The stars above just got a little brighter

Carpe diem.  Don’t miss a chance to see the ones that really matter to you.

That's the message I take from the sad news today that Clarence Clemons, sax player extraordinaire and the heart and soul of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band for forty years, has died.  Clemons, who has battled back, knee and hip problems in recent years, suffered a massive stroke last week.

Two memories to share:

In 2003 on The Rising tour I caught a show in Sacramento with my friend Dave, the guy who originally got me hooked on Springsteen, Clemons & Co.  It was a great, great show, but the absolute highlight was a spot-on performance of “Jungleland,” complete with the jazzy, lyrical, impossibly expressive sax solo that carries the ten-minute song to the summit of its epic narrative arc.  Seeing that song performed live as only Clemons, Springsteen and the E Street crew could deliver it remains one of the highlights of my three-decade-plus concert-going career.

Three years ago, I reviewed Brothers In Arms, the debut album from Temple Of Soul, a soul supergroup featuring Clemons.  As a courtesy, I sent a note to his publicist when the review was published.  A couple of days later, she replied with an e-mail that included a personal note from Clarence Clemons thanking me and praising the review. 

That note did what Clarence Clemons did his whole life: it put a smile on someone’s face.  It brought a little more sunshine into a world that sorely needs it.

Clarence Clemons got the nickname “Big Man” on account of standing 6’4” and 250 pounds.  But his personality, his warmth were always so much bigger than his physical frame could ever contain.  Wherever you may be tonight, Big Man, that corner of the universe is surely a brighter and better place for it.

R.I.P.

Best Of 2008

As the holidays close in, the Daily Vault is proud to present our annual cavalcade of Best Of 2008 columns, this year featuring entries from six writers (and counting...). Jeff Clutterbuck, Melanie Love, Sean McCarthy, Kenny S. McGuane, Mark Millan and yours truly have all chipped in to highlight the highlights from Bon Iver to Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond to Nine Inch Nails, The Hold Steady to Nick Cave and those Bad Seeds of his. Even Guns N' Roses merited a mention -- but then, these aren't exactly your conventional awards we're handing out here...

Springsteen readies new album for January release

Bruce Springsteen's new album Working On A Dream is now set for a January 27 release on Columbia Records. Recorded with the E Street Band during breaks on the Magic tour, the album features twelve new songs plus two bonus tracks :

1. Outlaw Pete
2. My Lucky Day
3. Working on a Dream
4. Queen of the Supermarket
5. What Love Can Do
6. This Life
7. Good Eye
8. Tomorrow Never Knows
9. Life Itself
10. Kingdom of Days
11. Surprise, Surprise
12. The Last Carnival

Bonus tracks:
The Wrestler
A Night with the Jersey Devil

A release from the Springsteen camp quotes Bruce: "Towards the end of recording Magic, excited by the return to pop production sounds, I continued writing. When my friend producer Brendan O'Brien heard the new songs, he said, 'Let's keep going.' Over the course of the next year, that's just what we did, recording with the E Street Band during the breaks on last year's tour. I hope Working On A Dream has caught the energy of the band fresh off the road from some of the most exciting shows we've ever done. All the songs were written quickly, we usually used one of our first few takes, and we all had a blast making this one from beginning to end."

Working On A Dream is Springsteen's twenty-fourth album. It was once again produced and mixed by Brendan O'Brien -- the fourth Springsteen/O'Brien collaboration -- and was recorded and mixed at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, GA with additional recording in New York City, Los Angeles, and New Jersey.

Monday roundup

The items are arriving in bunches these days, so...

• First of all, it was already widely known that the obnoxious person formerly known as Prince was in the habit of being a jerk to his own fans. Turns out he doesn't like to pay his bills either. What a class act.
  
  
• Raul Malo, lead singer of the superb but star-crossed alt-country group The Mavericks, is preparing to issue his third solo album since the band's most recent hiatus. Lucky One will feature all originals after two albums' worth of covers and Malo will be touring in support.
  
  
• Fans knew this days ago, but for the record and for the rest of you, looks like Bruce Springsteen will be celebrating the new U.S. president's inauguration with a new album coming out in January. No word if "Hail To The Chief" will be on the track list....
  

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band tagged for Superbowl XLIII

For true football fans, the Superbowl halftime show means turning the channel or making a beer run. Sports fans don't care about the overblown glitz and phony enthusiasm of these contrived, plastic spectacles. Can anyone forget the heinous debacle of a Superbowl half-time show that put Britney Spears on the same stage as Aerosmith? Or the ludicrous antics of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake? The history of the half-time entertainment for what is historically the most-watched annual TV event in the world is a pathetic legacy of bad choices. With the exception of Tom Petty a few years back, they rarely hit a home run (or score a touchdown if you will). Even some of the decent acts are routinely subjected to the shabby accoutrements of bad choreography and and cheesy pandering by the on-air personalities.

Hope arrives by way of New Jersey. Your friends at the DV (me and Jason at least) will be glued to the set this year after the announcement that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band will play this year's half-time show from Tampa. If anyone can save this annual display of bad taste and poor judgement by the network execs, its The Boss. Kudos to the network idiots for getting this one right.

Tuesday item-fest: Little Feat and friends, Obama-Springsteen, Radiohead live

Items galore this Tuesday:

• Little Feat's new album features a slew of guest stars taking over the frontman slot once held by Lowell George and reinterpreting classics from the band's rich catalogue. Any album with Vince Gill -- who tackles the immortal "Dixie Chicken" -- Dave Matthews, Bob Seger, Brooks & Dunn, Brad Paisley, Jimmy Buffett and Emmylou Harris all singing on it has got to be worth a listen...
  
  
• Speaking of presidential candidates' relations with the music world, the Rocky Mountain News reports that Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver will be bracketed by performances from Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. Now that's some Jersey love right there...
  
  
• There have been hundreds of reviews of Radiohead concerts published in the past decade. We've even published one or two ourselves. This one from the LA Times was good enough to make me -- who doesn't even like the band -- curious about seeing them live. Nice job.
  

New AC/DC album Black Ice drops October 20

The rumors are true... the release date is confirmed... and they're baaa-aaack. Columbia Records announced today the October 20th release of hard rock heroes AC/DC's Black Ice, the band's first studio album in eight years.

The new album features 15 new tracks from brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, Brian Johnson, Cliff Williams, and Phil Rudd, the very same lineup that made 1980's immortal Back In Black. The album was produced by Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Train) at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, BC.

"Rock 'N' Roll Train," the album's first single, will debut on August 28th, with a video to premiere in September. Maybe the best news of all for fans -- the band is set to kick off its first world tour since 2001 in late October. Break out the cannons and get ready to head-bang!

New music from Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen has done charity benefit work throughout his career, but this time it's personal.

On July 15 Columbia will release a new digital EP of highlights from the still-underway world tour of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Magic Tour Highlights will be released via all digital download stores and will consist of four audio tracks with four accompanying videos, all recorded live in concert during the current Magic tour.

As fans all over the world know, the E Street Band lost one of its founding members earlier this year when organ and accordion player Danny Federici succumbed to melanoma (skin cancer).

The artists, songwriters, and music publishers are donating all of their royalties, and Columbia Records is donating all of its net profits, from sales of Magic Tour Highlights to the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund. The iTunes Store is donating their first year's net profits as well.

Magic Tour Highlights Track Listing:

1. "Always A Friend" (performed with Alejandro Escovedo)
Recording Date: 04/14/2008 (Houston, Texas)

2. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (performed with Tom Morello)
Recording Date: 04/07/2008 (Anaheim, California)

3. "Turn Turn Turn" (performed with Roger McGuinn)
Recording Date: 04/23/2008 (Orlando, Florida)

4. "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" (Danny Federici's final performance with the E Street Band)
Recording Date: 03/20/2008 (Indianapolis, Indiana)

Visit www.brucespringsteen.net on July 15 for download information. And again, R.I.P. Danny.

Prince vs. Springsteen vs. Neil Young: Who's got the best backing band?

Nice job by Marc Hirsh of MSNBC today rating the best backing bands in the business. The J.B.'s (James Brown), The Attractions (Elvis Costello), the E Street Band (Bruce Springsteen), Crazy Horse (Neil Young) and The Revolution (Prince) are all worthy of consideration for the title. What's truly bizarre is how Hirsh managed to exclude two others who definitely belong in this category. No Heartbreakers (Tom Petty)? And sacrilege of sacrileges, he left out the only backing unit ever to have the nerve to call themselves simply The Band (Bob Dylan, and they lived up to the name)? Can't give this column more than a B with those two glaring exclusions...

R.I.P. Danny Federici

His Boss called E Street Band organ, glockenspiel and accordion player Danny Federici "one of the pillars of our sound." Late yesterday word came that Federici had died at the age of 58, after a three-year battle with melanoma. Ten years ago, Danny Federici was my first professional interview, after DV Founder Christopher Thelen was kind enough to assist me in lining it up.

The interview, which took place concurrent with the release of Federici's first solo album, 1998's Flemington, is here. Chris's review of the album is here. You can read more about Federici's colorful life and tremendous musical accomplishments here, and see video of his last live performance with the band on March 20th here. I recommend having the Kleenex handy for the latter. Judging by their expressions, I think they must all have known.

Danny Federici was a remarkable musician and a true gentleman. Our condolences to his family, friends, and bandmates.

R.I.P. Danny.

Add to your shopping list: Chris Cubeta

I am a Chris Cubeta fan; just ask the writing staff here at the Vault how many times I have bugged and cajoled and demanded that they give him a listen. Perceptive, artful lyrics backed with stirring roots-rock/alt-country arrangements, and sung with total commitment, that's Cubeta's thing. In past reviews I've compared the quality of his lyrics to big guns like Springsteen, Dylan and Hiatt, and I'm not backing off now. Quite the contrary; his new Change EP is one of the most powerful, amazing discs I've heard all year and you should really go buy it right now.