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Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
May 2012

Levon Helm

- When I went to Chicago deejay Howard Miller’s rock & roll stage show (a road show, renamed per city) in May, 1959 (I was a baby) Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks shook us from the doldrums of the pop acts (Poni-tails, Anka) by rocking the house. The set’s highlight was a giant drum solo by Levon. Later, during Bobby Rydell's appearance, the Hawks drum set (with the red flaming hawk on the bass drum) was wheeled out and we the rock-starved cheered because we thought the Hawks had beaten up the other acts and were retaking the stage. But it was, in fact, brought out for Rydell to do a little drum thing. I'm sure he felt bad - he could hear our sigh of disappointment. But it was 1959, and the rock-conscious knew rock & roll was in its death throes.

- In 1973 when The Band was recording Moondog Matinee in the Capitol Studios, someone came to me to obtain a copy of an old record. I found it, but when Levon came to my office I played him ‘Blackland Farmer’ by Frankie Miller, my favorite country song. He said “Damn, that’s the song I’ve been trying to write all my life.” But The Band didn’t do it.

Dick Clark

He stepped into a role and grew with it. No rock & roll fan, he became the standard bearer for the new music. He did what other deejays did at the start - took gifts 1, made money by playing music he part-owned - but when the Payola spotlight hit he divested it and went straight. His biggest contribution was spotlighting black acts, talking to them with respect, the only host doing that til others followed suit. And later he booked bands with an almost whimsical flair - Captain Beefheart, 13th Floor Elevators, Public Image Ltd., the Blasters.

1 Sonny Bono recalled that when he got onto Bandstand with Cher, he privately 2 reminded Dick that when he, Sonny, was a promo man for Specialty Records he had to stand in line with other promo men to hand him gifts. He said Clark was not amused.

2 When I landed a job with Variety in 1973 I attended a screening of Bandstand clips at the 9000 Sunset bldg. Clark was a little drunk and among friends and had some very funny things to say. (The show-stopper was “Fabian, if you’re here, I know you’re a good actor now, but you couldn’t sing worth shit. You were on only because Marcucci managed you.”) In 1989 when I had lunch with him for a story about an oldies collaboration he was doing with Art Laboe, I asked polite, non-sensitive questions and he said to Laboe “Be careful what you say.” I explained that this was a positive piece, then asked if he was ever going to put out a video comp of lesser-known rockers, considering the growing interest in rockabilly. “We put one out with all the big stars and it sold only 20,000. How many would YOURS sell?” I wanted to tell him that wasn’t the point, but to him it was.

‘Round Town

April 3 - After enduring a stomach flu for 5 days (“everybody’s doing it”) checked into the ER at Cedars Sinai and got a head-to-toe checkup. Nothing wrong.

April 5 - Had lunch with Rupert Perry, of EMI, at the new Beachwood Cafe. Food fine, prices a bit pricey: breakfast eggs 12 bucks sans bread. They close at 3 pm, earlier than their long-there much-loved predecessor.

April 14 - To Viva Cantina for Jonny Whiteside’s always-great Messaround to see Emy Lee, who sang “Tearin’ My Hair Out” on the ‘LA Rockabilly’ album. Nobody from that scene had seen hide nor torn-hair of her since 1985. Now she’s choir director at Atascadero High School and getting back to performing. She is great! (The show was fab and Gear. She was fab and Axl, Spike, and Dave - The Gears - were there.) After Viva I scooted over to the Grand Ol’ Echo’s season debut and saw the always great Old Californio and the ditto Kim Grant.


Ronnie Mack, Art Fein, Emy at Viva Cantina.


Great ol’ Old California, at the Echo.


Walter Spencer on the back porch at the Echo.

April 16 - Drove non-driving Skip Heller to errands in the Valley and stopped at Republic of Pie, in CaNoHo, for him to pitch doing a gig there. They booked him immediately.

April 20 - At 11 pm drifted over to TAIX, the French restaurant that years ago - 1929 or so - gave up expecting anyone to pronounce it right and settled on “Tex.”(It has regional food, so regional pronunciation.) Stayed as long as I could for the Syd Straw show, but two weeks without caffeine (the doctor suggested low-acidity, so I stopped taking tea) made it hard to stay out late (her set 11:30) and I caught only part of it.


Always glamorous Syd Straw gives her come-hither glance. Art Fein fights to stay awake.

April 21 - Girlfriend Diane took me to the Betty LaVette show at UCLA. I was dazzled, coming into it without knowing Betty. Her vocal range is narrow, but she sings with heart. Her version of Beatles, Dolly Parton and Lucinda Williams songs were deconstructed, and she was well served by her young keyboard/guitar/bass/drums backup band. Her oft-expressed gratitude for her current fame “After ... Fifty ... Years ...” never grew tiring. Ran into Ruby Friedman and Chris Morris, as well as Len Chandler.

April 21 - After Betty we went to Viva Cantina to see Ray Campi’s 78th Birthday show. Ray is as spry as a lad, to the delight of revelers less than a third his age.


Fans go wild to a boogie that’s hot, boogie woogie makes you want to stop and do the bop.


Ray Campi holds court. Rip Masters, in red, performed righteously right before him. Long time Campi guitarist Kevin Fennell is on the right.

April 22 - We went to a Film Noir night at the Egyptian and saw Phantom Lady, Black Angel and The Window. They upped the price to $15 because they added ’Suddenly’ as the fourth pic, as if anyone was gonna stay that long. (Some did.) Encountered cinephiles Allan Arkush, Eric Caiden, Vince Waldron, and Tom Kenny, the latter two with their teenage children. (Girl/boy, I should have introduced them.) Diane noticed a phenomenon she saw at the Beatles screening there a year ago -- a long line for the men’s room, none for the women’s. Ladies, you want to find a man? Come to a film noir fest. Look shady, and don’t be too picky.

April 23 - Had some tea and life came roaring back. Went to Frank Sprague’s house in North Hollywood to help him pack for his move to Fort Collins, Colorado. His older brother has taken their mother there, where she can be better treated for cancer-related problems. Frank will soon be that town’s go-to guy for music, music, music.

April 26 - Decided against going to ‘What About Dick,’ the English comic superstar show. Stiff ticket prices were a factor, as well as the fact that when English performers play to an, inevitably, English audience, Americans will miss a lot. But the lineup was mammoth: Eric Idle, Russell Brand, Eddie Izzard, Tracey Ullman, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry and more. I’m sure it was filmed.

April 28 - The Tues morning breakfast bunch cruised out to Desert Hot Springs, near Palm Springs, to visit Hal Blaine, the gang’s founder. He held forth for nearly three hours at Manhattan In The Desert where we all feasted, on Hal. But a two-and-a-half hour ride home (120 miles, with stops) can take it out of you after a corned beef and pastrami omelet and a couple of blintzes. All hail Hal!


Arshag Chookoorian snaps a shot of Gold Star founder Dave Gold, oudist and longtime movie musician Guy Chookoorian (“Dad,” to Arshag), Hal, black-hat good-guy Kevin Grey, engineer and owner of Cohearant record-mastering plant in Carpenteria, and Frank Zarider.


Hal Blaine and Art Fein.

April 29 - Dropped in to the Candye Kane benefit show at Joe’s American Bar & Grill. (Her pancreatic cancer has returned. She underwent surgery at Cedars-Sinai May 2.) After that we shot over to the Grand Ole Echo and saw Loves It from Austin, spent an hour at Stories book store with John Tottenham, and returned to the GOE to see talkative Marvin Etzioni with a string quartet. Etzioni, Lone Justice cofounder and Elvis Costello lookalike, enchanted the crowd with a dedicated and precious performance. On the GOE back patio I ran into Syd Straw again with her friend Boo watching the talented Amy Blaschke accompanied by Whispering Pines’ Joe Bourdet.


We love Loves It.


Marvin Etzioni waits, string section tunes up, while Chris Morris looms over the proceeding. Emcee Morris went to grade school with Etzioni in Chicago.


Smilin’ Amy Blaschke, Joe Bourdet’s back.

LA - what a great place.

Music

A friend saw Bruce Springsteen in New Orleans recently, and said that Dr. John opened the show. If I’d known maybe I’d’ve gone there, for the symmetry. The first time I saw Springsteen he opened for Dr. John, at the Santa Monica Civic ... Jeopardy 3, mid-April, another Blue Oyster Cult question ... In Always Magic In The Air, Ken Emerson’s 2005 book about NY rock & roll songwriters, Doc Pomus described hearing Elvis 4 for the first time: He sounded like “somebody who came out of the swamp. I couldn’t believe it was a white guy. It was something wild, insane, like he was singing on the edge.” That’s the best account I ever heard of encountering Elvis at the beginning ... The Everlys came out of retirement in 1984 with “On the Wings of A Nightingale,” which I didn’t care for. But when it came up on the iPod the other day I thought “great song!” Too late smart ... “ABC Boogie” by Bill Haley is one of many songs to suggest that music is “taught to the tune of the licorice stick.” I thought for a while it was the conductor’s ‘hickory stick’ now decided it’s a clarinet. All irrelevant in rock ... Everyone had a reel-to-reel tape deck in the pre-cassette 70s, then they disappeared. I had one, but cannot remember what I did with it. I never throw machines out. Were they recalled? ... Freddy Cannon was interviewed on local Channel 11 news the morning after Dick Clark’s death. Praising Clark he sought to emphasize that he, Cannon, was a rocker, not a teen idol. Maybe that’s why he’s not in the R&R Hall of Fame. They need the room for Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. (Hmm, mightn’t rock-writers be the next to be canonized? I’ll bet they could get the votes) ... Todd Everett spotted this hed in a 3-29 LAT story about climbing trees to harvest cocoanuts - “Shinny, shinny coconut.” For Little Anthony fans ... The ticket agency says “Lindsay Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac.” Wow, that should be great. Oh, the connecting word is “of.” “Rare solo acoustic performance” it says. Wait - what’s rare about singing and playing alone? When an act shorts you they call it a bonus. “Bruce Springsteen without his band - same price!” ... Is there any reason to review a Beach Boys concert today? It’s no different from the 90s lineup, only with Brian standing silent and sullen like a puzzled mannequin. And as for the profundity of the Coachella concerts, who is thinking about ideology there besides scribblers? People who go to concerts don’t read, and if they did they’d be puzzled about what the people with the “Press” hats were seeing. Music is fun, except for writers ... Comedy segments pop up every so often in my car, the only place I listen to my iPod. Sound effect clips seemed like a good idea til loud train sounds followed by screeching brakes and a crash flashed left-to right through my car’s interior in too-living stereo ... Here’s one you missed, I’ll bet. In “Roll Away The Stone” by Mott the Hoople there’s this spoken passage: “There’s a rockabilly party on Saturday night, You gonna be there? I got my invite.” Rockabilly? Mott The Who? I too had a 45 of “Rockabilly Party” by Hugo & Luigi and that was its opening. The clueless speakers name no hillbilly boppers, most pointedly “Tab and Tommy” and “Pearly May Bailey” ... Heard on ‘30 Rock’ - “Being terrible has never been a drawback in the music biz. Just look at Biz Markey, or the Doors” ....

3 How time flies. The “1930s Movies” clue - ‘This popular comedy duo of the silent and sound era was in Sons Of The Desert” - was met, by three contestants between 29 and 40, with the same sound as in the older movies ...

4 Pomus and Mort Schuman wrote ‘Mess of Blues,’ ‘Suspicion,’ ‘Little Sister,’ ‘His Latest Flame.’

TV

For the final do-or-die question on Cash Cab is the name of the Japanese Mafia. A ‘street shoutout’ guy tells them and they cheer and thank him. They won $1000. If I’m ever stopped for a question I’ll ask how much money is at stake. In this case I’d say “You split $300 each and I get a hundred” ... On a Burns & Allen, Gracie is hypnotized into being the smartest woman in the world. George is frightened that their act is over. It lasts for two episodes. ‘50s surrealism ... Try as you might, you can’t find a Betamax recorder. (I need one for some inherited tapes.) I think they don’t carry them at the Goodwill so no one will bring it back because it won’t play their VHS tapes ... JLTV is a Jewish network hidden in the thicket of ‘untouchable’ stations in the high hundreds on my cable. It features reruns of The Goldbergs (you’re surprised?), David Susskind, Soupy Sales in color (a toreador joke ended “and the bull tore Hernando’s hide away”), and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show from 1958 -- the episode I caught featured Ernie Kovacs & Edie Adams and Louis Prima & Keely Smith. (The Jewish element is Dinah) ... A misfired 1964 Hitchcock episode, “Beast In View,” features a clumsy crazed psychedelic (black and white) freakout at the end. Model Peggy Moffitt appears in a dramatic role looking like she just walked in from the Genreich shoot...

Words

Many years ago weather was deemed “unseasonable” and it stuck. Rather than unseasonal. (“Unseasonable” means you can’t flavor it) ... In “The Song Of The Thin Man” he uses the word ‘trickster’ so I guess writers were infected with German-suffixation even then. Writesters, I mean ... In February when a Hollywood agent born in March 1912 died the LATimes called him 99 -- not using “one month short of” (his 100th bday) legitimately for once ... Denny Jackson in IMDB writes “In 1923. she then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe store for the princely sum of $18 per week.” That’s $241 today. Why do people cite meaningless figures? Where are the thought police? ...

Good hed - LATimes!

“Francs not worth beans”

Defunct French currency is officially worthless.

It was 20 years ago some day

How did you feel on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock? The 65th Anniversary of Bugsy Siegel’s murder in Beverly Hills (the Channel 4 scoop)? Some guy on FB announces ‘anniversaries’ (“Today Duke Ellington would be 113 years old”) daily. Shut those annuals!

The LATimes is fixed on anniversaries. On Feb 14th we learned 5 of the 50th anniversary of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” 6 which, we also learn, some people hate.

Now comes the 20th anniversary of the second LA riots of the second half of the 20th century. The LATimes’s debut reminiscence is from the food guy, Jonathan Gold. Misty-eyed and frou-frou, he cheers, reflectively, the survival of one ”redoubt of caldo de pollo,” then laments the ruined ‘hood eateries where one could no longer get “bangus, empek-empek, or brains masala.” After the smoke cleared, West side friends declined his invites to get “nacatamales or goat birria” in Pico-Union - the cowards. Thanks LATimes -- the riot’s effects were less important than we believed. 7

5 The lyrics were printed three times in the course of the article. Space that could have been used for L.A. news.

6 In 1984 The City declared the rollicking 1936 film song “San Francisco” the town’s official song, with a supervisor blaming the Bennett tune’s popularity on “the hippie-love movement.” So true. You could never go to the Fillmore without hearing Quicksilver or the Dead do it.

7 He also tells of returning to the neighborhood he left 20 years before and “shaking hands with neighbors.” This guy knew his neighbors? In L.A.? I live on a dead end, and know, slightly, five of the six residents around me. My previous apartment contained 20 units and over the course of 16 years I knew five of them. Maybe it’s me.

Beats me

Why do people walk for cancer? Why don’t they sweep the street or erase graffiti? “Look at me walk.” Who cares ... I’ve never had a bottom dollar, that I know of ... People always say “hardwood floors,” like it’s remarkable. Does anyone sell soft wood floors? When my friend had hardwood floors installed in her house, I stared bewilderedly as thin strips of wood were laid down. I thought that 2 X 4s would be laid side-by-side to make a 4-inch deep wood floor.

Journalism

The 4-14 LATimes printed a letter criticizing a 4-10 editorial - and then allowed the newspaper writer, Dan Turner, to write a response. The newspaper guy writes a lengthy opinion seen, potentially, by millions, and then when a citizen squeaks in with a contrary POV the newspaper bully is given the last word - at thrice the letter-writer’s length. Undignified minor-league behavior. Disgraceful actually ... The NYTimes allowed Neil Genzlinger, 3-16, to write a ‘cute’ story about the free goods he gets from publicists and others bent on influencing him. We are supposed to be amused that some of the ‘swag’ is useless rather than appalled that he accepts it.

Not so deep LATimes

1-19-12 Jessica Guynn and Tiffany Hsu, or a press release, combined to pry this quote from Apple’s Chief Operating Officer: “In my view, Apple is doing its best work ever.” Not satisfied, they grilled him til he squealed “We feel very, very confident about the future of the company” ... April 28. Jessica “Born Yesterday” Gelt discovered chefs who have - that’s right - tattoos. That’s so outlier it’s impactless ... Next day Tiffany Hsu finds that ‘upscale’ (gag me) restaurants are turning to “budding foodies” (arrgghh) instead of “grey-templed” in-the-way people. These young people are - brace yourself - on Social Networks. Front page ... The 4-24 Gerrick D. Kennedy piece about the old-record store owner unable to sell his 300,000 records - the second story about him - would have benefitted from perspective. The internet has several stories like this about retiring collectors stuck with their wares. The underlying fact often is that the best records have already been sold and what’s left is the dross.

Fact-free zone

In one of the TWO 4-21 LATimes features about a Disney firing, Dawn C and Rebecca Keegan employ --

“It has also called into question”
“suggests”
“Industry observers said”
“people in the industry with knowledge”
“Agents, managers and filmmakers”
“people with knowledge of the situation”

Who could make that up?

NYTimes, Sunday Styles, 4-8-12

The front page Brooks Barnes story about movie moguls’ wives who “pursue careers that let them make names for themselves” is right out of the LATimes’s “He/she made it without the aid of rich, connected parents” template. I thought we had a lock on asskissing piffle. The jump-hed “Don’t call her a trophy wife” asks the impossible. Also in that section we learned that Ralph Lauren’s niece’s beadwork being embraced by tony Manhattan boites is unconnected to her lineage. I guess it’s all relative.

I’m not very political but

Opening day, Dodgers Stadium, the Star Spangled Banner (not God Bless America for once - who mandated that song? Both are a bitch to sing, evident in the parade of croakers ruining it every game) is playing and the Dodgers are lined up, standing at attention - with Matt Kemp chomping gum, I mean churning, with his hands clasped behind his back, superhero style, hand not across his heart. The cameraman, unaware of Kemp’s doltish disrespect, remains fixed on him, the team hero. A 3rd-grade teacher would have slapped the gum out of Joe Cool’s mouth and make him stand in the corner ... A Supreme Court justice, Kennedy, says a full-search of anyone arrested is good because maybe the cops will find something else? This from a conservative defender of individual liberty? ... In April, a woman in Texas snatched a baby and killed its mother. I saw the story on CNN, where they said a search was on for “a blonde woman” in a green Lexus. I thought, gee, how many blonde women in Texas? Millions. The state was settled by Germans (Luchenbach, New Berlin, etc.). Only later did I hear it was a BLACK woman. I’m politically correct, but mightn’t it have sped up the capture process if they eliminated 99% of potential suspects with that info? ... I guess I’m the only person who thinks that using vegetable oil - it can supply nourishment to a living being, yes? - as engine fuel is titanic moral bankruptcy.

Cars

So promising. Robin Finn, NYTimes 4-15-12, in a piece about family members’ struggle for the Archie Comics fortune, writes “Like Betty and Veronica, the two are feuding over Archie’s future.” Bravo! But she opens describing the firm’s entryway’s display of “the back end of a vintage white Cadillac, circa 1948, with its killer shark-fin fenders.” How can you believe anything else she writes? ... Seeing all the ‘58 Plymouth Furys destroyed in the movie of Stephen King’s “Christine” is targeted torture. King is my age. He knew what he was doing. The pain we who came of car awareness during the late 1950s felt seeing those beauties crushed was acute.



If you’re selling your Maserati, best to park it on a street with Camrys and Cobalts and make sure the sign is achored with a plastic laundry basket from the 99 Cent store.

Phoenix Airport - afterthoughts

If you think that crime is down at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, don’t. When my wallet was stolen March 15, a police officer handed me a slip of paper with the internet address of the police dept. “Fill out a crime report online.” I did not, and I imagine a lot of other crime victims don’t.

Waiting for my same-day return trip (I paid $340 for a round-trip to Burbank - losing my wallet wasn’t Southwest’s fault) I sat next to Dave Kroat (possibly Kraut), a guy 5 years my senior. He grew up 50 miles outside of Chicago, and lives outside of Dallas. I mentioned rock & roll and he said “Oh, I only liked Elvis and Gene Vincent and those guys.” You don’t hear that firsthand very often. When they called his flight he said “Nice talking to you” and got in line. A few minutes later he left his space in line and came back and handed me $20. I had lost my wallet, I did need money for a little food or the taxi home. His generosity was a great capper to a crummy day.

Position statement

At the Grand Ole Echo during a show I went up to a gal musician I know and said “You know, people like me are lucky, we have no talent, so don’t risk the disappointment you do. We never create something beautiful like this, so we’re never disappointed if it doesn’t succeed.” The gal said “Hey, wait, you’re talented too, in your own way.”

I had erred. It might have sounded like a cry for help.
She didn’t get my intention, so I wrote to her:

“It struck me that my comment didn't land right. We who don't make music but need it are on one side of the counter basking in it, awash in it.

Making it is another thing. You need a gift for that.
Few of my peers have that gift.
We are simply receivers, and grateful for it.
Receiving is a constant joy.

But we/I have heard many records that are brilliant and have flopped. When I hear an incredible record like that I think "Boy, it must have killed him/her to make something that good and nobody noticed."

That is not, as it may have sounded, egolessness on my part.
NOBODY says ‘Boy, that Art Fein, I sure wish he had a higher opinion of himself.’ I get along great on my side of the fence, but with great envy for youse on the other.”

A swell finale

(IMDB) “Laurence Harvey died on November 25, 1973, from stomach cancer. He publicly revealed that he was dismayed by being afflicted with the fatal disease, as he had always been careful with the way he ate. “

The Wikipedia bio reaches far and wide to insult him, saying Americans liked him but, he was “widely dismissed by critics.” One author said, “He was an appalling person, and, even more unforgivably, an appalling actor.”

Write your own obit - now.

The darnedest things

The not-expensive silverware I got for wedding #1 in 1984 has a solid black wood handle that made it good for scooping ice cream, prying open jar-lids; strong. Knew the maker, tried for many years to get additional pieces (there are single-fork web sites) always describing “black wood handle,” always failing. Told this to daughter Jessie and she said “They’re all metal, dad. The handles are painted.”

More car talk

My friend just bought a 91 Toyota Tercel. It was the company’s cheapest model, not a glamor ride. Over time it has acquired a motto: "YOU may not have ridden in to Toyota Tercel, but your pizza has."

- 57 -

While his band Sonic Youth is on hiatus, Lee Ranaldo has launched his own band and solo album “Between The Times And Tides,” and brought his new set of tunes to San Francisco’s Brick and Mortar club in mid-April.  With Sonic Youth he’s contributed to their psychedelic, avant-garde, often noisy sound, but in his new band he unleashes his devotion to melodic pop.  Songs like “Waiting On a Dream,” “Angles,” “Fire Island” and “Tomorrow Never Comes” are focused and often Beatle-like.  Although on his album he employs heavy hitters like Nels Cline and John Medeski to help out, they aren’t on tour with him, but Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley is, and really anchors the group well.  Ranaldo did perform one Sonic Youth song “Genetic,” plus two covers that showed just how wide his taste is: Talking Heads’ “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” and The Monkees’ “You Just May Be The One.”
 
In Las Vegas I caught Pat Dinizio’s “Confessions of a Rock Star” show at the Riviera, where it runs several days a week at 11pm after the nudie revue “Crazy Girls.” With Pat on guitar, Kenny Howes on 12-string Hofner bass and Nate Stelfa drumming, the band is tight, playing classic tunes from Pat’s band The Smithereens (“Blood and Roses,” “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” “Only a Memory”) and a lot more.  The show is a multimedia trip down memory lane for Pat as he talks about his New Jersey childhood, his none-too-likable parents, his job as a garbage collector before he achieved fleeting MTV stardom, and his appreciation of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison etc.
 
Although the crowd consisted of only eight people the night I was there, Pat didn’t stint during a nearly two-hour show, amusingly interacting with everyone in the audience and telling great tales, like the time he met Buddy Holly’s widow Maria Elena after he wrote a song for her (which led to him performing it for Paul McCartney as well).  He threw out the prepared set list early on, told jokes and tall tales the band clearly hadn’t heard before, and talked quite a bit about how his mother drives him crazy, which is why he moved from New Jersey to Las Vegas when the offer for a year-long contract came along.  He played “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Beat On the Brat,” “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and “I’m A Believer” as illustrations.  Lots of fun.
 
 The first night of Bruce Springsteen’s two-night stand at the Los Angeles Sports Arena exceeded my expectations.  During his last tour I saw, I didn’t think the new material (from the then-current “Working On A Dream” album) held up, and missed the old songs greatly.  Now he’s reconfigured the E-Street Band after the death of saxophonist Clarence Clemons last year, adding a full horn section (including Clarence’s nephew Jake on sax), percussionists and backround singers, and it’s a smart move, especially given the increasingly soul/gospel turn in his music and on his new album “Wrecking Ball.”  He did almost every song from the album, along with back-catalog items like “Badlands,” “Promised Land,” “She’s the One” and a spectacular “Ghost of Tom Joad” with Tom Morello guesting with an incendiary guitar solo and co-lead vocal. 
 
His energy continues to amaze (the guy’s 62 now), and his forays into the audience were exuberant fun (lifting a little girl up on stage to sing “Waitin’ On a Sunny Day,” dancing with his younger sister Pamela during “Dancing In the Dark”).  But my favorite selections were the medley of The Temptations’ “The Way You Do The Things You Do” and Wilson Pickett’s “634-5789” and the blazing encore of The Rivieras’ “California Sun,” with garage-band enthusiast Steven Van Zandt laughing it up alongside.  Bruce even inserted a little nod to “Wipe Out” halfway through.  He ended with “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” looking up at jumbotron pictures of Clarence, and rocking the joint with the house lights full up.  Brooooooosssss!!!!!
          
-- Mark Leviton
 
(Mark’s sixties-themed radio show Pet Sounds can be heard alternate Wednesdays 10pm-Midnight PST on KVMR-FM 89.5 in the Sacramento area and streaming at www.kvmr.org )