richard
|
|
response 576 of 673:
| 
Sep 1 02:59 UTC 2003 |
IHB I had a quality Saturday night last night. Spent it across the
river on the Jersey side, at Giants Stadium, watching Bruce Springsteen
and the E Street Band perform live. Bruce is of course New Jersey's
favorite son, he lives right near the Meadowlands, so this was
literally a home field show for him. Stadium shows are becoming a
rarity in this day and age. These days you have acts who have to co-
headline just to sell 12,000 seat arenas. Stadium shows are fast
becoming something reserved for multi-act festivals. This was the 9th
of 10 shows Bruce has done at Giants Stadium, a facility that seats
80,000, and all are sellouts. And not only was this not a co-headline
tour, or a festival, but Bruce was as usual his own opening act. A
three hour plus show, with no smoke or pyrotechnics, or video montages,
or performers disappearing for long periods of time for costume
changes. Just a good old fashioned rock and roll show, where the band
comes to play, and do nothing BUT play. Pretty refreshing!
Bruce played a lot of songs, both old and new, and showed the special
chemistry he has with the E Street Band. Rare it is to see a band
playing that knows each other so well. These days bands are too often
artificially created, put together by PR flacks and talent agents
sorting through head shots, with the songs written by professional
pop "songwriters" hired by the studios. When Bruce was
doing "Rosalita", with this big grin on his face, and jamming to
Clarence Clemmons' sax solo, you see the affection they have for each
other and can sense the fact that they were flashing back to days when
they were playing in nearby Jersey bars years ago and nobody had ever
heard of them. When you see Bruce and his band, you are seeing
something real, and authentic, and sadly, you don't see that much
anymore. The whole music business is corrupted now, and the artists
are corrupted, and most of what you get is packaged and processed, and
decidely IMO *not* real.
This was a great concert. I have never seen a bad Bruce show, he is a
hell of a live performer. He did great old hits like Glory Days (with
Bruce and Little Steven VanZandt doing an extended guitar jam), Dancing
in the Dark, Badlands, Rosalita, Candy's Room, and great new songs like
The Rising, Waiting on a Sunny Day, Mary's Place, and others. A
special thrill was when one of my favorite singers, Emmylou Harris,
came on stage and a beautiful duet of Bruce's song "Across the Border"
(which she also sings on her new album btw) Bruce also doesn't hide
his political feelings, such as making pretty pointed negative comments
about the Iraq war and our troops continued presence there. which he
made to lead into the terrific song, "Land of Hope and Dreams" Also,
as I've seen at virtually all Bruce's shows that I've been to, he had
reprentatives of his favorite causes, the local homeless organizations
and foodbanks, as well as Amnesty International, in and around the
building collecting money, and he made pitches for them.
A wonderful show, but when you left the building, you couldn't help but
feel a little sadness mixed with the adrenalin high. Because, as I
said, IMO rock and roll is losing its authenticity, the new performers
are packaged and processed, and the music is given to them as opposed
to being the product of authentic struggle and life experience. Bruce
and his bandmates are in their fifties now. When they stop performing,
and they will at some point probably not too far off, they won't be
replaced. Acts don't grow that naturally anymore. Its all artificial
now. So you think, ten or twenty years from now, will you or your kids
be able to go to a rock and roll show and have the experience be as
real as this was? Answer-- probably not. Bruce is a dinosaur now in
the industry, the consummate rock performer. A dying breed, nearing
extinction. So when you see him, or others like him, performing live,
you have to savor the moment-- as I did-- knowing those moments are
soon not to come again.
|
drew
|
|
response 596 of 673:
|
Sep 7 20:34 UTC 2003 |
Re #590:
Tesla was working on something of the sort...
In the apartment I was living in before I moved into a house, it would
have been possible to accommodate an electric car. The building was a
single-floor four unit type built on a corner in a neighborhood of mostly
single-family houses. A driveway ran from one street, behind the building,
to the other street, with four parallel parking spots marked one outside each
apartment's kitchen window. (And the other three tenants almost never used
that parking, preferring to park in the street so as to be right outside the
door.) It would be easy in that building to run an extension cord from a
vehicle into the kitchen window (might have to loosen a screen, maybe) to
whatever plug would be convenient, without the cord even being visible let
alone interfering with anything.
When I moved recently, I looked for such a place. But they seem not to
exist in the location I was after. About the only thing listed were apartments
in complexes of multi-story building with parking spaces some distance from
their respective apartments. I do have a docking port (and am satisifed with
its location after all), and they run power to it as at the middle of each
pair of spaces there is a lightbulb which comes on at night. I doubt one could
get away with tapping power, though. Maybe some day apartment carports will
feature electric car charging hookups...
Anyway I plan to start the next search a few months early.
|