Springsteen In Buffalo & Nashville Memories

"There's just one thing that you need to know about Bruce Springsteen: that after forty years in the trenches, he still plays like it matters. That when he hits the stage with the 'best little bar band in the world,' Bruce and his fellow E Streeters still perform like they have something to lose, like they're auditioning for history, like they're not happy until every fan in attendance is exhausted, drenched in sweat and unable to dance another minute. The Boss would have it no other way…"

That's how I began my Harp magazine website review of the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band show in Buffalo, New York on Friday night. My wife Tracey and I braved a snowstorm that eventually dumped nearly two feet of snow on West New York from Friday night through Sunday morning, driving an hour-and-a-half into downtown Buffalo with crappy visibility to catch The Boss in concert. It was our first big rock-and-roll show since moving to WNY from Nashville and it got me thinking about some of the memorable Springsteen shows that I witnessed in Nashville through the years.

The first appearance that I can find record of for Springsteen in Nashville was a two-night stand in January 1974, opening for blues guitarist Freddie King at a long-gone club by the name of Muther's Music Emporium. I never went to any shows at the club, but Muther's had a reputation for featuring some hotshot young talent on its stage. Kiss first played Nashville at Muther's a few months after Bruce did. This was one of Bruce's first big national tours and he performed with a number of odd booking choices – opening for Black Oak Arkansas, for instance, in Ohio while headlining in Virginia with the Goose Creek Symphony and the Charlie Daniels Band opening two different shows.

According to legend, Springsteen's manager Mike Appel booked the last-minute Nashville shows when he found out that CBS Records was having a sales convention in the Music City and that most of the label executives were staying at a hotel near the club. Appel had flyers for the shows delivered to every room at the hotel, and supposedly invited close to 200 of the label's sales and marketing people to the 300-seat club to witness Springsteen perform live. Sadly, few if any CBS personnel attended the shows and it seemed, after only two albums, that the future Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member's career would be short-circuited before it began. The label was pretty ambivalent about Springsteen at the time, much like Capital EMI was about Jason & the Scorchers when EMI had its sales convention in Nashville in 1986 or so.

I was a bit too young to have seen the Springsteen show at Muther's, and I didn't really become familiar with Bruce until later in '74 when WKDF-FM began playing a pre-release single of "Born To Run." I ran out and picked up Springsteen's first two albums and quickly became enamored with his music. Oddly enough, that Muther's show from 1974 is available as an Italian bootleg album; more people have probably heard Springsteen's 10-song set from that night on vinyl and CD than were actually there!

The first time that I actually got to see Springsteen in concert was at the Grand Ol' Opry House near the old Opryland theme park, back in 1976. The venue holds around 4,500 I'd guess, and it was around half full the night of April 28, 1976. The Music City had yet to embrace Bruce and I managed to score first row tickets, on the left side of the stage. They were great seats and even though I don't remember exactly how long that Springsteen played, I do remember that my girlfriend at the time, Tammy, wasn't enjoying herself as much as I was, and she wanted to leave during the intermission. Of course, I made her stay until the bloody end (for which she was none to happy)!

When Bruce rolled back around a couple of years later, touring in support of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, I was involved with Thom King's Take One Magazine. Thom was (and is) an old high school friend of mine and he published what could arguably be considered the first alternative newspaper/magazine in Nashville, a important precursor to the Nashville Scene. I don't recall who among my friends attended the July 21, 1978 show at the Municipal Auditorium, but I know that Thom and I were there, and I seem to remember that we had pretty good seats. Elvis Costello was also at that show, watching from the low-level seats to the left of the stage, and we could see him from our groovy floor seats. Costello had a sour look on his face all evening and we wondered why he wasn't enjoying himself more.

The best Springsteen show that I've personally ever seen was on February 26, 1981 at the Municipal Auditorium, the tour for The River album. This show also provided me with my best Springsteen experience. Tickets went on sale one Saturday morning in December, and my brother Billy C (a/k/a "Kid Kasual") and I decided to sit on line all night at Harding Mall. I hit the mall's north entrance near the old Port O' Call store shortly after the mall closed at 9:00 PM and found around a dozen people already there; Bill joined me shortly thereafter. By 10:00 PM or so around 20 of us hardcore faithful were dug in for a long, cold night (temps were in the teens by morning).

One guy pulled his truck up to the entrance and opened the doors so that we could all hear his stereo. We listened to Springsteen albums until sunrise, singing and drinking coffee and beer and eating donuts and Krystal gut-bombs that some of our friends had brought to help us through the night. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a communal effort that we all enjoyed. Sometime during the night, we each took a number and agreed among ourselves that nobody was going to cut in front of the 20 of us that had braved the elements to be first in line. Sure enough, some assholes showed up between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM when the tickets went on sale and tried to muscle their way in, but we held 'em off! WKDF-FM showed up around 7:00 AM with coffee and donuts and sausage-biscuits.

The show itself was incredible, one of Bruce's four-hour marathons. We had a great time! Since Bill and I had maxed out on the number of tickets that we could each buy, we had most of an entire row to ourselves; Bill's girlfriend Amy, my brother Greg and the big man himself Willie J all witnessed the show.

The last Springsteen show that I was able to see in Nashville was the Born In The USA tour (program picture above) that was held in Murfreesboro on December 9, 1984 at the Murphy Center, which was larger than the Municipal Auditorium. I don't remember the exact details, but I seem to believe that we had an insider at Ticketmaster or something 'cause we managed to snag an entire row on the floor at the arena and filled it with friends and family. The stage was round and open on all sides so that everybody could see the band, and I remember that we could see some friends on the other side of the stage during the show. It was another incredible Springsteen performance, around 3-1/2 hours long and highly rocking! A very posh bootleg vinyl box set was released of this show! Although I'm not sure who put it out (among my connections in the audio underground), it was a limited edition of 400 copies with posters and the entire show spanned three picture discs.

Sadly, the Nashville area didn't get to see Springsteen on either the Tunnel Of Love or the Human Touch tours during the late-80s and early-90s. In fact, best as I can tell, it was twelve years between Springsteen shows for the Music City, as the solo acoustic The Ghost Of Tom Joad tour hit the Ryman Auditorium on December 12, 1996. I tried to get tickets and had the cash in hand, but in the smaller venue they moved quick, and I had no inside connection to score even a pair of tickets. Four years later, Springsteen and the E Street Band returned for their "reunion" tour on April 12, 2000 but that time around I simply didn't have the cash to attend. Writing for Live! Music Review at the time, I got a nice bootleg of a different show from the 1995/96 acoustic tour, and thanks to some friends in low places, I acquired a good copy of the April 2000 Nashville show burned onto three CD-Rs as well.

Nashville lost out on tours for Springsteen's The Rising (2003) and Devils And Dust (2005) albums, and I don't see a Nashville date scheduled for the current Magic tour, either. It speaks volumes that Nashville's concert promotion is so poor that the city has hosted only two of seven tours from one of the biggest performing bands on the planet over the last 20 years (and let's face it, a Springsteen show is pretty much a stone cold surefire sell-out). Springsteen fans are forced to travel to Memphis or Atlanta to catch a tour. Lucky for me, The Boss seemingly schedules a Buffalo or Rochester (or both) show for every tour!

Through the years, I've also been lucky enough to catch Springsteen shows in Detroit ('78 & 1980), Chicago (1980) and Cincinnati ('80 again); in fact over the course of nine months (1980-81), I managed to see Springsteen and Bob Seger, another favorite, each perform four times in various cities, including Nashville. The Springsteen shows in Nashville are by far my favorites, though, and they stand among the best rock & roll performances that I've ever seen.

Sitting in HSBC Arena on Friday night in Buffalo watching Springsteen and the E Street Band, I couldn't help but relive all those great Nashville shows...

(Thanks to the Killing Floor database of Springsteen tour dates for exact show info)

Some musical goodies for you all:
"Because The Night" (mp3 from Buffalo 03/07/08)
"Rosalita" (mp3 from Nashville 01/29/74)

(Right click on the mp3 link with your mouse and choose "save as" to download to your computer)

Nashville Rocks LaLa & WOXY!!!

I'd read a little about LaLa, this service that allows you to trade in CDs that you don't want for discs that you might want, at a minimal cost of $1.00 or something like that. Since I have a few promo discs laying around that I've reviewed and just don't have room on the shelves for, I figured that I'd check LaLa out and see if I could trade 'em in on the couple of new releases that I want but can't currently afford to buy.

After listing a half-dozen discs on the service, and quickly trading five of them (which gets you points to use against future trades), I decided to look around for a while. I looked up the discs that I wanted to try and score copies of and, sadly, nobody had copies to trade right now. I went ahead and placed them on my "want list," hoping that somebody will come up with a copy of the new Patti Smith covers album, but while digging through the site, which – with the addition of a digital download store – seems to be trying to be all things to all people, I ran across the WOXY sessions page.

Best I can tell, WOXY-FM was a "Modern Rock" radio station launched back in the early-80s in Oxford, Ohio. The station broadcast an alternative format, with an emphasis on indie rock, which earned WOXY all kinds of kudos from the likes of Spin and Rolling Stone. In the late-90s they began simulcasting programming on the Internet. When the station's ownership sold the broadcast license and assets to a Texas company in 2004, the idea was to take the station online full-time, and a group retained the "intellectual" assets (i.e. call letters, web site) and music library with this in mind. Lack of funds caused them to close up shop, but investors cropped up the day after they closed the doors and, in July 2004, WOXY-FM became WOXY.COM, the first terrestrial radio station to reinvent itself online.

Anyway, WOXY is hooked up in some sort of deal with LaLa, providing free mp3 podcast downloads of short-performances by a wealth of indie rock and Americana artists. Each session "in the lounge" runs 20-30 minutes in length and there are some pretty cool people who have dropped by the WOXY.COM studios to perform, including Frank Black, Gomez, Heartless Bastards and French Kicks.

Nashville's current rock scene is strongly represented, perhaps more so than any other city. Of the nearly 100 podcasts available on the site, eight or nine of them are by Nashville bands, some of 'em twice! If you want to get a good idea of what Nashville rock is all about these days, check out LaLa, click on the "discover" tab at the top of the page and scroll down to the bottom right corner where it says "Download free MP3s." Scrolling through the pages, you'll find sessions by the Features, the Hotpipes, De Novo Dahl, Forget Cassettes, the Carter Administration and Apollo Up! All of these are very cool Nashville bands and I've downloaded all of their sessions for frequent future listening. The Rev sez "check it out!"

TMQ Zine Archive Launched!

Never ones to rest on our laurels, your friends over at Trademark Of Quality have launched yet another a sister blog, the TMQ Zine Archive. Our goal is to create a library of zines (culled from our extensive collection), including a cover photo gallery, as a way to document the wild and wacky small press publications of the '80s and '90s, before the worldwide web thingie and blogs and such all but killed off the zine as a tool of self-expression.

For our first section of zines, we chose Nashville's House O' Pain music zine. Drop by the zine archive when you get a chance and check out this little slice of zine history. As usual, your comments are welcome and there's also an email link on every page with which to contact the Reverend. Enjoy!

Rebecca Writes, The Velcro Stars & More Bands!!!

The Reverend recently heard from his old friend Rebecca Luxford concerning "The Other Side Of Nashville" Project. Rebecca was editor of The Metro during a particularly difficult time for the magazine and successfully oversaw its evolution from an inconsistent, narrowly-focused music rag into a more professional and diverse publication. Rebecca brought up a couple of bands that should be on the list, the first of which - Joe, Marc's Brother - I simply overlooked for some inexplicable reason. The other band she mentioned, the Times, was pretty well known on the local scene but I don't remember them and don't know anything about them. I've added them both to the "official" list.

My old high school buddy Ron Graham submitted the Nashville band Ligion for the list, as well as John Davis, formerly of Superdrag. I've added them both, and although Davis is shooting for a CCM audience these days, his music is straight indie rock. I think that there's enough flexibility in the list to include Davis. What about Superdrag, though? They've been recommended by just about everybody that has emailed me to date and although they started in Knoxville, did they play around town enough or have enough of a Nashville presence to include them on the list? Please let me know your thoughts on this, either by email through the nifty new link to your right or in the comments box.

Speaking of bands that are on the edge of "the list," what are your thoughts, readers, on the Immortal Lee County Killers? They're originally from Alabama if I remember correctly, but band leader Chet "Cheetah" Weise moved to Nashville a few months before the band recorded their excellent 2005 CD These Bones Will Rise To Love You. Have the Immortal Lee County Killers done enough locally to be included on the list? Do they receive a similar sort of "pass" as Will & the Bushmen? Inquiring minds want to know....

I also heard from Shane of the Velcro Stars, who also recommended a bunch of great bands, including the Hot Pipes, Apollo Up!, the Friendlies and Tony Danza Tap Dancing Extravaganza, among others. Reader Linda Barnett wrote to recommend Alien In The Land Of Our Birth, who I had thought that I put on the list but obviously overlooked. That band's Steve Austin went on to form underground icons Today Is The Day, who were already on the list. Some of the other new bands listed below, which have also been added, I found through their MySpace pages.

Finally, another old friend and a big supporter of the project, Donna Frost, dropped me a line to recommend the Purple Giraffes. Fronted by wildman Billy Stickers, Donna remembers him wearing a tutu on stage and performing all sorts of antics; the band also counted Jeff Johnson, Greg Herston and Richie Owens among its members at one time or another. Donna also brought up Psychic Surgery, and has found some recordings of that band, who were pretty hot in town during their time if my memory serves me right. They're both in....

ALIEN IN THE LAND OF OUR BIRTH,
AN ARIATIC SILENCE, APOLLO UP!,
BUBBLE GUM COMPLEX,
CAESAR'S GLASS BOX, THE DARLINGS,
JOHN DAVIS, THE FRIENDLIES,
THE GOLDEN GEARS, THE HOT PIPES,
JOE, MARC'S BROTHER, LIGION,
PSYCHIC SURGERY, PURPLE GIRAFFES,
THE REDOUBTS, SERATONIN,
TREY STEIN, THE TIMES,
TONY DANZA TAP DANCING EXTRAVAGANZA,
THE WHOLE FANTASTIC WORLD

Kudos to Rebecca for recommending the Enkoder software for our email link. Thanks to her, I can provide a "mailto" link for you all to contact me without getting swamped with spam and porno links. You'll find that link in the column to the right of the screen, and if you have any info on any of the bands on the list, I'd like to hear from you. Rebecca also recommended some improvements to the band list and project pages and so I've made them better and easier to use (I hope).

If you're just now finding this blog and wonder what the project is all about, you can find the project's details here and last of all, the "official list" is now 410 bands big! I know that I've said it before, but unless somebody comes up with a real hot band, I think that the list is closed. Now I've got work to do and a book to write....

Nashville Rockers On YouTube

I'm sure that I'm not telling you all anything that you don't already know, but I've found YouTube to be a great way to waste a whole heck of a lot of time. You can keep your silly videos of people lip-syncing to Green Day songs, or the dozens of "Barbie Girl" videos (although the one with the Technoboy Justin is a real scream). No, vintage music videos are my drug of choice and for the moment, at least, until the copyright police have them all pulled, there are a lot of classic '80s videos to watch on the site.

Nashville rockers are well-represented among the YouTube masses, thanks to Allen from Practical Stylists. Allen has posted some damn cool local vids, including Jason & the Scorchers, Basic Static, Bill Lloyd and, naturally, Practical Stylists. But you'll also find videos from Webb Wilder, Royal Court Of China, the Pink Spiders, Jonathan Bright and Be Your Own Pet, among others.

Best as I can remember (and I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong), Jason & the Nashville Scorchers' "Absolutely Sweet Marie" was the first rock video by a Nashville band. I still have a VHS copy that Jack Emerson gave me, and evidently so does Allen, who posted a copy on YouTube. The Scorchers' other made-for-MTV videos, which bankrupted the band, can also be found on the site, including the hilarious "White Lies" which would have won the Scorchers a lot of new fans if it had ever been played with any regularity. I remember seeing the "White Lies" video only once, and I watched MTV day and night back the day.

The Royal Court Of China's "Half The Truth" is especially cool in that it was directed by Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) and produced by Bruce Campbell. This was made during RCOC's "L.A." period, but the song kicks ass and Joey comes across like the "next big rock star" on the screen. But the RCOC video for "It's All Changed" showcases a better song, I believe, as well as the original band with Robert Logue and Oscar Rice. It's a trippy, very visual, almost psychedelic video from the band's strong debut album. I don't think that A& M Records ever really had any idea what to do with Royal Court Of China.

Of Nashville's current artists, Jonathan Bright is a master in using low-budget, high-concept videos as an extension of his brilliant music. "The ABC's Of Love" is rude and crude but it's also funny as hell, clever, and a hell of a cool song. YouTube also has a video for Jonathan's excellent "Tweakin' To A Fine Tune," another very cool rockin' tune. JB's claim to fame, though, has to be his cover of Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher," spiced up with a "ripped from the headlines" edge and great visuals like the Steve McNair bobblehead doll, the clearly visible box fan blowing Jonathan's hair, Joey-Blanton-rockstar-style, and the two-person audience sitting on the couch (I love the Iron City Beer t-shirt). Jonathan's videos seem to all be directed by Dee Nichols; kudos to Dee for putting together creative, entertaining and memorable videos on a budget that is probably a fraction of what was spent on the latest Pink Spiders' video.

The Reverend has been kind enough to put together a short list below of choice YouTube videos featuring Nashville rockers, with links to each video's individual page. Like me, I think that you'll find these tunes to be a fun distraction. If I get enough positive feedback from this, maybe I'll put together a future post with more Music City rock videos.

Jason & the Scorchers "Absolutely Sweet Marie"

Jason & the Scorchers "White Lies"

Jason & the Scorchers "Golden Ball & Chain"

Royal Court Of China "It's All Changed"

Royal Court Of China "Half The Truth"

Webb Wilder "Human Cannonball"

Jonathan Bright "The ABC's Of Love"

Jonathan Bright "Hot For Teacher"

One of the coolest things I've discovered on YouTube is a Firefly fan that pieces together montages of scenes from the TV show with a Scorchers' backing soundtrack. In this case, the unknown auteur's use of the Scorchers' "Bible And A Gun" (from the often-ignored Thunder & Fire album) is especially well-executed, a perfect matching of music and visuals. I like this so much that I've included a YouTube player with the video for all of you readers. Enjoy!

Nashville's Starwood Amphitheatre To Close

According to a recent Nashville City Paper article written by my old pal William Williams, Nashville's Starwood Amphitheatre has been closed for the season by its owner, Live Nation, with the few concerts scheduled for this summer already canceled. The 65-acre property has been put up for sale by Live Nation but so far there are no takers. Supposedly Live Nation will work with other venues like the arena or the stadium to promote summer concerts.

I had heard this news a couple of days ago from Rev. Keith Coes via a MySpace bulletin. It's a damn shame about Starwood and, in a lot of ways, the closing of the venue spells the end of an era. Starwood opened in 1985 and as it changed sponsors, was also known as the First American Music Center and AmSouth Amphitheatre. A lot of big shows came through Nashville and stopped at Starwood, including at least one Lollapalooza Festival that I remember, one H.O.R.D.E. Festival and many shows by Bob Dylan, Aerosmith and Hank Williams Jr. among many, many others. The very first program at the new Starwood was Charlie Daniels' 1985 "Volunteer Jam;" ironically, the now-canceled 2007 Volunteer Jam was the only event booked this year in the venue.

The opening of Starwood Amphitheatre during the summer of 1985 coincided with the first issues of The Metro and they were an early advertiser with the rag, possibly the only one that Gus didn't piss off or alienate in some way. During the summer of 1989, Gus worked a deal with Starwood to publish a monthly "concert guide" called All Access. I was the editor of the tabloid and wrote most of the content, rush-to-the-deadline pieces that were a cross between artist biographies and advertising copy. They were often pieced together from label bios, but now and then we scored an interview with one of the performers and could write a proper piece. Mostly, however, the rag just sucked...or so I remember. In our move to WNY, I discovered a bunch of old word processor discs from that era that include all of my All Access pieces. I found a company online to convert the discs to proper Microsoft formats so I'll probably pay them to do so, if only to salvage a bunch of unknown writing files for future projects (like THE OTHER SIDE OF NASHVILLE).

On the plus side, putting together All Access every month netted me and my new girlfriend/future bride Tracey free passes to all the Starwood shows that we could tolerate. I remember seeing Dylan and Aerosmith and Joan Jett and probably a bunch more that we've forgotten. Plus, since Starwood paid Gus for the publication, he in turn threw a few dollars my way, the first (and last) money that I ever got from Palas for writing until he bought out my R Squared zine with Radio Lightning's money. It was a summer that I was trying (and failing miserably) to make a living as a freelance writer and the All Access paydays represented the bulk of my income that year, even if I had to pry every dollar out of Gus' clenched fists.

I hadn't been to Starwood, or whatever they were calling it, for years before moving. Even if you got on the guest list of an artist for a show, you had to pay outrageous parking fees and deal with obscene traffic jams and the resulting road rage going in (and out) of the venue. Beer and coke prices were too damn high, the crowd too often obnoxious, and during the past few years, the shows promoted at the venue held little interest. As is often the case, the best touring shows each summer passed Nashville by and fans had to travel to Atlanta or Charlotte to catch bands.

No matter how you slice it, however, Starwood Amphitheatre had a lasting impact on Nashville's music scene; it was the 800-pound gorilla that you couldn't ignore. It will be missed by many of the city's mainstream music fans who have fond memories of their favorite shows at the venue. In the end, Starwood proved to be another casualty of the changes and declining fortunes experienced by the music industry over the past decade, and I doubt that another venue like Starwood will be built in Nashville in the future...and that's a sad thing, indeed.