Costello/Springsteen: my kind of cabaret

Well, nobody told me this had happened, happily I found out for myself... But clearly Spectacle, the Costello show for Sundance Channel, is the sort of thing that should be on television all the time...

Bruce Springsteen: Life Itself

I had a fairly ho-hum response to the first two singles that came off the new Springsteen album, formally released tomorrow - but the third (promo clip above) is much, much more like it, indeed wondrous, I think.
I've always been agnostic when it comes to the whole fraught business of faith and disillusion that seems to attend the release of every new Springsteen long-player. For instance I thought Lucky Town and Human Touch got a bad rap back in 1992... But I couldn't see why people were so keen on Magic - and was that in 2006 or 2007? Whereas Devils and Dust (2005) was clearly criminally underrated. The Rising (2002) was a solid, solid piece of work, but I do remember the official Springsteen site's bulletin board having to play host to a terribly uppity and sneering dismissal of the record, posted up on its very first day of release, by a supposed longterm fan who declared himself sick and tired of waiting for a return to form. 'Well, sod off then' was my feeling toward said poster, but then I'm someone who doesn't much care for Born To Run...
Over on Counterpunch Harry Browne, a regular commentator in these matters, isn't too keen on the new LP, but he hasn't lost faith either. Of 'Life Itself' he's not willing to say anything much more heady than that it's 'probably as close to a truly interesting lyric as there is on the album...' Once then, again, I'll be reduced to the tricky business of having to make up my own mind...

The Boss vs Lionel Bart...

Last night, around 9pm, my mobile started ringing. I recognised the Caller ID and answered, only to hear dim ambient noise, the hubbub of a group of people, some distant music. I figured My Mate had triggered his Blackberry accidentally down the pub, and so ended the call. Moments later my phone rang again, and this time the music was louder and clearer, as were the lyrics, and people were singing along: 'Because the night/belongs to lovers...' Finally my brain started working, this after a long torpid day. My Mate was at the Springsteen show at the Arsenal Emirates, and the E Street Band had just lit into the tune Bruce gave to Patti Smith. And My Mate just wanted to share a little of that magic with me. It sounded fantastic, though not as glorious as 'She's The One' when My Mate duly called me back 3 minutes later...
Would I had been there. It would have much amazed me. Very like... But the asking price was £125 face-value for a ticket, and I can't live with that. In any case my missus was watching the Andrew Lloyd Webber music show I'd Do Anything on BBC1 and I was getting more and more interested as it came down to a public vote between two girls vying to be cast as Nancy in a new Cameron MacIntosh West End production of Oliver!
Then came an unexpectedly great moment of television - or as good as these extended-advert talent-contests can manage: both Lloyd-Webber and Macintosh showed their hand in advance of the public vote, and said they favoured 18-year-old Jessie (Irish, flame-haired, clearly highly gifted, understandably a tad vulnerable) over the mid-20s Jodie (from Blackpool, with a good big voice, and a heroic weight-loss behind her, in all a typical model of what you'd want for Nancy if you intended the show to be much like the film etc.)
But I certainly respected their preference: god knows who'll play Bill Sykes this time out, but the idea of young Jessie as his deluded and masochistic female doorstep suddenly proposed an unusually strong, interesting - even disturbing - Oliver! Alas, the British public know what they like, and clearly wanted this Oliver! to have all the heft and originality of an episode of Eastenders, and so plumped for Jodie. Jessie couldn't hide her tears, but the camera kept a fairly dignified distance from these. Anyhow I hope she'll do very well in something else in due course. But as for Lord Lloyd-Webber and Sir MacIntosh, well, they just had to stand there and applaud their second preference, something that two men of their wealth and standing must find a bit galling. Still, in these dog days for the West End, they have enjoyed another extraordinary PR boon for their project on BBC primetime (a state of affairs that Kevin Spacey was sounding very annoyed about on behalf of Dame Theatre a while back.)
Meanwhile over at the Emirates I assume the Boss had moved onto The Rising or Born To Run or however it is he closes his shows these days. Yes, I should have been there. I don't believe in being puritanical about musical taste, but it's better for the soul to stay attuned to the Good Stuff, and listening to Jodie earlier giving it karaoke-style welly to a version of Whitney Houston's appalling I Have Nothing was a grim reminder of the stuff that will otherwise creep into the void between one's ears.

The Jill Jones Fan Club (Defunct)

When I was still a boy (this would be the late 1970s?) I read a newspaper column by the then-celebrated TV reviewer Clive James, discussing some surly broadcast interview with Johnny Rotten (then of the Sex Pistols). James disapproved of Rotten more or less totally, as did most responsible media outlets of the day, and made an especially aggrieved point of how rock 'n' roll - which had brought joy to his own Aussie boyhood back in the days of Bill Haley and the Comets - had since degenerated into an obnoxious disgrace. So much for poor old punk. 'Johnny Rotten' (John Lydon to you) is now older than James was when he wrote that Eeyore-ish diatribe. Rock 'n' roll has never died, and some of its leading early practioners are now pension-age, albeit rich as Croesus. In my teens I found it impossible to take seriously any rocker over the age of 30 - maybe 35 at an absolute push. Now past that upper age bracket myself, I just plain don't trust or rate anybody younger. If I count the 'records' I have bought (or requested to be bought for me as presents) over the last two years, the roster of artists is wizened beyond belief: The Who, Dylan, Springsteen, Levon Helm, Robert Plant (with Alison Krauss, of course)...) Be it said, not all my favourites have to be Rolling Stone standard-issue Rock Legends. I remain loyally devoted to Maria McKee and to Bob Mould, once the respective frontpersons of rowdy young bands I adored back in 1986. And then, once in a while, I will try to touch base with other singers and songwriters of that vintage, to revisit their old stuff, and see if there's been anything new since. A simple task in the Amazon/YouTube era, right? Nope. So if anybody can find me a CD of Peter Case's eponymous debut LP (1986) for a reasonable price I am ready to meet and talk cash-money. Did Test Department's The Unacceptable Face of Freedom ever get a CD release? Or Nile Rodgers' Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove? And then, above all, consider the Strange Case of Jill Jones (pictured above, on the cover of her own eponymous debut c. 1987, and 20 years later at some sort of Prince-related reunion.) I shan't detain you with all the varied reasons for her fabulousness. But I do understand she finally released a follow-up album c. 2001-2, an acoustic set, called One? Occasionally I see it offered unreliably around the Web, priced at $40 or so, second-hand - dammit. What I want to know is how come I can't get away from Leona Lewis and her reasonably priced and utterly pointless recordings, but I can't find the last Jill Jones recording anywhere readily to hand on God's earth? What is the point of music? None of this makes me Mean Old Man Clive James the Second, you understand - just the irate president-in-exile of the Jill Jones Fan Club (Defunct).

"The Best Man"? Springsteen favours Obama

Not that these things mean anything. I don't recall Springsteen's deeply felt on-the-stump renditions of 'The Promised Land' doing anything for John Kerry in 04. Nor do I recall Obama saying anything very stirring this year, other than he wasn't minded to share a ticket with Mrs Clinton. But then I don't have a vote in this election. I was simply interested to read Springsteen's just-published reasons for wanting Obama in 08. There's only one thing to be read into his assertion that the senator for Illinois is 'head and shoulders' above the rival candidate(s). Springsteen is a well-mannered fellow in public, and even were he not, he probably wouldn't summon up the same invective (i.e. invoking 'evil') as Christopher Hitchens in this critique of Mrs Clinton from a recent appearance on Fox News. But then again...