There was a Glen Campbell song, called ‘Me and My Guitar.’ But me
and my guitar? Yeah, well, we don’t always get along. That’s what
happens when you get down to learning something. It can get horrible,
moving beyond the basics, the safe, the comfortable.
It’s
the same with anything. Learn to work with wood, and you get to a
stage where you try to get it to do something it can’t quite manage, at
least not the way you’re trying to do it. Learn to drive a race-car,
and you get to a stage where you think you’re competent, accomplished.
You can want to stay there, safe, looking cool, and assured, but you
have to move on, and then it can look ugly, and you can look like a rank
beginner, all over again. Whatever you try, you’ll reach that point
where you feel comfortable, and you’ll want to stay there, where people
can see you are competent. Complacency is appealing, seductive.
Things
can get ugly between my guitar and I. There are times when we sail
along smoothly, a unit, meshing together, doing things we’re comfortable
with. Then it can turn into a chaotic wrestling match, an ugly street
brawl, messy. This is the way it has to be, if we are to explore new
ground. The guitar complains, and the wrestling starts. I try to
gently convince it that we need to stretch, move, grow. The guitar
kicks up, what was going smoothly, starts to slow down. The harmonious
song starts to squeak, grind and chatter—the guitar sounds decidedly
unhappy. I feel sorry, ashamed, it’s the pain we have to go
through—buzz, thunk, plunk, or silence where there should be sound.
I
bought my first guitar when I was 17. Let’s face it, when you’re in
your teens and you want an electric guitar, you’ve likely only got one
thing in mind—you’re going to be a rock star!
It took
some time to summon up the courage to walk into the music store and lay
down the money to buy the guitar. I watched the balance in my bank book
grow, and one lunch time I walked down to the store, bought the guitar,
and had the guy hold it for me, for when I got off work.
I had no idea what I was in for.
I
sat on my bed, a book on guitar playing open on the bed, and eagerness
just oozing out of me. I placed a finger ever so deliberately on a
string, and played a note, and then nothing… at least until I found the
next note to play. It was a struggle.
A few weeks
later I bought a book that was about rhythm guitar. I got all set up to
play my first chord, an ‘E’ major and strummed, ‘plunk!’ I pressed
harder, got a few clear sounds, and some buzzes and then dull pain.
After ten or twenty minutes, I was no closer to sounding like anyone,
and I was very frustrated. Day after day the same thing happened, and
then I moved back to the book about lead guitar. Look at the finger on
my left hand—make sure it’s on the correct string, pluck the string with
the plectrum, look at the plectrum and make sure I pluck the correct
string this time.
The guitar was electric, and thankfully I had nothing to plug it into, so no one else had to suffer the mess I was making.
Music playing and I already had a bone of contention between us—it was called the recorder.
The
recorder is a plastic whistle that we were introduced to in year four.
I can remember standing up the back of the classroom, behind everyone
else, pretending to play, because I couldn’t get the blowing and the
fingering synchronised. I had the advantage of being half a head
shorter than everyone else—the teacher couldn’t see me, as she played
her piano, so she never knew. Oh I managed to play “Mary had a Little
Lamb” perfectly, but anything faster was impossible.
The
recorder was boring, annoying, and clumsy—your thumb covers a hole at
the back, and uncovers it halfway to make sharps and flats. It is
messy.
The guitar doesn’t suffer from that messiness,
no little tricks to make flats or sharps. It is flexible, changing
tuning changes the configuration, it’s like being able to move the keys
on a piano. Your voice is free to sing, because it’s not a wind
instrument. To silence the strings for musical rests, you use your
hand, not your feet like the piano, it’s less complicated. And it’s
portable, you can put it in the seat of a car, or carry it on the back
of a motorbike. When you get it wrong, and learning how to play any
musical instrument means getting it wrong, it's not as annoying as a
violin, or as loud as a trumpet.
I spent months making
awful noises, with tunes that were only recognisable to me. I had no
doubt I could learn the guitar, which is something, because I was so far
away from what could be considered even showing promise.
When
I was growing up, I took a stab at learning how to play Aussie rules
footy. To be quite honest, I was never going to be a great player, but
my Dad, always full of encouragement, would say, many times, “Don’t
worry if you don’t get it, you’ll be out the back, practising, and it’ll
just come to you, in an instant.” No one would catch me out the back
practising footy, but years later, that’s exactly what happened when it
came to playing the guitar. The power of mental rehearsal. The phrase
“sleep on it” does mean something. I spent months trying to get the
basics right, and hardly improving. It is something we don’t need
anyone to remind us of. I would try to get a chord correct, clear… and
fail, and fail again, for minutes, then I would get to the stage that I
was frustrated, almost wanting to throw the guitar away. Then one day,
it was a little easier.
That was just the start. So I
could strum an ‘A’, or an ‘E’, which was fine as long as there was a
song that consisted of one chord. Or The Who’s “My Generation”, which
is close enough. I had to get the hang of changing chords. It was
labourious, and it took months. I had to fight complacency and plain
laziness all the way. ‘Plunk’… pain… move fingers a little… perfect…
change chords… ‘plunk’, again. I played guitar with friends, every now
and then, with them all telling me I had to get around to changing
chords.
It seems as if I woke up one day, grabbed the
guitar, and suddenly I wasn’t sounding too bad. I had held off getting
any lessons, under the pretentious reasoning that I wanted to develop my
own style, first. So exactly what style was I going for, 6 year old
plunking style? Time lead me to getting lessons, eventually, at a store
in West Perth, across the road from a Scout shop. They allowed me to
concentrate on getting my technique correct. Very early on, my teacher
took a look at the guitar I had bought, and advised me to buy a new
one. It was embarrassing to find a guitar only five dollars more than
the first one I bought, streets ahead in quality. Nice, light solid
body, and a rosewood fingerboard, with an action (the distance between
the strings and the fretboard, the smaller the better) that was good. I
still own that guitar.
Then, for a little while, I was
in a band. We were happy with what we were doing, some original songs,
and some covers, but it threw up things I didn’t expect. The bass
player was better than me, but then he had a better attitude, at the
time, towards learning new things. My ego found that hard to take, that
and I really started to dislike the way he dressed like Robert Smith,
of The Cure. I was never interested in trying to sound like someone
else. As a band even the covers we did didn’t sound like the
originals. We did Yazoo’s “Only You,” a pop-synth hit of the 80s, but
our line up consisted of a female singer, a bass player, a drummer, and
two guitarists. See what I mean, we were not going to sound like anyone
else. We did one public performance, before I ran into my own personal
mess.
I was dealing with all the baggage I had from
the death of a friend, Steve, my feelings for his girlfriend, Leonie,
and being almost unemployable. Music might have been a nice escape, and
ideas of stardom were a handy distraction. But it wasn’t worth going
crazy over. It was a mess, and while I knew exactly what I was doing
with music, I had no idea what I was doing with the rest of my life. I
left the band, and went through a sort of personal rebuilding.
That was some 20 years ago...
A
few weeks ago, I picked up my acoustic guitar, again, and went right
back to basics. Now I can read and play the notes from Middle 'c', 'g'
through to 'g', all down the end of the fingerboard. I messed around
with "Black Magic Woman" to where it isn't boring, and I've been
tackling some of Springsteen's easier songs from Nebraska, including the
title track.
I still can’t give you a sense of what
music does to me. A few days ago I listened to Bruce Springsteen’s
second album, “The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle” and it
just felt nice, I hadn’t heard it for a while. When I hear the opening
of Sherbet’s “Silv’ry Moon” it’s always like the second time I heard it,
like the relief of a long sigh.
Practising the guitar
is not a chore, consequently, while it is difficult, it isn’t an effort
to pick up the guitar and try to get it right. I have a picture in my
head, sitting with the guitar writing songs, and playing around with
chords and notes. The real difficulty I have is getting the music in my
head out onto paper, which is why, now, I’ve been working on reading
and understanding music. But the term “Rock Star”, well it’s fine for
teenagers, but that ship sailed. I enjoy the guitar, now, even if it
does complain a little, every now and then, we have to grow together… it
just has to be that way…
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
The History of Music, from the Very Beginning to Now. The 11th of February, 2014, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Floating in space, hurtling around an insignificant
ball of gas we call a star, a tiny little planet spins soundlessly in
the vacuum of space. Third one out, with a little satellite of it's
own, the blue green planet tracks through space, circling the star again
and again. Life started on this planet millions of years ago, and the
creatures and plants hum through the business of living and dying, over
and over again.
There emerged, on this planet, a species of ape that, after millions of years of changing, growing, and moving grew a brain. From this brain there came communication, really good communication, the transfer of ideas. Maybe then came the recognition of patterns--patterns of time, as season followed season, as day followed night followed day followed night, patterns of light, of colour, and patterns of sound. Then the ape became something called human. And this human had hands, and fingers, and it made patterns, patterns of colour, patterns of light, and this ape had ears, and it could hear patterns of sound, and with it's hands, one day, it discovered it could make patterns of sound as well. Humans could sing, and the singing was good. Humans could clap, and bang and stomp, and that was good, and when some sang, and others clapped, some danced, and that was good. With their hands humans could make marks, and shapes, and put sound and language into sight, into pictures and symbols. Humans found they could make these patterns of sound into sight, into patterns of marks, and then there was music--and the music was good. Music travelled, and music changed and music grew, and everywhere the human went, music followed, and that was magic.
Humans built, and the humans made objects, and some of those objects made music, and one day a human made an object that made music, and that object was called the guitar, and the guitar was good. Years past and the human was clever, and a human learnt to capture sound, and recording was born, and recording was wonderful, and the record was born, and the record was amazing. Humans were really clever, and humans captured movement, and they put captured movement with captured sound, and that was good. Humans made radio, and humans made television, and that was mostly good. The humans made electricity, and humans learnt how to make sound with electricity, and then the electric guitar was born, and it was very good.
On Thursday, the 9th of May, in 1974, a human who bore the name of John Landau, went to a rock show where a very particular human was singing, and performing with an electric guitar. Very soon after, that human brain, full of promise, and all the full weight of the legacy of the human past, put symbols together--all that history of scratching, and all those discoveries stretched across the centuries, and all those nights and days of the making of sounds, of the moulding and shaping of hand, and eye, and ear, and brain met and melted and burst, and Landau declared:
"Last Thursday , at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock 'n' roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."
The time passed, the years turned, and music came and went, and people danced, and people sang, and people bought records. People watched television, and people watched music, and people watched music on television. People listened to music.
In 1984 on an ordinary day, an ordinary human walked into an ordinary store selling very ordinary take-away food. In that ordinary store, up on a shelf sat an ordinary single speaker radio, and at that very moment, that radio played a very particular recorded song, it was called "Dancing in the Dark" and that moment was very good.
In 1985 that human got his hands on an album, and that album was called "Born in the U.S.A." and that moment was good.And the years went by, and the human bought many albums, and they were all good.
On the 11th of February, 2014--just last night, that human went to a concert to see Bruce Springsteen, and that was amazingly awesomely unbelievable.
The day saw the temperature rise above 40C for the twelfth time that summer, an all time record. The air was still hot, and, sitting on the scooter, I lifted my visor at every red light to get a little relief from the stifling heat inside the helmet. I made my way to Port Road, excitement racing through me. For some reason, the only song I could think of, while I was riding along the road, was Dire Straits' "Telegraph Road." In my head I saw the yellow concert ticket peeking out the top of my wallet that sat in the top box, behind me. I throttled the scooter around the corner, looking for a place to park, trying to avoid the steep parking fees they charged at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. I was thankful for my motorbike license, as I saw a row of cars, angle parked. Next to the first car was a white triangular space, out of bounds for a car, but perfect for parking the scooter. With the bike parked, my jacket packed with my helmet, I made my way down the street, towards the Centre. People in small groups hummed and buzzed along, no doubt we all shared a common destination. I glimpsed people in Springsteen T-shirts, and there was no doubt about where they were going.
The mouth of the Entertainment Centre opened wide to swallow the steady stream of people presenting tickets. A bright LED hoarding above the long line of glass doors flashed upcoming shows. Once inside I made my way to the merchandise counter, and bought a shirt and the USB wristband that, in a few days I would be able to fill up with a complete recording of tonight's performance.
People moved about, but, while it was busy, the crowd was easy to move through, and I made my way to the entry gate, and then up to my seat.Slowly, achingly slowly, the seats filled up. Tonight was a sell-out, a full house. Months ago, we waited in front of the computer as sections were released, slowly, waiting until this seat came up for purchase. People filed in, and soon there were people all around me. The sea of red empty seats became a multicoloured quilt of faces. Down on the stage the road crew moved around, checking microphones, thrashing every now and then on a guitar, or crashing and thumping on the drumkit. Behind the stage, over the railing, a sign appeared that paid tribute to Clarence "The Big Man" Clemmons, and Danny "The Phantom" Federici, the two members of The E Street Band that were no longer with us.
We had been asked, ages before, to make up signs requesting our favourite song. I couldn't make up a sign, I couldn't pick just one favourite, though I suppose "Play All Of Them, Bruce" might have sufficed. When you're a fan of Springsteen, any time you hear a song of his, anywhere, it just reaches you.
The lights went down, and the crowd went wild, and then we heard the man himself, "Why is it so fucking hot here?" There he was, on stage, guitar in his hands. He once said the first time he looked in the mirror and liked what he saw was when he was holding a guitar. Next to him, off to his left, stood "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, dressed for all the world like it was a mild spring day, jacket, scarf around his neck, and a bandana covering his head. A little further left was Gary W. Tallent, with his bass. To Bruce's right stood Nils Lofgren, and Tom Morello. Behind him was "The Professor" Roy Bittan behind a white grand piano; and in the centre of the stage, immovable, solid and thumping sat Max Weinberg, beating and artfully striking his modest drum-kit. I took in all of this in a split second, and I didn't have to explain a thing to the people around me, they all knew what I knew, and there we were.
This was it, I felt goose bumps run down my body, because this was the first ever true rock concert I had ever been to. A few years ago I had the amazing experience at the Clipsal 500 RocKwiz concert, where I saw "Born to Run" performed live, for the first time in my life, and that was amazing--but tonight, this was the real thing, the more real thing, the complete immersion and embrace of what music is, what rock and roll is.
I can't give you the sound, I can't give you the amazing breath taking moment in "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" when pictures of the late great Big Man himself were flashed onto the screens, or the roar of respectful approval that greeted Jake Clemmons every time he took on the task of recreating his uncle's great work on the saxophone. There was the moment when "Born to Run" surged out into the cavern of the Centre, and we sent it back to him, from the opening chords to the final "whoah oh whoah".
There was a rule, once, that at a concert, all the light had to be thrown onto the stage. There was a rule, once, that the artist was the act... the performers and the audience were divided, cleft in two. There was an order, the tight demarcation betwixt us and them. Fences were put up, walls stood strong and oppressive and the crowd was kept out there. With the spotlights in their faces, the artists could only see black. But that is not this night. There is no wall, as Bruce and Steve and Tom walked down the runway, as Bruce crowd surfed back to the stage, and we were one, we were all, we were undeniably a part of the show. We needed nothing more than a nominal nod of the head from Steve to rise up off our butts, and dance, and sing, and live... all of us bright, all of us alive. People held up their signs, asking that Bruce and the band take a little step this way in their song catalogue, or that way. This was immersion, this was interaction. There was no set list, at a moment's notice, the band would launch into a song, any song they wanted, any song we wanted.
After two and half hours or so, they wound down, but winding down for the E Street Band means jumping on the gas, song after song being jammed together without a stop, and we were standing, we had been standing, and we weren't about to sit down.
Last century, Tom Morello and the band, Rage Against the Machine completely deconstructed "The Ghost of Tom Joad," and reassembled it as a spitting, growling indictment of big economics. They put fire and anger behind Bruce's lyrics. Here, tonight, we felt the licking fire, as Bruce and Tom took us to another place, where we can rail and rant against the greed and deliberate myopia of a bitterly hard world run into the ground by big business, where we will see the character from "The Grapes of Wrath" keeping true to his promise. And the song never lived like it does tonight.
Then the lights came up, the band took a bow, Jake Clemmons getting every drop of respect and understanding and love he deserved, and they sauntered off... for a moment. And now we knew we had to pay... if we wanted them back we had to EARN IT, so we yelled, we clapped, we howled, we made noise, we stomped, and then, in the darkness, the man returned with a question:
"Adelaide! Have you had enough?"
And as one voice we replied, "No!!"
"Have you had enough?"
"No!!"
Satisfied we had earned it, the man gave a nod and the band returned. And they rocked all over again. "Steve!! I see a request... I see a request!!!" Bruce yelled, while the band played, and all it took was a point at a sign, a nod of the head and the band launched into "Ramrod" without missing a beat.
Then the band bid us all a goodnight, but Bruce stayed, with his guitar, and his harmonica, and he said goodnight in the best way he could.
"Adelaide," he said quietly, "The E Street Band loves you."
The very last song fluttered and breezed around the auditorium, fully lit, to absolute crystal sharp silence--an acoustic "Thunder Road".
All through the concert, hanging behind the stage from the seats behind the stage, hung a simple, hand painted sign in blue letters on white, and it simply said "Thanks Bruce". No one could put it better.
And then the Entertainment Centre, having well and truly lived up to its name, emptied, with a buzz, and with thousands of smiling, beaming people.
As the planet turned and hurtled through space, the only planet in the Universe to have seen a Springsteen show, we headed out into the heat, because, although the day had gone, the heat had not.
Adelaide woke up the next morning, still hot, and readying itself for concert number two, but that is someone else's story.
There emerged, on this planet, a species of ape that, after millions of years of changing, growing, and moving grew a brain. From this brain there came communication, really good communication, the transfer of ideas. Maybe then came the recognition of patterns--patterns of time, as season followed season, as day followed night followed day followed night, patterns of light, of colour, and patterns of sound. Then the ape became something called human. And this human had hands, and fingers, and it made patterns, patterns of colour, patterns of light, and this ape had ears, and it could hear patterns of sound, and with it's hands, one day, it discovered it could make patterns of sound as well. Humans could sing, and the singing was good. Humans could clap, and bang and stomp, and that was good, and when some sang, and others clapped, some danced, and that was good. With their hands humans could make marks, and shapes, and put sound and language into sight, into pictures and symbols. Humans found they could make these patterns of sound into sight, into patterns of marks, and then there was music--and the music was good. Music travelled, and music changed and music grew, and everywhere the human went, music followed, and that was magic.
Humans built, and the humans made objects, and some of those objects made music, and one day a human made an object that made music, and that object was called the guitar, and the guitar was good. Years past and the human was clever, and a human learnt to capture sound, and recording was born, and recording was wonderful, and the record was born, and the record was amazing. Humans were really clever, and humans captured movement, and they put captured movement with captured sound, and that was good. Humans made radio, and humans made television, and that was mostly good. The humans made electricity, and humans learnt how to make sound with electricity, and then the electric guitar was born, and it was very good.
On Thursday, the 9th of May, in 1974, a human who bore the name of John Landau, went to a rock show where a very particular human was singing, and performing with an electric guitar. Very soon after, that human brain, full of promise, and all the full weight of the legacy of the human past, put symbols together--all that history of scratching, and all those discoveries stretched across the centuries, and all those nights and days of the making of sounds, of the moulding and shaping of hand, and eye, and ear, and brain met and melted and burst, and Landau declared:
"Last Thursday , at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock 'n' roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."
The time passed, the years turned, and music came and went, and people danced, and people sang, and people bought records. People watched television, and people watched music, and people watched music on television. People listened to music.
In 1984 on an ordinary day, an ordinary human walked into an ordinary store selling very ordinary take-away food. In that ordinary store, up on a shelf sat an ordinary single speaker radio, and at that very moment, that radio played a very particular recorded song, it was called "Dancing in the Dark" and that moment was very good.
In 1985 that human got his hands on an album, and that album was called "Born in the U.S.A." and that moment was good.And the years went by, and the human bought many albums, and they were all good.
On the 11th of February, 2014--just last night, that human went to a concert to see Bruce Springsteen, and that was amazingly awesomely unbelievable.
The day saw the temperature rise above 40C for the twelfth time that summer, an all time record. The air was still hot, and, sitting on the scooter, I lifted my visor at every red light to get a little relief from the stifling heat inside the helmet. I made my way to Port Road, excitement racing through me. For some reason, the only song I could think of, while I was riding along the road, was Dire Straits' "Telegraph Road." In my head I saw the yellow concert ticket peeking out the top of my wallet that sat in the top box, behind me. I throttled the scooter around the corner, looking for a place to park, trying to avoid the steep parking fees they charged at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. I was thankful for my motorbike license, as I saw a row of cars, angle parked. Next to the first car was a white triangular space, out of bounds for a car, but perfect for parking the scooter. With the bike parked, my jacket packed with my helmet, I made my way down the street, towards the Centre. People in small groups hummed and buzzed along, no doubt we all shared a common destination. I glimpsed people in Springsteen T-shirts, and there was no doubt about where they were going.
The mouth of the Entertainment Centre opened wide to swallow the steady stream of people presenting tickets. A bright LED hoarding above the long line of glass doors flashed upcoming shows. Once inside I made my way to the merchandise counter, and bought a shirt and the USB wristband that, in a few days I would be able to fill up with a complete recording of tonight's performance.
People moved about, but, while it was busy, the crowd was easy to move through, and I made my way to the entry gate, and then up to my seat.Slowly, achingly slowly, the seats filled up. Tonight was a sell-out, a full house. Months ago, we waited in front of the computer as sections were released, slowly, waiting until this seat came up for purchase. People filed in, and soon there were people all around me. The sea of red empty seats became a multicoloured quilt of faces. Down on the stage the road crew moved around, checking microphones, thrashing every now and then on a guitar, or crashing and thumping on the drumkit. Behind the stage, over the railing, a sign appeared that paid tribute to Clarence "The Big Man" Clemmons, and Danny "The Phantom" Federici, the two members of The E Street Band that were no longer with us.
We had been asked, ages before, to make up signs requesting our favourite song. I couldn't make up a sign, I couldn't pick just one favourite, though I suppose "Play All Of Them, Bruce" might have sufficed. When you're a fan of Springsteen, any time you hear a song of his, anywhere, it just reaches you.
The lights went down, and the crowd went wild, and then we heard the man himself, "Why is it so fucking hot here?" There he was, on stage, guitar in his hands. He once said the first time he looked in the mirror and liked what he saw was when he was holding a guitar. Next to him, off to his left, stood "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, dressed for all the world like it was a mild spring day, jacket, scarf around his neck, and a bandana covering his head. A little further left was Gary W. Tallent, with his bass. To Bruce's right stood Nils Lofgren, and Tom Morello. Behind him was "The Professor" Roy Bittan behind a white grand piano; and in the centre of the stage, immovable, solid and thumping sat Max Weinberg, beating and artfully striking his modest drum-kit. I took in all of this in a split second, and I didn't have to explain a thing to the people around me, they all knew what I knew, and there we were.
This was it, I felt goose bumps run down my body, because this was the first ever true rock concert I had ever been to. A few years ago I had the amazing experience at the Clipsal 500 RocKwiz concert, where I saw "Born to Run" performed live, for the first time in my life, and that was amazing--but tonight, this was the real thing, the more real thing, the complete immersion and embrace of what music is, what rock and roll is.
I can't give you the sound, I can't give you the amazing breath taking moment in "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" when pictures of the late great Big Man himself were flashed onto the screens, or the roar of respectful approval that greeted Jake Clemmons every time he took on the task of recreating his uncle's great work on the saxophone. There was the moment when "Born to Run" surged out into the cavern of the Centre, and we sent it back to him, from the opening chords to the final "whoah oh whoah".
There was a rule, once, that at a concert, all the light had to be thrown onto the stage. There was a rule, once, that the artist was the act... the performers and the audience were divided, cleft in two. There was an order, the tight demarcation betwixt us and them. Fences were put up, walls stood strong and oppressive and the crowd was kept out there. With the spotlights in their faces, the artists could only see black. But that is not this night. There is no wall, as Bruce and Steve and Tom walked down the runway, as Bruce crowd surfed back to the stage, and we were one, we were all, we were undeniably a part of the show. We needed nothing more than a nominal nod of the head from Steve to rise up off our butts, and dance, and sing, and live... all of us bright, all of us alive. People held up their signs, asking that Bruce and the band take a little step this way in their song catalogue, or that way. This was immersion, this was interaction. There was no set list, at a moment's notice, the band would launch into a song, any song they wanted, any song we wanted.
After two and half hours or so, they wound down, but winding down for the E Street Band means jumping on the gas, song after song being jammed together without a stop, and we were standing, we had been standing, and we weren't about to sit down.
Last century, Tom Morello and the band, Rage Against the Machine completely deconstructed "The Ghost of Tom Joad," and reassembled it as a spitting, growling indictment of big economics. They put fire and anger behind Bruce's lyrics. Here, tonight, we felt the licking fire, as Bruce and Tom took us to another place, where we can rail and rant against the greed and deliberate myopia of a bitterly hard world run into the ground by big business, where we will see the character from "The Grapes of Wrath" keeping true to his promise. And the song never lived like it does tonight.
Then the lights came up, the band took a bow, Jake Clemmons getting every drop of respect and understanding and love he deserved, and they sauntered off... for a moment. And now we knew we had to pay... if we wanted them back we had to EARN IT, so we yelled, we clapped, we howled, we made noise, we stomped, and then, in the darkness, the man returned with a question:
"Adelaide! Have you had enough?"
And as one voice we replied, "No!!"
"Have you had enough?"
"No!!"
Satisfied we had earned it, the man gave a nod and the band returned. And they rocked all over again. "Steve!! I see a request... I see a request!!!" Bruce yelled, while the band played, and all it took was a point at a sign, a nod of the head and the band launched into "Ramrod" without missing a beat.
Then the band bid us all a goodnight, but Bruce stayed, with his guitar, and his harmonica, and he said goodnight in the best way he could.
"Adelaide," he said quietly, "The E Street Band loves you."
The very last song fluttered and breezed around the auditorium, fully lit, to absolute crystal sharp silence--an acoustic "Thunder Road".
All through the concert, hanging behind the stage from the seats behind the stage, hung a simple, hand painted sign in blue letters on white, and it simply said "Thanks Bruce". No one could put it better.
And then the Entertainment Centre, having well and truly lived up to its name, emptied, with a buzz, and with thousands of smiling, beaming people.
As the planet turned and hurtled through space, the only planet in the Universe to have seen a Springsteen show, we headed out into the heat, because, although the day had gone, the heat had not.
Adelaide woke up the next morning, still hot, and readying itself for concert number two, but that is someone else's story.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Always new places
I enjoy exploring sl, there is always something new. I find new places in all sorts of ways:
Follow a linden path, or simply cross into neighbouring sims.
Look at the links and picks in the profile of someone around me, and go there.
Pick a word of interest to put into the search function, and see what comes up.
Have a look at the big map and see if there is anything that looks interesting in the group of sims around, then zap there.
With the last method, I started finding something interesting, I started finding a lot of 'empty' sims. Curious, I started going to have a look, and found that they belonged to the Lindens, and they were rarely empty. All around costal areas you can spot them, empty water places, but once you arrive you see plants, sea animals, and water craft that ended up on the bottom of the sea. If you are really lucky, you will find a special building or a few treasure chests. It pays to check anthing interesting you come across, as there can be a few things that you can take a copy of, including some of the plant and animal life that is all around you.
Follow a linden path, or simply cross into neighbouring sims.
Look at the links and picks in the profile of someone around me, and go there.
Pick a word of interest to put into the search function, and see what comes up.
Have a look at the big map and see if there is anything that looks interesting in the group of sims around, then zap there.
With the last method, I started finding something interesting, I started finding a lot of 'empty' sims. Curious, I started going to have a look, and found that they belonged to the Lindens, and they were rarely empty. All around costal areas you can spot them, empty water places, but once you arrive you see plants, sea animals, and water craft that ended up on the bottom of the sea. If you are really lucky, you will find a special building or a few treasure chests. It pays to check anthing interesting you come across, as there can be a few things that you can take a copy of, including some of the plant and animal life that is all around you.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
I'm here....now what?
Why you entered the world found a few people jumping about trying to fly, found screens to look at and boards of items to grab. You can certainly spend a bit of time here getting to know the way things work, and filling up your inventory, but I personally found it much more exciting diving in boots and all.
Three things I found out very quickly -
1) You find freebies all over the place (but quite a few are rubbish)
2) You see and hear about money trees to get funds, but most of these require you to have payment information on file (and really not worth the bother anyway)
3) Most people in the world a friendly, and if they know you are new they are even more so. Within an hour of arriving in the world two people had given me links to different places filled as far as the eye can see with free clothes, skins, hair, etc. I was also given some lindens (money) by a lovely shop owner when she found me trying unsuccessfully to get something out of her money tree.
More to come,
watch this space ;)
Three things I found out very quickly -
1) You find freebies all over the place (but quite a few are rubbish)
2) You see and hear about money trees to get funds, but most of these require you to have payment information on file (and really not worth the bother anyway)
3) Most people in the world a friendly, and if they know you are new they are even more so. Within an hour of arriving in the world two people had given me links to different places filled as far as the eye can see with free clothes, skins, hair, etc. I was also given some lindens (money) by a lovely shop owner when she found me trying unsuccessfully to get something out of her money tree.
More to come,
watch this space ;)
Comprehensive details to sign up for Second Life
Go to - http://secondlife.com
Membership is free, however you will be asked for some details.
Click on the “Join Now” button, whichwill bring up the registration page.
Once you have filled out your registration details you can create your character.
You can make up any first name you want, except obviously ones that can offend others. Your lastname is chosen from a list of available surnames and you can select the “Change” button to see more, however there is still a limited choice of what will come up. You CANNOT CHANGE your name once it is created, so take your time and chose carefully.
Create a password etc, and choose your initial appearance. Don’t worry about the limited choice, you can change everything about the look of your avatar once in the world.
Set up your security question in case you forget your password then click create account.
Return to the Secondlife homepage (http://secondlife.com) where there is a “Download Secondlife” link at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the download page. Click “DownLoad Now” and follow the directions. It is like installing any software. Once the Secondlife viewer is installed you can log onto Secondlife.
You will appear in the “Welcome” area. There are lots of helpful things here, including instructions on how to fly and move around.
For now the most important thing is the “Search” button. Search will help you contact and find your host for this event, as well as find the location it is held in. Clicking on “Search” along the bottom of the screen will bring up the search window, you can search for:
* “huntress catteneo”, host of this event, and IM or “Instant Message” her so that if she is online she will get your message straight away, other wise the message will be saved, and she will get it the next time she logs in.
* “Rannveig”, this is the region where the Virtual fruit event will occur. In the list that comes up, the very first item should be “Rannveig”. Left click on “Rannveig” and this will take you to another page that has a “Teleport” button. Left click that button, and you will arrive pretty near the virtual fruit area.
Alternatively you can just put http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rannveig/137/149/43 into your web browser, while you still have Second Life open. This will take you to a “Location Based Linking in Secondlife” page. Click on the “Teleport now”, and it will take your avatar to that location, or alternatively it may offer you a teleport window in Secondlife.
Happy travels.
Membership is free, however you will be asked for some details.
Click on the “Join Now” button, whichwill bring up the registration page.
Once you have filled out your registration details you can create your character.
You can make up any first name you want, except obviously ones that can offend others. Your lastname is chosen from a list of available surnames and you can select the “Change” button to see more, however there is still a limited choice of what will come up. You CANNOT CHANGE your name once it is created, so take your time and chose carefully.
Create a password etc, and choose your initial appearance. Don’t worry about the limited choice, you can change everything about the look of your avatar once in the world.
Set up your security question in case you forget your password then click create account.
Return to the Secondlife homepage (http://secondlife.com) where there is a “Download Secondlife” link at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the download page. Click “DownLoad Now” and follow the directions. It is like installing any software. Once the Secondlife viewer is installed you can log onto Secondlife.
You will appear in the “Welcome” area. There are lots of helpful things here, including instructions on how to fly and move around.
For now the most important thing is the “Search” button. Search will help you contact and find your host for this event, as well as find the location it is held in. Clicking on “Search” along the bottom of the screen will bring up the search window, you can search for:
* “huntress catteneo”, host of this event, and IM or “Instant Message” her so that if she is online she will get your message straight away, other wise the message will be saved, and she will get it the next time she logs in.
* “Rannveig”, this is the region where the Virtual fruit event will occur. In the list that comes up, the very first item should be “Rannveig”. Left click on “Rannveig” and this will take you to another page that has a “Teleport” button. Left click that button, and you will arrive pretty near the virtual fruit area.
Alternatively you can just put http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rannveig/137/149/43 into your web browser, while you still have Second Life open. This will take you to a “Location Based Linking in Secondlife” page. Click on the “Teleport now”, and it will take your avatar to that location, or alternatively it may offer you a teleport window in Secondlife.
Happy travels.
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