BEFORE: Checking the records for what happened on this day in music history, I find that August 15 was the date in 1969 of the original Woodstock Festival - damn, I wish I'd known that, I could have delayed the Joe Cocker film by 2 days to get that to line up right. Watching Joe Cocker sing "With a Little Help From My Friends" at Woodstock on the anniversary of that could have been really cool. (Ah, but it was a 3-day festival, right? I'd probably have to check whether that performance happened on the first day or the second, or what...that seems like a lot of work.) But it's also the 49th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner, and all those other great performances from bands like Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead, the Who, and, umm, yeah, Sha Na Na was also there.
Screw it, I'm taking a look, but it's not like today's the 50th Anniversary or anything, that will come around next year. Gee, I wonder if anybody's planning anything to mark that. Everyone who was there is probably either dead or in a nursing home by now, right? I guess Carlos Santana's still in pretty good health, and a couple of guys from the Who are still alive. But Joe Cocker's gone, Jimi's gone, Jerry Garcia's gone, a couple of guys from The Band are gone, Johnny Winter's gone - maybe they can cobble something together from whichever senior citizens, like CSNY, are still breathing and available.
(The first day of Woodstock, by the way, featured Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez. In my opinion, anyone who showed up on Day 2 didn't miss much.)
Bruce Springsteen carries over from "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives" - really, I could have gone in a hundred different directions with a cast list as large as that film had. But to get to THIS film, with only one notable star (at least according to the IMDB) I had to follow the Springsteen connection. And tomorrow's film is another one with a very large cast, Springsteen's in that one, too - so really, I had to arrange the whole chain so that there would be two docs with Bruce in a row, so I could sandwich this one in between those two.
Again, I really should have flipped things, and gone from "Whitney: Can I Be Me" to the Clive Davis film, then linked from there to "History of the Eagles" and "Joe Cocker: Mad Dog with Soul". Linking from there to "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me" would have enabled me to follow the Springsteen link to here - I guess I would have ended up here today no matter what, so I just have to be satisfied with that.
THE PLOT: For 40 years Bruce Springsteen has influenced fans all over the world. This film gives the fans just as much time as the Boss himself, with fan-recorded footage and live performances from his past tours.
AFTER: Well, at least this is an innovative way to string together a bunch of concert footage from different tours and make something new out of it. I support recycling in all of its forms. But this is also a bit like when your favorite TV show says to tune in for an "all-new" episode and it turns out to be a damn clip show, like the main characters are stuck in an elevator or a meat locker and they think back on the funny things that happened to them before - which gives them an excuse to run old footage for most of the show. By all means, call that a "new" episode, but in no way is it "ALL-new". When I was a teenager that used to piss me off, I was a stickler for details even then.
They asked Springsteen fans to record phone-camera tributes to Springsteen, which is a similarly effective cost-cutting measure. Clearly there were some assigned parameters, like "describe what Springsteen means to you in three words", and some people followed that, and others didn't. Some people tried, but had trouble counting to three, if you can believe that. (I sure can.) This is really a double-edged sword, because for those fans that just want to tell a story, some succeed, and others just end up demonstrating how illiterate most Americans seem to be getting these days, unable to form sentences together to prove a coherent point. Others (mostly teen girls) are so vain and ego-centric that every time they make the slightest speaking error, they have to start over again from the beginning. Come on, people, you're not making a great work of literature here, just speak from the heart. One teen is particularly annoying, stopping and re-starting a dozen times. I bet she's got a zillion selfies on her phone.
But this ended up being just as unbalanced, if not more, than the Clive Davis tribute film from yesterday. Because who would go to the trouble of recording a tribute to Bruce Springsteen and then say something negative? And then even if they did, why would they take the time to submit it then? So OF COURSE you're going to get stories from people who hold the Boss in high regard, talking about the time that Bruce noticed them in the crowd and READ THEIR SIGN OUT LOUD! Like, Oh my god, you'd think that Jesus cured their leprosy or something. All that really proved was that Springsteen is literate, has good vision and needed to kill 10 seconds between songs.
But there were three fan stories that I liked. One of them actually did supply some balance, it came from a woman who's a huge Bruce fan, but her husband is clearly not. He goes with her to the concerts because he loves HER, not Springsteen, and he's not afraid to say so. His message to Bruce was basically, "Could you please make the concerts a bit shorter, because three hours is just a bit too long." Like, I love my wife, and I'll keep going to shows with her, but it's really starting to become a bit of an inconvenience. I totally feel this guy, I go to Broadway shows with my wife, and mostly I have a good time, but that does vary a little. I'm mainly there because it's her birthday and I bought her tickets, and I want to have that experience with her. Like, OK, I'll try to enjoy "The Lion King" on stage, but I never would have gone to see that by myself - someday I'll probably have to sit through "Hamilton" too, if the cost ever goes down, but it's not really my thing.
I also liked the story from the guy who dressed as Elvis Presley, and held up a sign at a Springsteen concert that read, "Can the King sing with the Boss?" Springsteen called the guy up on stage and started playing "All Shook Up", inviting the Elvis impersonator to join in. Elvis took over and went right into "Blue Suede Shoes" and the band followed. Imagine the balls on that guy, Bruce gets him up on stage to sing part of one song, and he launches into ANOTHER one. And now he's got a story that he can tell for the rest of his life.
The final story that I enjoyed came from a British fan who came all the way to NYC's Madison Square Garden with his wife to see his first Springsteen show, and as they were walking to their seats in the nosebleed section, way up in the back rafters of the building, a stranger approached and said he worked for Bruce, looked at their tickets and said he would give them an "upgrade". He gave them orange wristbands, held on to their upper section tickets and gave them a couple of tickets for floor seats. Now, I walk by MSG all the time, and on concert days there are always scalpers about, asking for both buyers and sellers - so this seemed like part of a scam where this guy would give them phony tickets and bogus wristbands, and hold on to their original tickets. This just seems like a natural way for scalpers to get tickets to re-sell, and out-of-towners with thick accents are probably easy targets for scams like that. But it turned out that the tickets were legit, and the couple got to sit in the front row for their first Bruce concert. Really, that story could have gone either way. It's great that some concerts keep that front section available, I'm guessing maybe the promoters want to get a look at the audience first-hand so they can find older people to sit there, people who look like they're going to behave and not get all grabby with the band, or try to climb up on stage uninvited.
But I'm just not a big Springsteen fan myself, I own his Greatest Hits CD, but that's about it. So as always, your mileage may vary. I just cleared another film off my Netflix list today, that's all. I just don't care about some female fan's budding sexual interest after attending her first rock concert when she was 13. At least most people remembered to turn their phone 90 degrees before recording their videos. And I've got to hand it to anyone who not only crowd-sources funding for a film, but finds a way to crowd-source the film''s footage! If nothing else, it's a hell of an idea.
Also starring Clarence Clemons, Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa, and Courteney Cox, all appearing in archive footage. (I don't know enough about the E Street band to name the other members seen here, but I've updated the IMDB listing for this film with the ones that I do know...)
RATING: 4 out of 10 "Born in the USA" posters
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