. “We suggested that he might explore it in more depth, but he gave us what he wanted to say.”

The biggest curiosity for readers, however, presumably surrounds his account of his marriage to Ms. Boyd. Her book incited a bit of a tabloid frenzy, particularly a scene of the two guitarists battling for her affection with their instruments like medieval knights.

Mr. Clapton remembers the evening in question. “I went over just to hang out, he got two guitars, and we played,” he said. “But we were always doing that, so how do you make an everyday thing into a commodity?”

Ms. Boyd said in an e-mail message that she and Mr. Clapton are “friends” now but that he “is quite right in saying that we each have our memories of our years together.”

Despite his anguish over his initially unrequited love, which drove him deeper into addiction, Mr. Clapton says now that the affair didn’t seem like such a big deal. “At the time it was kind of like swinging, very loose and amoral,” he said. “I think we didn’t give it too much thought. It was really only later that we realized that we treated each other quite badly.”

The despair of “Layla,” Mr. Clapton added, represented a creative choice, not a documentary about his life. “That’s the art of writing love songs,” he said. “I was desperately obsessed with Pattie, but creating a song is just putting a stamp on a feeling.”

Ms. Boyd has different feelings about the intensity of their affair. “It was a big deal,” she wrote. “Eric was very attractive and persuasive. George and I had many problems in our relationship that had a great deal to do with the enormity of his fame and his increasing passion for meditation and the spiritual life. He frequently simply wasn’t there for me, and there were other women.”

Mr. Clapton’s friendship with Mr. Harrison survived the change in Ms. Boyd’s allegiance; famously, the former Beatle once said, “I’d rather she be with him than some dope.” Mr. Clapton served as the musical director for the “Concert for George” tribute show after Mr. Harrison’s death from cancer in 2001.

“For George, it was all maya,” he said, referring to the Hindu concept of cosmic illusion. “Something would come up, and we would get together to play because that’s what drew us together. His take was purely spiritual, that we could always get past the physical world.”

Ms. Boyd’s summation is that “George was able to put all of this in perspective.”

If Mr. Clapton sounds at peace with his complicated personal history, what emerges as he recounts his musical career in his autobiography is a kind of perpetual dissatisfaction. In one telling anecdote, he remembers coveting a certain guitar when he was young, only to lose interest after buying it. “As soon as I got it, I suddenly didn’t want it anymore,” he writes. “This phenomenon was to rear its head throughout my life and cause many difficulties.”

Mr. Clapton comes across as feeling equally uneasy as a frontman and as part of a band. He tells of joining and quitting groups, no matter how successful, frequently and with little warning. He races dismissively through his solo albums from the 1970s (which he described in conversation as “unfulfilled and half-baked”). Most recently, he seems happiest collaborating with old friends like B. B. King or the reclusive songwriter J. J. Cale; he is exploring possibilities with Steve Winwood, his partner in the ill-fated supergroup Blind Faith.

“My musical identity has taken my entire life to develop,” Mr. Clapton said. “Now I can sing in a band, play backup, lead, sing a duet — there doesn’t have to be a label on it anymore. The most important thing is that I enjoy listening to music, and I still do.”

Mr. Clapton said he finds his stability in the blues, the music that he first loved and that he continues to regard as a kind of beacon. “There’s a matter-of-factness, a sense of acceptance about the blues,” he said. “Acceptance is a great state of being. It steps aside of hysteria, drama, extreme emotions.” And it is precisely this even, unblinking sensibility that defines the author’s voice in “Clapton.”

“To write this book, I had to be comfortable with my day-to-day existence,” Mr. Clapton said. “I like that I can look back and feel comfortable with my life.”

From The New York Post:
BRIBING TROOPS TO QUIT
By RALPH PETERS

October 6, 2007 -- THE problems with military outsourcing go far beyond last month's massacre of civilians by Blackwater USA's hired guns: Wartime profiteers are bleeding our military.

Astonishingly, contractors are free to approach those in uniform, offer them generous salaries to leave their service in wartime, then profit from the skills your tax dollars taught them.

This isn't just about Navy SEALS or other special operators. In intelligence, for example, we train young soldiers for complex missions and expensively process their security clearances - then contractors bribe them to leave the military, raking in big bucks from your investment in their new employee.

Maybe we could look the other way in peacetime. But we're fighting multiple wars. Would we have allowed contractors to hire away some of the most highly skilled men and women in uniform during World War II? (Of course, most lawmakers really were patriots then . . .)

It's fundamentally wrong to let contractors go head-hunting among our troops in wartime. Those in government who've elevated outsourcing to a state religion pretend it helps our war effort - with the whopper that outsourcing military functions saves taxpayer dollars.

Exactly how does that one work? You get stuck with the training and security-clearance costs; the soldier lured to the private sector gets his salary doubled or tripled - then the contractor adds in a markup for his multiple layers of overhead costs and a generous profit margin, and bills the taxpayers. How is that cheaper than having soldiers do the job?

The scam-artists tell us that using contractors saves money in the long run, since their employees don't get military health care and retirement benefits. But the numbers just don't add up.

Contractors are looting our military - while wrapping themselves in the flag.

Thankfully, the finest soldiers and Marines aren't in it for the money. But we're still losing personnel with vital in-demand skills.

Here's how one disgusted special-ops veteran puts it:

"I got tired of old SF buddies handing me their business cards as I exited the dining facility in Iraq [and] asking me to come over and work for them. I'll go teach high school English in the inner city first."

In a follow-up message, this veteran - who's sticking by the colors - wrote:

"The saddest thing I see in those 'flesh peddlers' is the part of the conversation when they admit that they really miss the unit and the people in it. A true warrior isn't in it for the money, but, rather, for those things that money can never buy: mutual respect, camaraderie and the self-worth that comes with it.

"Every one of my contractor 'buddies' eventually breaks down and admits these things to me. Unfortunately, they can also pick up on a malcontent quickly, therefore acquiring the 'easy sale.' "

The disgraceful cycle works like this: Contractors hire away military talent. The military finds itself short of skilled workers, so contractors get more contracts. With more money, they hire away more uniformed talent.

Here's what we need to do to right a wrong that borders on treason:

* Congress must defy its campaign contributors and criminalize attempts to hire those in uniform away from their service during periods of war and conflict.

* If a service member put in a full 20 years or more and retired, he or she should be free to take a job with any law-abiding firm. But any soldier short of 20 who accepts specialized training and a security clearance at government expense should have to wait two years after his or her discharge before moving to a related private-sector position.

* Defense contractors who hire young veterans with advanced skills or security clearances should have to reimburse the government 50 percent of their training and background investigation costs.

The current system is intolerable. The problem, of course, is Congress. Although the Hill is half-way to approving stateside prosecutions for criminal conduct by government contractors abroad, your representatives only did so because they were caught out by the Blackwater scandal.

The truth is that most members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, will favor a contractor who pays in campaign contributions over soldiers who pay with their lives.

We saw classic congressional behavior last week, when Blackwater founder Erik Prince testified on the Hill and set a new standard for smugness. A solid Republican phalanx defended a major contributor. The Dems, who failed to do their homework on the issues, looked stupidly partisan themselves - just harassing a GOP donor.

And Prince got away with his shameless claims that he and his trigger-happy thugs are true-blue patriots. If so, why hire talent away from our military in wartime? Why give heavy weapons to under-supervised "malcontents," endangering our battlefield progress?

And if the independently wealthy Prince is so patriotic, why not provide Blackwater's services to the government on a no-profit basis?

Well, Blackwater ain't no red-white-and-blue charity, and Prince isn't one of FDR'S dollar-a-year men. The company lacked serious credentials when it landed its first security contract - and one suspects it would never have been hired if not for Prince's campaign contributions and political connections.

People like Erik Prince aren't patriots. They're vampires sucking the blood of our troops - war profiteers growing rich while soldiers die.

As I warned in these pages several years ago, we didn't just outsource services in Iraq. We outsourced our nation's honor.

Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author of "Wars Of Blood and Faith."

CHANGING HIS TUNE
Steyn on People

October 1, 2007

HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review

In The New York Sun the other day, Ron Radosh had a scoop: Hold the front page! Stop the presses! Grizzled Leftie Icon Repudiates…

Who? Castro? Chavez? Al-Qaeda?

Whoa, let’s not rush to judgment. No, the big story was: Grizzled Leftie Icon Repudiates …Stalin.

A couple of months back, there was some documentary or other “celebrating” the “spirit” of Pete Seeger, the folkie colossus, with contributions from the usual suspects – Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, one or more Dixie Chicks, two-thirds of Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. Mr Radosh had also been interviewed but his remarks about Seeger’s lifelong support of Stalinism had not made the final cut. No surprise there. In such circumstances, the rule is to hail someone for his “activism” and “commitment” and “passion” without getting hung up on the specifics of what exactly he’s actively and passionately committing to. Giving him a Kennedy Center Honor a decade or so back, President Clinton hailed ol’ Pete as “an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them”, which is one way of putting it. You can’t help noticing, though, that it’s all the documentaries and honors ceremonies and lifetime-achievement tributes to Mr Seeger that seem to find certain things “inconvenient”. The Washington Post’s Style section, with its usual sly elan, hailed him as America’s “best-loved Commie” – which I think translates as “Okay, so the genial old coot spent a lifetime shilling for totalitarian murderers, but only uptight Republican squares would be boorish enough to dwell on it.”

Anyway, in the Sun, Mr Radosh, a former banjo pupil of the great man, did dwell on it, and a few weeks later got a letter in response. “I think you’re right,” wrote Pete. “I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in [the] USSR.” And he enclosed a new song he’d composed:

I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe
He ruled with an iron hand
He put an end to the dreams
Of so many in every land
He had a chance to make
A brand new start for the human race
Instead he set it back
Right in the same nasty place
I got the Big Joe Blues
(Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast)
I got the Big Joe Blues
(Do this job, no questions asked)
I got the Big Joe Blues…

It’s heartening to see that age (he’s now 88) hasn’t withered Seeger’s unerring instinct for bum rhymes (“fast/asked”). Still, Ron Radosh was thrilled that, just 54 years after the old brute’s death, a mere three-quarters of a century after the purges and show trials and whatnot, the old protest singer has finally got around to protesting Stalin, albeit somewhat evasively: He put the human race “right in the same nasty place”? Sorry, not good enough. Stalin created whole new degrees of nastiness. But, given that the guy got the two great conflicts of the 20th century wrong (in 1940, he was anti-war and singing “Wendell Wilkie and Franklin D/Both agree on killing me”), it’s a start. I can’t wait for his anti-Osama album circa 2078.

Mr Seeger has a song called “Treblinka”, because he thinks it’s important that we should “never forget”. But wouldn’t it be better if we were hip to it before it snowballed into one of those things we had to remember not to forget? Would it kill the icons of the left just for once to be on the right side at the time? America has no “best-loved Nazi” or “best-loved Fascist” or even “best-loved Republican”, but its best-loved Stalinist stooge is hailed in his dotage as a secular saint who’s spent his life “singing for peace”. He sang for “peace” when he opposed the fascistic armaments stooge Roosevelt and imperialist Britain, and he sang for “peace” when he attacked the Cold War paranoiac Truman, and he kept on singing for “peace” no matter how many millions died and millions more had to live in bondage, and, while that may seem agreeably peaceful when you’re singing “If I Had A Hammer” in Ann Arbor, it’s not if you’re on the sharp end of the deal thousands of miles away.

Explaining how Stalin had “put an end to the dreams” of a Communist utopia, Seeger told Ron Radosh that he’d underestimated “how the majority of the human race has faith in violence”. But that isn’t true, is it? Very few of us are violent. Those who order the killings are few in number, and those who carry them out aren’t significantly numerous. But those willing to string along and those too fainthearted to object and those who just want to keep their heads down and wait for things to blow over are numbered in the millions. And so are those many miles away in the plump prosperous western democracies who don’t see why this or that dictator is their problem. One can perhaps understand the great shrug of indifference to distant monsters. It’s harder, though, to forgive the contemporary urge to celebrate it as a form of “idealism”.

James Lileks, the bard of Minnesota, once offered this trenchant analysis of Pete Seeger:

“‘If I Had A Hammer’? Well, what’s stopping you? Go to the hardware store; they’re about a buck-ninety, tops.”

Very true. For the cost of a restricted-view seat at a Peter, Paul and Mary revival, you could buy half-a-dozen top-of-the-line hammers and have a lot more fun, even if you used them on yourself. Yet in a sense Lileks is missing the point : yes, they’re dopey nursery-school jingles, but that’s why they’re so insidious. The numbing simplicity allows them to be passed off as uncontentious unexceptionable all-purpose anthems of goodwill. Which is why you hear “This Land Is Your Land” in American grade schools, but not “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic”. The invention of the faux-childlike faux-folk song was one of the greatest forces in the infantilization of American culture. Seeger’s hymn to the “senselessness” of all war, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”, combined passivity with condescension - “When will they ever learn?” - and established the default mode of contemporary artistic “dissent”. Mr Seeger’s ongoing veneration is indestructible. But at least we now know the answer to the question “When will he ever learn?”

At least half-a-century too late.

from National Review

From The Onion A.V. Club:
Primer: Bruce Springsteen
by Noel Murray

October 5th, 2007

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Bruce Springsteen, broken down by 20 songs that define his themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Springsteen's latest album, Magic, was released this week.


Bruce Springsteen 101:

The Jersey-bred Springsteen started gigging around his home state beginning in 1965, first as the 16-year-old wunderkind guitarist in a garage-band called The Castiles, and later, at the end of the decade, as a shaggy-haired guitar hero fronting the heavy blues-rock outfit Steel Mill. Throughout Springsteen's early adventures in clubbing—which included at least three more band names and countless different line-ups—Springsteen seemed torn between the different styles he was both capable and interested in pursuing. Part of him wanted to crank out hooky hit records, like The Rascals. Part of him wanted to grind through long jams, like The Allman Brothers. And part of him wanted to be Bob Dylan, telling rambling stories about colorful characters over rickety electric folk music. His Dylan side had won out by the time he landed a record deal with Columbia in 1972—the label even took out ads dubbing him "the new Dylan"—but his commercial and creative breakthroughs would come later in the decade, when he learned to eschew clever wordplay and just sing direct songs about relatable topics.

If any one song encapsulates Springsteen—his indelible melodies, his gripping storytelling, his grasp of emotional and cultural detail—it's "Atlantic City," a morose crime story debuted on the stark 1982 folk album Nebraska. Populated by the kind of colorful characters that haunted Springsteen's early albums, yet steeped in the working-class anxiety that started to take hold around 1978's Darkness On The Edge Of Town, "Atlantic City" begins with a general report on mob violence and ends with one hard-up mug taking a job that's bound to get him killed. Springsteen sells the song with his croaky, committed vocal and small lyrical gestures (like when the narrator, kindly to the last, tells his girl to "put on your stockings, 'cause the night's gettin' cold"). And then there's that chorus, so spooky and unduly hopeful: "Maybe everything that dies some day comes back."

"Atlantic City," for all its atmosphere of despair and danger, is a love song, and it's in the love song format that Springsteen has been easiest to like—even when he bends the concept a little. "Two Hearts," from 1980's The River, is an exultant paean to the concept of couplehood, and though it ends with an admission that the singer is alone—but looking, always looking—The E Street Band's relentless drive elevates a simple plea for togetherness into something epic and eternal.

"All That Heaven Will Allow," from 1987's Tunnel Of Love, is a much lighter song: ebulliently poppy but not cloying. It's another declaration that love is all our man needs, but this time, he's holding onto something he's already got, and describing how confident it makes him feel to have a steady. After writing that song, Springsteen went through a divorce and remarriage, then wrote "If I Should Fall Behind" for 1992's Lucky Town. The singer's recent history of loss and rejuvenation informs the song, which is filled with poetic imagery of beautiful rivers and oak boughs, and lovers who fall out of step. "But I'll wait for you," Springsteen half-whispers, "And if I should fall behind, wait for me."

In the above four songs, there's something serious at stake. But in "Cindy," an aspiring boyfriend makes a series of halfhearted attempts to court the object of his infatuation and keeps getting rebuffed, in almost comical fashion. "Cindy" was slated for the original single-disc version of 1980's The River—known then as The Ties That Bind—and it remains the only song from that record that didn't make it onto the final album or any of the official Springsteen leftovers collections. It's a slight song, but endearingly so, and it showcases Springsteen's gift for throwaway pop numbers—a direction he could've gone in had he chosen to be The Rascals instead of Dylan. And yet the song is no throwback. Listen to "Cindy"'s shimmering guitar bridge, which was recorded in 1979, yet anticipates the just-around-the-corner Britpop sound of bands like The Smiths and Aztec Camera.

Intermediate work:

After Springsteen signed with Columbia, he recorded Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, a lyric-stuffed quasi-boogie record with a lot of songs that showed promise—including one, "Blinded By The Light," that became a #1 hit in a prog-rock arrangement for Manfred Mann's Earth Band—but the overall sound was too derivative and amateurish, and nothing like the raucous rock-and-soul revues he and his newly dubbed "E Street Band" were starting to perform to packed clubs up and down the East Coast. Springsteen really announced himself as an original on album number two, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, released in late '73 (roughly nine months after Greetings). With songs like "Rosalita" and "Incident On 57th Street" pushing past the seven-minute mark, The E Street Shuffle allowed Springsteen to explore different moods—from slapstick to serious—within the same song, and also let him show off his crackerjack bandmates.

Throughout his career since, Springsteen has tried to recapture that sprawl, in songs that spread across landscapes and drag handfuls of lost people along in their wake. (It's this style that's proved inspirational to modern rock bands like The Hold Steady and The Arcade Fire.) Sometimes these songs run long, and sometimes Springsteen keeps them compact. During the sessions for The E Street Shuffle, Springsteen recorded (and eventually abandoned) a few vamp-y songs that had been road-tested and audience-approved, and a few garage-rock exercises that didn't fit the style he was exploring at the time. "Seaside Bar Song"—eventually released on the box set Tracks—is one of the latter, rocking a tinny organ, a Duane Eddy guitar riff, and a bleating sax, all as if The Beatles never happened. The song features a yearning break in the middle and a few other oddball touches in the arrangement that mark it as a product of the '70s, not the '50s, but the propulsive sound and vivid road imagery help connect the music Springsteen grew up on to the music he was about to make.

"Thunder Road"—and the entirety of 1975's Born To Run album—picks up where "Seaside Bar Song" left off, exploring the inner lives and anxieties of people who cruise the night in souped-up Chevys. "Thunder Road" builds from a tinkling piano and images of screen doors and wind-blown hair to a promise of escape, set to music that chugs, rumbles, and pulls away in triumph. It's the apotheosis of the "young Springsteen" style, and ground zero for his next stage.

Springsteen has said that writing Born To Run's songs on a piano finally let him realize the sweeping "golden oldies grow up" vision he'd had for his music from the beginning. But his early songs still come to life in the right context, even with a guitar carrying the bulk of the load. The Greetings From Asbury Park version of "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City" sounds as muffled and crazily loquacious as the rest of that album does, but the version on Live 1975-1985—recorded at the Roxy in 1978—gets all the cockiness and menace that had always been intended. The dueling Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt solos that close the performance sum up the time and place described in the song better than the lyrics' overheated metaphors.

Springsteen has always done "summing up" remarkably well, which speaks to his faith that the right song at the right time can transform people. Toward the end of the sets during The E Street Band reunion shows of 1999 and 2000, Springsteen played "Land Of Hope And Dreams" (available on Live In New York City), a pastiche of "People Get Ready" and "This Train Is Bound For Glory" that linked up Springsteen's mutual love of R&B and folk music, and presented his version of an America built to carry all passengers.

But the ultimate valedictory song in his repertoire is "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," from The E Street Shuffle. The overwrought, overstuffed descriptions of the previous album give way to a more relaxed tour of the boardwalk, as Springsteen points out the carnies and hustlers that make Asbury Park so colorful and so sad. The beauty of the song—arguably the most beautiful song Springsteen has ever written—is the way the travelogue evolves into an argument. The narrator is getting ready to leave, and trying to convince Sandy to go with him. Does she say yes? Check "Thunder Road" for the answer.

Advanced studies:

The promise of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle gave way to the commercial breakthrough of 1975's Born To Run, which tempered the youthful exuberance of Springsteen's earlier albums with tighter song-structures and a little bit of the creeping working-class melancholy that has been the dominant subject of his songs for the last 30 years. In an era of surface-deep corporate rock, Springsteen's direct, honest appeal inspired artists like Tom Petty and John Mellencamp to let go of the payola-and-coke-spoon star-track that both of them started out on, and try instead to make music about where they were from. Meanwhile, Springsteen's Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, Nebraska and the blockbuster 1984 hit Born In The U.S.A. all reached an expanding audience with simple songs—many with hummable choruses—that describe how it is to live under the specter of divorce, unemployment, war and, worst of all, mediocrity.

Not for nothing did Springsteen first want to name The River after its leadoff song, "The Ties That Bind." Along with community-defining anthems and tales of young love, Springsteen has written a large body of songs about family, responsibility, and the tangled legacies parents leave their children. One of the sweetest is "The Wish," a Tunnel Of Love leftover dedicated to a mother who buys her son a guitar and gets a song in return. The loving memories of mom's working clothes and the pleasure she took in dancing are among the most unabashedly happy in Springsteen's songbook. At this very moment, "The Wish" is just waiting for some country star to cover it and make it a new standard.

But again, "The Wish" is pretty much an aberration. For a more typical Springsteen take on what happens to families and people in love, start with "Darkness On The Edge Of Town," the title track of his 1978 album about broken promises and painful endurance. The song's narrator has lost everything, for reasons only hinted at: "I'll pay the cost for wanting things that can only be found in the darkness on the edge of town," he sings, indicating that no matter how warm home and hearth may be, there's something alluring lurking outside, drawing him away from what he knows is proper.

Perhaps that something is the stolen car of "Stolen Car," which the song's narrator drives because he's hoping to get caught. "Stolen Car" has been released in two versions, both essential in their way: the murmuring, minimalist take from The River, and the country-ballad version that preceded it on The Ties That Bind. In both, Springsteen sings about the gap between youthful passion and middle-aged respectability. The narrator explains that they threw a party when he got married, and he's certain that somewhere, they're still partying without him. So he ventures out into the darkness, waiting for his sins to catch up to him and shut him away once and for all from the good life he isn't living.

Then again, maybe all he needs is a good scare to wake him up. In "Wreck On The Highway," also on The River, the narrator drives at night—just like everybody else in a Springsteen song—until he passes an accident scene, and a dying man. And he starts thinking, mainly about a woman who'll never see her husband or boyfriend again. So now the narrator stays home nights, sitting up in his bed in the dark, staring at his own wife, and contemplating death.

Death also pervades "Gypsy Biker," the best song on Springsteen's latest album, Magic (a return to the E-Street-Band-fueled glory days of The River and Born In The U.S.A.). Over lashing guitars and pounding drums, Springsteen sings about a death in the family—possibly a military family—and what it means to the people left behind. In its performance alone, "Gypsy Biker" is one of the most intense songs The E Street Band has recorded since the Born In The U.S.A. era, but it's also chillingly elegiac, as Springsteen sings, "To the dead it don't matter much 'bout who's wrong or right." In the past, Springsteen has been able to use the lives and deaths of others to recontextualize the protagonists of his songs. Here, the meaning is that there is no meaning. Just finality.

The essentials:

1. The River (1980)

Springsteen first met rock critic Jon Landau in 1974, and eventually made the scribe his friend, producer, and manager. From the start, Landau urged the ambitious young rocker to simplify, and to try to write songs more like the garage rock that was already a major component of The E Street Band live experience. After the long struggle to craft the grim Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Springsteen leaned heavily on his friend and guitarist Steve Van Zandt to help him bash out songs that were looser and less studied, and the result was a two-year burst of creativity that culminated in a double album. The whole of Springsteen is here: the pop, the frat-rock, the country ballads, the working-man's sorrow, the horny teenager's joy, the giddy humor and the life-changing realizations.

2. Born To Run (1975)

Springsteen's first two albums sold poorly and were met with mixed reviews, to the extent that when his third album became a runaway success—with Springsteen making the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week—some people questioned whether show-business chicanery was afoot. Actually, what happened was that years of touring and Landau's brotherly advice helped Springsteen get as close as he'd ever get to the cinematic sound in his head, and in a rock market split between stoner pap and increasingly ethereal prog, Born To Run proved as revelatory as Jaws would be to moviegoers. It was the record people had been waiting for, and even now, it sounds thrilling and timeless, pumping with the blood of a thousand teenagers staring out of their windows at midnight.

3. Nebraska (1982)

Becoming alienated by the values taking hold in the Reagan era—both in the music industry and in the culture at large—Springsteen holed up in his house with a four-track and demoed a bunch of songs about murderers and poor folks. When he tried to turn them into a rock album, they didn't work, so Springsteen released the demos, letting his fans fill in the wide spaces in Nebraska's arrangements with their own ideas about what he was saying, where he was heading, and whether they wanted to follow.

4. The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973)

Springsteen's debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, was a minor misfire, conveying little of the high-spirited E Street rock carnival. And while the production on the follow-up The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle is just as muffled, the songs are among the most sprawling and inventive that Springsteen has ever recorded, jumping from the post-Cream blues boogie of "Kitty's Back" to the Salvation Army band pump of "Wild Billy's Circus Story" to the nothing-else-like-it adolescent mania of "Rosalita." It's a singular album in rock history and Springsteen history, and many of his longtime fans are still hoping he'll return to its style someday.

5. Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Springsteen made the transition from star to superstar with 1984's Born In The U.S.A., then began to beat a retreat, by getting married, dismissing The E Street Band, and recording a low-key, curiously glimmering album about settling down, yet remaining discontented. Tunnel Of Love contains two of Springsteen's best singles—the urgent title track and the sophisticated "Brilliant Disguise"—but the record expresses its theme best in its final song, "Valentine's Day," a semi-rewrite of "Wreck On The Highway" in which the narrator confesses that he clings to his wife more out of nightmarish terror than sweet reassurance. To date, it's the last "great" album that Springsteen has made, though his reunions with The E Street Band on The Rising and Magic have proved that he can continue writing and recording relevant songs for as long as he cares to. Springsteen still has plenty of styles he hasn't yet fully explored—some of which he pioneered.

Miscellany:

Two of Springsteen's most popular songs were actually hits for other people. The Pointer Sisters turned the playfully smirky "Fire" into a pop and R&B smash, while Patti Smith and 10,000 Maniacs both garnered radio play with "Because The Night," a simmering lust anthem that boils over dramatically. Springsteen has performed these songs in concert, but in some ways, they don't really fit into the rest of his oeuvre; both sound like excerpts from albums he never made. (Although "Because The Night" would probably sound just fine on the heady Magic, oddly enough.)

"Light Of Day," on the other hand, has become an essential staple of the Springsteen live show, where he uses it as a kind of altar call for the audience. It's hard to believe now that the song started out as a fairly lame Joan Jett-sung title track to a clumsy Paul Schrader movie:

While Springsteen has been covered extensively, he's also done his share of covering, most notably on last year's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, which found contemporary relevance and a surprising amount of rock energy in traditional folk songs. One of the set's highlights is Springsteen's version of the dustbowl ballad "My Oklahoma Home," which he sings as an elegy for the homes lost and people displaced after Hurricane Katrina, ending with a note of hope by pointing out that once your house is scattered to the four winds, your home is literally everywhere.

While touring behind The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen reinterpreted some of his old songs in a retro style that changed some of them for the better. The greatest beneficiary of the treatment was Nebraska's "Open All Night," formerly a slight roadhouse rocker, and now—as heard on this year's Live In Dublin—a jump-jive/Western-swing workout. The debt Springsteen owes to his forbears has never been plainer, nor so happily repaid.

Pretend to Be All That You Can Be
by Ann Coulter

Posted 10/03/2007 ET
Updated 10/05/2007 ET

Not content to wait for my book to come out, Senate Democrats are demanding a censure resolution against Rush Limbaugh. Ah, the memories ...

In my experience, having prominent Democrats censure you on the Senate floor is the equivalent of 50 book signings. Or being put on the cover of The New York Times magazine 20 years ago when people still read The New York Times magazine. They should rename Senate censure resolutions "Harry Reid's Book Club."

Liberals are hopping mad because Rush Limbaugh referred to phony soldiers as "phony soldiers." They claim he was accusing all Democrats in the military of being "phony."

True, all Democrats in the military are not phony soldiers, but all phony soldiers seem to be Democrats.

If we are to believe the self-descriptions of callers to talk radio and the typical soldier interviewed on MSNBC, the military is fairly bristling with Moveon.org types.

The reality is quite the opposite. While liberals have managed to worm themselves into every important institution in America, from the public schools to the CIA to charitable foundations, they are shamefully absent from the military.

As noted in that great book that came out this week, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans":

"According to a Military Times survey taken in September 2004, active-duty military personnel preferred President Bush to Kerry by about 73 percent to 18 percent. Sixty percent describe themselves as Republican and less than 10 percent call themselves Democrat (the same 10 percent that MSNBC has on its speed-dial). Even among the veterans, Republicans outnumber Democrats 46 percent to 22 percent."

So there aren't a lot of anti-war military types for the media to turn into this month's "It Girl." (If conservatives ran the media, there would be a constant stream of government employees admitting to sloth and incompetence, welfare recipients admitting to being welfare cheats and public schoolteachers who support school vouchers.) Sometimes liberals get desperate and have to concoct Tawana Brawley veterans.

In addition to famous fake soldiers promoted by the anti-war crowd, like Jesse MacBeth and "Winter Soldier" Al Hubbard, even liberals with actual military experience are constantly being caught in the middle of some liberal hoax.

Al Gore endlessly bragged to the media about his service in Vietnam. "I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later," he told Vanity Fair. And then we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months. Although to his credit, Gore did not put in for a Purple Heart for the carpal tunnel syndrome he got from all that typing.

Speaking of which, John Kerry claimed to be a valiant, Purple Heart-deserving Vietnam veteran, who spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia -- until he ran for president and more than 280 Swift Boat Veterans called him a liar. We've been waiting more than 20 months for Kerry to make good on his "Meet the Press" pledge to sign form 180, which would allow the military to release his records.

Then there was Bill Burkett, who gave CBS the phony National Guard documents; Scott Thomas Beauchamp, The New Republic's fantasist anti-war "Baghdad Diarist"; and Max Cleland, whose injuries were repeatedly and falsely described as a result of enemy fire.

Liberals will even turn a war hero like Pat Tillman into an anti-war cause celebre posthumously -- so he can't disagree. Tillman died in a friendly fire incident that occurred -- unlike Max Cleland's accident -- during actual combat with the enemy.

Because they are screaming, hysterical women, liberals treat friendly fire like a drunk driving accident. But friendly fire has been a part of war from time immemorial.

Liberals have an insane, litigious view of the military: There's been an accident in warfare, let's sue! It's as mad as the line from "Dr. Strangelove": "Gentlemen! No fighting in the War Room!" Golly jeepers, accidents can't happen in a war!

Contrary to the insinuations of his family, we don't know what Pat Tillman would say about the war he volunteered for, but we do know that he was a patriot until death. And we know what other patriots have said about friendly fire during a war.

In his book Faith of My Fathers, John McCain describes how demoralized American prisoners of war in Vietnam were when they didn't hear any bombing for years. Finally, after a long bombing halt, Nixon renewed aerial bombing of North Vietnam in December 1972.

Our bombers couldn't know with precision where the enemy was holding (and torturing) our troops. McCain and the rest of those POWs could easily have been hit and killed by an American bomb.

But the POWs weren't denouncing the U.S. military for risking their lives with "friendly fire." They weren't crying Mommy, investigate this! Get me a trial lawyer! If their camp had been hit by American bombs, it would have been as the POWs were shouting: "God bless President Nixon!"

That's from their own mouths; that's what's in their hearts. Friendly fire -- to a nation that hasn't lost its wits -- is part of waging war.

If Democrats don't want to hear about "phony soldiers," maybe they should stop trying to edify us with these bathos-laden hoaxes.

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."

From The Heights:
Springsteen works his 'Magic' again
By: Kaitlin Meehan

Posted: 10/4/07

The Boss has done it again. Bruce Springsteen has proved that his legendary brand of heartland American rock will never die. Magic, released on Tuesday, is a welcome collaboration of Springsteen and the E Street Band that fans, old and new, will appreciate.

Though we've heard a lot from Springsteen in the past few years, his work has consisted of experimental solo productions that diverged from the kind of sound that earned him an iconic status and cult-like following. After having gone their separate ways for 18 years, the release of The Rising in 2002 marked the official reunion of the band's members. Though The Rising received rave reviews for its empowering response to the Sept. 11 attacks, fans noted the band's tentativeness in balancing the new material with its familiar sound. After the release of The Rising, Springsteen recorded Devils & Dust, an album of previously written material performed without the E Street Band, and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a project featuring a variety of musicians that was well-received in Europe, if not as much in the United States.

Fans have been left to wonder whether the glory days of Springsteen and the E Street Band were a thing of the past. Luckily, Magic answers this lament with a loud and clear "no." In Magic, Springsteen gloriously returns to the accessible anthems of nostalgia and Americana themes for which he became famous. Springsteen and the E Street Band prove that they've shed the temporary hesitancy evident on Rising with an excellent mixture of steady drums, melodic piano, warbling harmonica, and wailing guitars that complement Springsteen's powerful voice. The result is a serving of satisfyingly familiar Springsteen.

Even though Magic is a return to classic Springsteen, it still manages to sound fresh. There is an infusion of pop elements that simply weren't there in previous albums. The first four songs are definite pop tracks, marked by upbeat melody and catchy hooks, but the band still maintains its rock credibility. As you advance through the 12 tracks on Magic, the sound becomes progressively more like classic Springsteen. The one exception is the very middle track, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes." This Beach Boys-channeling song seems out of place upon the first listen, but serves as a welcome reminder of Springsteen's songwriting talent.

After a few listens to Magic, another side of Springsteen's motive becomes apparent. In the past, he has been known to infuse his music with political activism - think of the stinging account of Vietnam veterans in "Born In the U.S.A" - singing "No Surrender" in conjunction with John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004. It is no coincidence that Springsteen has released Magic amid the hype of the 2008 presidential campaign season.

Indeed, Springsteen makes his dissatisfaction with the state of our country loud and clear. Just as the album develops from playful pop tunes into serious ballads, Springsteen reveals his resentment of the times as the record plays on. Though the album picks up where Springsteen and the E Street Band left off in 2002, the message is much different this time around. The Rising was an album full of empowering anthems of unity and reconstruction, while Magic concerns the changes that our country has undergone between then and now - the mounting death toll due to war, the unpopularity of the current government and the hopeless outlook of a nation that must come to terms with its disillusionment. Springsteen takes care not to explicitly references any one official or policy with which he is dissatisfied, but if you listen carefully enough, the sentiment is apparent.

He begins with the track "Radio Nowhere." The message is veiled by catchy guitar melody and repeating chorus that are sure to make its way onto mainstream radio.Between the lines, however, is a proclamation of isolation and disparity. Skip to track three. "Livin' In The Future" is a characteristically upbeat ballad, but the lyrics, unlike the melody, insinuate something darker: "My faith's been torn asunder / Tell me is that rollin' thunder / Or just the sinkin' sound / Of somethin'righteous goin' under."

The emotionally charged "Gypsy Rider," one of the strongest numbers on Magic, showcases Springsteen's talent for purposeful storytelling. In a subdued voice, Springsteen sings: "Speculators made their money / On the blood you shed" but "To the dead, well it don't matter much / 'Bout who's wrong or right."

Perhaps the theme of the album is best summarized by its title track: a haunting, slow ballad that initially reminds us of the subdued sound of the hit "I'm On Fire." The lyrics begin with a deceptively light description of a magician's tricks. Then, as Springsteen chillingly sings, "Trust none of what you hear / And even less of what you see. / This is what we'll be, / This is what we'll be," his intentions for the album sink in. Whether you choose to take to heart its pleading message of political awareness or to appreciate the album as a compilation of classic, American rock, Magic is an album that is well worth the time of any Springsteen fan. A-

© Copyright 2007 The Heights

From The National Post:
Father Raymond J. DeSouza: A humbled Boss

The last time Bruce Springsteen appeared in this column was three years ago, having just announced his decision to headline a series of anti-Bush concerts in the last months of the 2004 presidential election campaign. I wrote then that trading the musical vocation for the partisan political one was a step down. But in a popular music world dominated by manufactured ciphers with talent and insight thinner than a CD, it is hard to be upset with the Boss for long. His new album was released on Tuesday, and he is back with the E Street Band in all its saxophone-wailing, piano-keys-dancing, mandolin-plucking, guitar-blazing, harmonica-haunted fun.

The politics is still there, but set against a broader critique. Springsteen accuses the architects of the Iraq War of deceit and bad faith, but it is with the experience of an older man who sees that so much of life fails to live up to earlier ideals, many of which were illusory. The title track, Magic, applies the image of the dark illusionist to the current American political leadership: "I'll cut you in half/ While you're smiling from ear to ear/ And the freedom that you sought's/ Driftin' like the ghost amongst trees... On the road the sun is sinkin' low/ There's bodies hangin' in the trees."

Springsteen is now 58, and there is a melancholy note sounded here. Almost 25 years ago, he wrote My Hometown, the lament of a 35-year-old man who sees his hometown in decline and realizes that it might be time for him and his wife and son to move on. Now pushing 60, he has long since left and he thinks about going back in Long Walk Home. But that town is gone, familiar places shuttered up and strangers having replaced old friends. And the values of small town America are no longer found either, the knowledge that there are some things set in stone: "Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't." He knows where he came from, but that to get back there "it's gonna be a long walk home".

The young Springsteen wrote of the ordinary man beaten down by the system, but who, with a few friends, a serviceable car, a hospitable bar and the attention of a pretty girl, might escape it all, even for a short while. The darkness of the edge of town always returned in his music, but it was kept at bay by a certain exuberant optimism, not untouched by sheer foolishness.

Foolishness is not becoming in a mature man, and the Boss now warns the girls he used to chase that "you'll be fine long as your pretty face holds out/ Then it's gonna get pretty cold out/ An empty stream of stars shooting by/ You got your hopes on high/ You'll be coming down now... Like a thief on a Sunday morning/ It all falls apart with no warning."

What lessons has the older Springsteen learned? Most are rather bleak, in the vein of realizing that all is passing away, and we are often betrayed, often by ourselves. But the fallen-away Catholic has not fallen completely, and my favourite song on the new album is a rousing love song in which he promises Theresa that, "I'll work for your love, dear/ What others want for free/ I'll work for your love."

Ornamented by the imagery of his faith, Springsteen knows that the measure of love is sacrifice, and the wise man is the one who knows for what he should make his sacrifices: "Now our city of peace has crumbled/ Our book of faith's been tossed/ And I'm just out here searchin'/ For my own piece of the cross."

The thriving cities and factory towns of Springsteen's youth have passed away and the ideals of earlier time have now dissolved into "tears, they fill the rosary at your feet." The breezy optimism of the young man is gone. In its place is something like wisdom, a wisdom that seeks love, and knows that seeking love means finding the cross, and that a price must be paid for all that is worthy of enduring. The accompanying sadness is that too often a steep price is paid for that which is false, what is not worthy, what doesn't endure.

Three or four years ago, the Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles wrote a book about those who listened to Springsteen. He subtitled it, "A People Listening, A Poet Singing." The poet indeed is singing again. And for the people who listen, there is a something new here: a measure of wisdom, world-weary to be sure, but wisdom still.

Springsteen hits the road:

'And so it begins!'
By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY

HARTFORD, Conn. — After more than three decades of running hell-bent down a thunderous, thrilling and often demoralizing road, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band still believe a promised land awaits.

But is time running out? And is there enough good magic left in the tank to get there?

The group grappled with those questions as it kicked off its first full-scale tour in five years here on Tuesday night with a sturdy and sobering 23-song revival that showcased the Magic CD, released earlier that day. By the time the two-hour, fifteen-minute workout ended, it was clear these blue-collar prophets still can cast a potent spell, but they've been tempered by the journey.

The Boss and his eight mates (joined by violinist/vocalist Soozie Tyrell), all clad in black, got right to work on the new material, opening with the CD's first cut and single, Radio Nowhere, a hard-driving lament about the vapidity of American culture.

"And so it begins!" Springsteen cried before the band launched into the uplifting 1980 anthem The Ties That Bind and renewed its covenant with the sold-out crowd of 16,000-plus fist-pumping souls.

But he quickly steered back toward the bleak themes that would dominate the night: 9/11's aftermath (Lonesome Day), the Iraq war (the new and dynamically rendered Gypsy Biker), and distrust of authority (Magic, the chilling new title track he introduced via a reference to "the Orwellian nightmare … of the past six years"). Even the crowd-pleasing chestnuts —Night, She's the One, Darkness on the Edge of Town and the indestructible Born To Run— tended toward the desperate and defiant and away from the romantic. (So did the night's only dud, a wobbly duet between Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa on Town Called Heartbreak from her recent solo album Play It As It Lays.)

Gone, or at least tamed, were Springsteen's jovial interplay with saxman Clarence Clemons and guitarist Stevie Van Zandt and the manic street-preacher exhortations that sometimes spiced the between-song patter on previous tours. Instead, a mostly somber and sometimes grim Bruce — his image on the video screen during the new smoldering Devil's Arcade was lit with a sinister red glow — let his searing guitar and lyrics speak for him.

The E Streeters, powered by drummer Max Weinberg and the guitars of Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren and bassist Garry Tallent, handled the eight new songs from Magic superbly, giving them a harder edge than on the more pop-sounding CD. And at least three of them, Gypsy Biker, Last to Die and Long Walk Home, seem destined for a permanent place in the canon. The latter two were sandwiched between The Rising and Badlands in a powerhouse finale that retraced the themes of resiliency, betrayal, alienation and defiance.

To soften the ride home the group finally showed its sweeter (though still bittersweet) side during the encores with the charming new Girls in Their Summer Clothes, a gum-smacking revival of Thundercrack and the plaintive sing-along Waitin' On a Sunny Day.

From Jewels and Binoculars (Jimmy Guterman's blog):

On Magic and opening night of the E Street Band tour

By Jimmy Guterman

"Devil's Arcade," the last song on Bruce Springsteen's just-released Magic, is one of his greatest-ever ballads, no small achievement. Intimate yet grand, engrossing and shattering, its story pivoting on the edge between life and death, its guitar as insistent and terrifying as the 4 a.m. cry of your own child, Springsteen's singing possessing an almost Astral Weeks-like intensity, "Devil's Arcade" is a song very much of the current political and military moment, but also as timeless as war itself. With Springsteen playing once again with The E Street Band, it's as powerful a piece of music as I've heard in years.

That awful beauty also separates "Devil's Arcade" from the rest of Magic. There are some strong tracks on the album (the nasty "Magic" and the worldly but hopeful "Long Walk Home"), but more than half of Magic feels tired, smooth, self-conscious, settling for the generic when it should be burrowing toward the specific. As with Springsteen's two previous albums, Magic is backward-looking. But whereas 2005's Devils and Dust rescued a handful of worthwhile decade-old compositions from the vault and last year's covers set We Shall Overcome showcased Springsteen's excitement as he discovered a new context, Magic feels overtly nostalgic. Its lead single, "Radio Nowhere," is the chief culprit. It's an unmistakable attempt to recapture a particular sound (the sound The E Street Band invented in the studio from 1979 to 1984), and it feels like someone returning home to find things have changed and he can't do anything about it. The topic is hardly new -- good bands were writing songs complaining that there was nothing to listen to on the radio as far back as the mid-'70s -- but here Springsteen just sounds petulant. He sounds, most of all, like an aging former multiplatinum rocker unhappy that he can't hear himself on the radio anymore. Contrast that with the bittersweet "Bobby Jean" (from Born in the U.S.A.), in which Springsteen imagines himself closer to a far-away friend because his friend can hear him on the radio. Bruce wants to be on the radio again, damn it (forget for a moment that there's no such thing as rock'n'roll radio anymore), and he's going to make a record that he thinks will get him back there.

So Springsteen stuffed Magic with more musical and lyrical connections to older songs than he'd ever allow on a record. Hey, self-referential cliches work for Bon Jovi. Nearly all Clarence Clemons's solos (even the sharp one over the fade of "Long Walk Home") bear a close resemblance to earlier ones, and some songs are pastiches of previous triumphs: "Livin' in the Future" is "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" meets "Out of Work," which Springsteen wrote for Gary U.S. Bonds during a previous recession. And the record just sounds a bit off, second-hand, without the rawness of Springsteen's previous record with the E Streeters, 2002's The Rising. Emotionally raw, I mean, not musically raw. Producer Brendan O'Brien, it seems, never found a musical edge he didn't want to sand smooth and buff up.

Still, even subpar Springsteen records have their charms. (The guitar solo at the end of "Human Touch," the title track of his 1992 dud, comes to mind.) Even on "Radio Nowhere," dismissed in the previous paragraph, you have the pleasure of listening to the Weinberg/Tallent rhythm section, as inevitable as the tides and a lot less predictable. Hearing these players lock in after so long together is, even on a bum cut, borderline thrilling. As they proved at the end of the Rising tour when Springsteen added Human Touch selections to the set, they can make mediocre songs sound better than they really are.

But as precise and reliable as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band can be in the studio, they do their best work on a concert stage. Magic feels like a record meant to be played live. And that's what sent me, on a school night even, down to Hartford for the kickoff night of the band's tour.

If you see a band on a long tour, either go very early in the tour or very late. Very early, they're still figuring out the set and some welcome surprises can emerge from the miscues. Very late, they're adding more and more surprises to keep themselves engaged. (Needless to say, the middle third usually produces the most professional and the least interesting shows.) Tonight's show in Hartford, after three open rehearsals in New Jersey, was the first bona fide full arena show, and a good place to see where the band is five years after it started its last major tour. The anticipation before such a show is still quite real, even for skeptics.

The two-hour-and-fifteen-minute show was, as with so many other official Springsteen/E Street opening night, mixed. It wasn't the near-train wreck of the Tunnel of Love Express opener in Worcester (would someone please explain that park bench to me?), but it was still a show in which the band members, particular Springsteen, were still feeling their way through the set. Lesser songs from Magic were played tougher than O'Brien let them in the studio ("Gypsy Biker" is developing a hard-headed rock'n'roll ending, as Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt trade brief guitar breaks), although even a vigorous take couldn't make sense out of the bipolar "Livin' in the Future." The performance, to start the single encore, of the pure-pop "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," was light and sweet, especially since the arena echo made the first-draft lyrics easier to ignore. "Devil's Arcade" was an intense highlight, but (like "Paradise" from The Rising) it may be too intimate to work in a hockey arena.

Most of the new songs did not garner a big audience response, probably because they're so new. (Magic was released officially the same day as the show.) But it was an unusual experience seeing an audience as a whole sit down for most of the
new songs, even the rockers (except, of course, for the floor, which was standing room only). I suspect this will change as more people hear the record. It won't change for "A Town Called Heartbreak," a song from Patti Scialfa's new album, sung as a duet, which provided the night's lull and will serve as the Senator Montoya moment for the tour if it stays in the set. (I was only 11 the summer of the Senate Watergate hearings, but I do remember that I could go to the bathroom when Senator
Montoya asked questions and not miss anything important.)

Some of the older songs felt old. "Darlington County," a deeply silly song, was put across with minimal silliness, and "The Promised Land" felt tired (although, to its credit, it was way less bloated than it's been on previous tours.) But, as you'd
expect from a band touring behind a not-great new record, most of the show's great moments came on older songs. "The Ties That Bind" featured a new melodic bass line from Garry Tallent and some sly, Emmylou Harris-esque harmonies from Scialfa. Springsteen played with his vocal and guitar phrasing on "Lonesome Day," which was one of many songs lifted by new Weinberg flourishes. "Reason to Believe" was a highlight, featuring a boogieing arrangement somewhere between ZZ Top and Springsteen's ZZ Top tribute "Seeds," an ace slide solo from Nils Lofgren, and, on the last verse, the return of the Devils and Dust tour bullet mic.

The five-song encore was particularly sturdy. The quarter-century-old "Thundercrack," only recently picked up by this version of the E Street Band, is as weird, eccentric, and enjoyable as always. Fellow long-time E Street Band concertgoers (likely the only people who have read this far) may appreciate this random note: During the song, bassist Tallent walked all the way to the edge of stage right, past Danny Federici's organ and Clemons's equipment, which is the farthest I've seen him walk from his usual spot next to the drum riser in 30 years of Springsteen concert-going. Tallent didn't only travel physically. Since 1975, he and Weinberg have been the core of this band, but tonight (maybe thanks to a bass-heavy arena mix) Tallent's balance of melody and rhythm was particularly notable. His injection of a few new runs into "Born to Run," which followed "Thundercrack," was one of many reasons why that old song still hasn't any rust on it. "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" felt like a benediction to send us into the night, but there was one more song, an E Streetified version of the Seeger Sessions tour finale "American Land." With Weinberg nearly battering his rack tom into smithereens, Federici and Roy Bittan playing dual accordions, and Clemons nearly mastering his pennywhistle, the band members took turns cracking each other up. It was a friendly, spirited way to end the night.

Two more comments before I end the night, which will soon be morning and I have to walk a second grader to school on Picture Day.

Since reuniting the E Street Band in the late 1990s, many of Springsteen's most worthwhile new songs have been about death: "Land of Hope and Dreams," "American Skin (41 Shots)," "The Rising," "Nothing Man," "You're Missing," and now "Devil's Arcade." Many before me have noted that death should be the subject of any artist. With this band, Springsteen is well-armed to battle the most difficult and inevitable of subjects.

This brings me to one related observation, which is that tonight's show felt to me as if it was a show about age. The show is shorter and less acrobatic than previous shows, and although Springsteen appears quite fit he did look like a man his age. During "Waitin' on a Sunny Day," he no longer hangs upside down on his mic stand. The show was not a Rolling Stones-style denial of age. Many of the songs on Magic are about age and the frustrations and sometimes wisdom it brings. And the show itself, without saying so, was about the aging of a magnificent band and its magnificent audience. The E Street Band played to their peers tonight. Springsteen has reached the point in his career that he no longer picks up casual fans who heard a recent single, say "Hungry Heart" or "Glory Days," and figured they'd check out the show. The fans at these shows tend to be lifers, people who have known the words to "Thundercrack" for decades. At its best, Magic and this tour appear to be honest about getting older, both the good and the bad, and offer the audience a shotgun seat to come along and find out how it all ends up. Onward!

(Thanks to Bill for the ride and the great company. Great to see you, Tim. Missed you a lot, Owen.)

[Setlist:Radio Nowhere/The Ties That Bind/Lonesome Day/Gypsy Biker/Magic/Reason to Believe/Night/She's the One/Livin' in the Future/The Promised Land/Town Called Heartbreak/Darkness on the Edge of Town/Darlington County/Devil's Arcade/The Rising/Last to Die/Long Walk Home/Badlands//Girls in Their Summer Clothes/Thundercrack/Born to Run/Waitin' on a Sunny Day/American Land]

From Courant.com:
Springsteen Makes Old New, New Old
'Boss' Maintains Balance And Rhythm
By ERIC R. DANTON

October 3, 2007

New songs, new tour: Of course Bruce Springsteen was going to be good when he and the E Street Band opened their fall outing Tuesday night at the Hartford Civic Center.

The Boss went one better, though, and put on a show he'll be hard-pressed to top between now and December, when the tour ends. Sorry, Philly.

Playing for more than two hours, Springsteen struck a near-perfect balance between old songs and new, making the former as fresh and eager as he made the latter sound classic and vital.

"So it begins!" he bellowed after the first number, "Radio Nowhere." It's also the first tune on his new album, "Magic," which was released Tuesday. Springsteen's gritty guitar riff echoed around the arena, Clarence Clemons' saxophone tore through the song like a runaway rocket and the Boss pleaded, "I just want to hear some rhythm" in the refrain.

There was no shortage of that: The band played 23 songs, building momentum as the show went on: "Lonesome Day," the dark new song "Gypsy Biker," "Reason to Believe."

And then it happened, on "Night": The Rock 'n' Roll Moment. It's that spark when an instant frozen in time seems to suddenly unspool, when the whole band locks in, turns a corner together and just takes off.

Little Steven Van Zandt's over sharing the microphone with Springsteen, Clemons plants himself like an anchor and pumps his lungs into that sax, bassist Gary Tallent bops in the back and drummer Max Weinberg holds it all together with no-frills rhythm.

It's glorious and it's rare, yet it happened time after time as Springsteen and his band resurrected the secret hopes and guarded dreams of a generation that found release in his music.

It happened on "She's the One," the crowd roaring at the piano vamp that sends it off and thrills to the massive bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp Bo Diddley beat and Clemons' thunderous solo.

It happened on "The Rising," Springsteen's somber anthem paying tribute to the heroes of 9/11; and on "Badlands" and, of course, "Born to Run," songs about transcending limitations and conquering the world. For a night in Hartford, Springsteen, his band and his fans did exactly that.

It's a different world now from when Springsteen wrote those early songs, and he talked frankly at times about the differences. He decried "illegal wiretapping, rendition, black sites, an attack on the Constitution" before playing "Livin' in the Future," and introduced new song "Magic" as an allegory about an "Orwellian moment when what's true can be made to seem like a lie and what's a lie can be made to seem true, and we've witnessed the consequences over the past six years."

All is not lost, however, and Springsteen ended the show on a hopeful note with "American Land," an Irish reel stacked with fiddle, accordion and penny whistle. Springsteen played the tune frequently last year during a tour for his album of songs popularized by Pete Seeger, and it made for an uncharacteristic, if joyful way to finish his first night on tour.

Contact Eric R. Danton at edanton@courant.com.

Copyright © 2007, The Hartford Courant

From Rolling Stone:
Bruce Springsteen
Magic

Review by David Fricke

Bruce Springsteen’s first album of original songs with the E Street Band since he lost the vote for change in 2004 starts with guitars --a wall of angry, droning treble that, for the three minutes of “Radio Nowhere,” is blessedly louder than the oceanic static of bent truths, partisan reporting and general bullshit that passes for life-and-death debate in the new wired order. Springsteen isn’t just pissed about the state of rock & roll radio --that’s like kicking a corpse --although he is blunt about what’s missing. “A thousand guitars . . . pounding drums,” he demands against the racing squall of his band. But “Radio Nowhere” is actually about how we speak and listen to each other through the murk --”Is there anybody alive out there?”he growls, over and over --and how a firm beat, some Telecaster sting and the robust peal of Clarence Clemons’ saxophone can still tell you more about the human condition than a thousand op-ed words.

Magic is, in one way, the most openly nostalgic record Springsteen has ever made. The arrangements, the performances and Brendan O’Brien’s wall-of-surf production are mined with echoes and near-direct quotes of classic records, including Springsteen’s: the early-Sixties beach-radio bounce of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes‚” the overcast-Pet Sounds orchestration of “Your Own Worst Enemy‚”the “Jungleland” ring of Roy Bittan’s piano rainfall in “I’ll Work for Your Love.” “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” sounds like it strutted over from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. “Livin’ in the Future” is “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” with a new, thick coat of twang and a full tank of lust. After wrapping himself in a thousand fiddles on The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen has rediscovered the boardwalk-dance-party power of Born to Run and the Mitch Ryder and Jackie DeShannon encore covers in his 1975 and ‘78 shows.

But Springsteen’s songwriting here is also intricately wired with outrage and disbelief. The pain, courage and genuine love of country that he saw and felt after 9/11 and put to song with the E Street Band on The Rising have gone up in flames and betrayal. He makes no direct references to Iraq, Bush or the so-called Patriot Act. He doesn’t need them. The pared metaphors and straight talk carry the weight and body count. Like “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Gypsy Biker” is the sober homecoming of a war veteran with images of anxious preparation (“We pulled your cycle out of the garage/And polished up the chrome”) and wasted effort (“The speculators made their money on the blood you shed”). Except this time, the soldier is returning in a coffin, and the devastated singer is numb with grief, mourning over lines of cocaine. “Last to Die”takes off like “Thunder Road,”but into a darkness of unknown depth. “Who will be the last to die for a mistake?”Springsteen sings, gripping the wheel and marking the miles in fires and martyrs from both sides of the road. And the title song, a skeleton dance of acoustic guitar and cimbalom, is a catalog of tricks, not magic. At the end, Springsteen adds up the high price of White House snake oil in a voice strained with exhaustion: “There’s bodies hangin’ in the trees/This is what will be, this is what will be.”

If we let it. Even when he was gunning Chevys in his old turnpike songs, Springsteen never wrote merely about escape. “Growin’ Up,” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”and “Backstreets” were about choices, the work of freedom. The same goes for Magic and its vintage Stone Pony-a-go-go. Only the stakes are even higher. In “Long Walk Home,”a muscular update of “My Hometown,” a father tells his son, about to ship out, the true meaning of national service and sacrifice: “You know that flag/Flying over the courthouse/Means certain things are set in stone/Who we are, what we’ll do/And what we won’t.” We only know who dies last for a mistake when we all stand up and say, “Enough.”

From the Los Angeles Times
The unspeakable American culture
Journalism's elite don't dare speak
of the patriotism that holds this country together.
Jonah Goldberg

October 2, 2007

In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Katie Couric expressed somber disapproval of the jingoistic excesses after 9/11. Among the things that vexed her: "The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States." From what I can tell, nobody among the journalistic swells bothered to ask, "Who isn't 'we,' Kemo Sabe?"

I don't want to revisit those supposedly Orwellian flag pins, which sat so heavily on so many journalistic lapels. But it's worth recalling that during World War II, civilian correspondent Walter Cronkite -- whose anchor job Couric now holds -- gladly wore a uniform, not just a pin, and subjected himself to military censors. He also used, I'm sure, the word "we" when referring to the United States.

To be clear, I have no interest in "questioning" Couric's patriotism. Rather, I'm interested in questioning her definition of it.

I've come around to the view that the culture war can best be understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism. On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from "progress." America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea. It is also a nation with a culture as real as France's or Mexico's. That's where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness.

Yet the strangest and most ironic aspect of our national culture is that we have an aversion to talking about a national culture. Samuel Huntington, one of the country's premier social scientists, has become something of a pariah for constantly reminding people (in books such as "The Clash of Civilizations" and "Who Are We?") that the United States is a nation, not just a government and a bunch of interest groups.

Many liberals hear talk of national culture and shout, "Nativist!" first and ask questions later, if at all. They believe it is a sign of their patriotism that they hold fast to the idea that we are a "nation of immigrants" -- forgetting that we are also a nation of immigrants who became Americans.

As the host of the "Today" show in 2003, Couric said of the lost crew members of the space shuttle Columbia: "They were an airborne United Nations -- men, women, an African American, an Indian woman, an Israeli. . . ." As my National Review colleague Mark Steyn noted, they weren't an airborne U.N., they were an airborne America. The "Indian woman" came to America in the 1980s, and, in about a decade's time, she was an astronaut. "There's no other country on Earth where you can do that," Steyn rightly noted.

For cosmopolitans like Couric, however, the very best thing you could say about those heroic astronauts was that they weren't part of the national "we" but of the global "we," for the only "we" that counts is that of "we are the world." That also seems to be the view of the elite crowd that chews the foie gras at places like Davos or wherever the Clinton Global Initiative meets. For such globalists, it just seems obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court should consult polls of Africans or the laws of France to glean the real meaning of the American Constitution. And, of course, John Kerry was right to say that there's a "global test" for what America can do in the name of its national interest.

The hitch to this kind of thinking is that it rules out the possibility that the American "we" might have answers to problems that the global "we" doesn't.

In Europe and Canada, the cure for every malady seems to be multiculturalism. This is the odd notion that all cultures are equal -- except for that of your own nation, which should be made to constantly bend to the aggrieved sensibilities of minority cultures. In Vancouver, Canada, smoking has been banned pretty much everywhere, except in Muslim-run hookah parlors. British schools were advised to ban crosses and crucifixes but not Muslim symbols. Honor killings among Muslims have gone ignored by police in progressive European countries out of some twisted sense of respect for Muslim culture.

The dirty, embarrassing secret is that this sort of multiculturalism has made Europe a wellspring of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, but America's Muslim community has remained overwhelmingly peaceful. Why? Well, if the answer doesn't lay in President Bush's "outreach" -- and few think it does -- or in Euro-style multicultural condescension, maybe it has something to do with the American "we" that Couric and so many others seem so embarrassed by.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com