Sunday 2 May 2010

My Bruce Journey - Part 17

‘We are Brothers and Sisters All’


We ordered our Seeger Sessions CD from Badlands - the first time we had bought from them.  They promised ‘very prompt’ delivery which is obviously a euphemism for you will get it on Saturday even though it’s not in the shops until Monday.

This was fantastic - I wasn’t expecting to get a listen until Monday evening and having the whole weekend to absorb the new album was a huge bonus.  I can’t remember hearing any of the tracks beforehand so it was a complete surprise when the first bars of ‘Old Dan Tucker‘ tumbled out of the stereo speakers in this joyful, haphazard sort of way!!.

Now I was expecting folk club type music - think Leonard Cohen, Fairport Convention, Joan Baez, or the traditional sort of thing that Mike Harding plays on his show. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wrmz This was music for a ceilidh.  It made me smile… and incidentally we did hear Mike Harding play a couple of tracks when the album was released.

It went on to my ‘Bruce’ play list on my iPod and after listening to it as an album for a couple of days I reverted to shuffling the play list.  It’s usually a good way for me to rate the songs when they come randomly mixed in with familiar tracks - favourites or ones I like less.

I have all Bruce’s songs on my iPod - even the tracks I don’t like - and I make myself listen to them. I reason that every song Bruce has written, or chosen to cover, has to be good (I admit I am a little biased) so there must be something to like about them.  I just haven’t found it yet… but I will.  I often come to really love a track after I have seen it live but, as I am never going to see everything live, there may always be the few songs that I just don’t get.

Anyway back to The Seeger Sessions.  I liked the album instantly although thought it a bit unusual, eccentric even and let’s be honest would any of us have bought this album if it hadn’t been a Springsteen album - well lots of fans didn’t buy it EVEN THOUGH it was a Springsteen album.

Two more albums down the road I still smile when an SS track comes on the iPod but as we have only bought one other folk album since (more of this in a later week) ‘We Shall Overcome’ hasn’t had a dramatic effect on our music taste.

Particular favourites are ‘Old Dan Tucker‘, ‘John Henry‘, ‘Oh Mary Don‘t You Weep’ and ‘Pay Me My Money Down‘…

… and I absolutely love ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live’.  When I found the video of The New Orleans’s Jazz Festival on the net I played it over and over.

 

This meant I had to buy the ‘American Land’ edition of ‘We Shall Overcome’ when it came out - well I suppose I could have downloaded the extra tracks from iTunes but I bought the whole thing again - was that a bit of a con?

So here we are looking forward to two concerts but there was heartbreak to come!!

I had always believed that life was intrinsically fair: that if you were kind to someone then sooner or later that kindness would be rewarded: that good triumphed over evil: that if you wanted something badly enough you would get it.  That was until St Luke’s.

We didn’t get tickets and it turned my view of life on it’s head.  You might say that a grown women in her forties should have known better on the other hand you might wonder if I had been lucky enough not to suffer any great disappointments up until now.  Well I haven’t had things all my way - who has? but I always reasoned that things happen for the best in the end. How can not getting St Luke’s tickets ever be for the best!!!

Walt Disney said that all our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them - well I had pursued …desperately.  So much for my dreams.  So much for Walt Disney and his happy ever afters.  I swear a little bit of my optimistic outlook on life died when I didn’t get those St Luke’s tickets.

Anyway with the CD playing in the car we set off to Manchester on a very gloomy wet day to hear only the second gig proper on this tour- yeah Bruce is trying this folky stuff out on us Europeans first.

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