A number of our Founding Townspeople migrated to this Rock Town Hall blog from our humble, spirited origins as a Yahoo Groups list. Although it’s no longer well trafficked, the old list is still active. I refer to it as “The Basement,” out of respect for our Rupert Pupkin-like origins, while a disgruntled handful of RTH founders call the old list the “Chess” edition to our current “Mercury” edition and still refuse to join us in the brilliant light of day. Regardless of all that nonsense, a few Townspeople still feel comfortable drifting from one spot to the other, dropping notes of upcoming releases and wiseacre responses, when appropriate. I check in there now and then to see what raw power still ferments. The other day I found the following nascent thread, which I think needs to see the light of day. First the initial post:
1. Re: Springsteen to perform more albums in entirety
“[name removed]” wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091104/music_nm/us_springsteen_1
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Bruce Springsteen is dusting off his catalog once again, as he and the E Street Band have announced two more full-album performances this coming weekend at Madison Square Garden in New York.
On Saturday (November 7), the group will play the Boss’ 1973 album “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle” in its entirety for the first time; on Sunday (November 8) they’ll tackle the 1980 double record “The River” from beginning to end for the first time.
And the follow-up, posted shortly thereafter:
1a. Re: Springsteen to perform more albums in entirety
Posted by: “[name removed]”:Wake me when he does the whole EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS soundtrack…
Good stuff, sez I. And the beat goes on…
Is Bruce making live albums out of all these concerts? Good marketing strategy there: you can get all his original albums and then get all of them performed live.
Of course, I won’t be getting any of them.
Steely Dan is doing that this tour. They’ll be here next week in a pretty small place that would be awesome to see them in, and one night they’re playing Aja and the next it’s The Royal Scam (one of my all time favorites!). I would love to go but the night after the Royal Scam show is The Reigning Sound at the Beachland.
Since I think Greg Cartwright is singlehandedly saving rock and roll, I have to go to that. They’re all on work nights, so no way possible can this fat old man stay up for two or three concerts in a row!
Unplugged, covers albums, standards albums, duet albums, and now albums-performed-in-their-entirety: I’m already sick of this new marketing gimmick by has-beens with nothing better to sell. I want somebody with integrity to go out on tour performing their worst-perceived album as a challenge: listen again, this is valid. When Bruce performs Human Touch in its entirety, then I’ll respect him again.
LUCKY TOWN/HUMAN Super Set! People will be nostalgic for the time when they only had 57 channels with nothing on…