On Bruce Springsteen's current tour in support of the 'Working On A Dream' album, an interesting game of Stump the Band has emerged as a centerpiece of each evening's performance. Informed by reports in both the on and off line media, through fan sites and blogs, as well as by You Tube clips, fans are fully aware of the routine and arrive at shows ready to stump the E Street Band.
If you have general admission tickets (note I didn't say "general admission seats"), you may actually luck into standing in the pit down in front of the stage. Those who do, often bring signs with song titles that they pass towards the front of the stage. Bruce collects these song requests towards the middle of his set, and then combs through them, picking songs that will keep the band on their toes. Often these have been requests for obscure Bruce compositions, but lately this has increasingly become a game of Stump the Band.
One recent example was The Who's 'My Generation', which you'll note in the introduction to the song, Bruce explains that "we're gonna play something that we've never played before". What he really meant is that the E Street Band had never played this before. Amazingly, Bruce recalls the exact year, 1967, when he and Steve last played 'My Generation'.
As luck would have it, an audio recording from 1967 of Bruce's first band The Castiles doing 'My Generation' was just posted the other day, and I just happened to spot it. Steve wasn't in the Castiles, but perhaps they played it together in another band, or in a late night jam in a Jersey shore bar. So, 42 years apart, here are two different renditions of the same song.
The original was of course written by Pete Townsend for his band, The Who. According to Wikipedia, it was "Written by Pete Townshend in 1965 for rebellious British youths called mods, it expressed their feeling that older people "just don't get it"." As a just turned 18 year old in 1967, Bruce may well have identified with that point of view. As a guy on the verge of 60, and a father of three kids, I imagine the song may mean something a little different to him now. More than anything, it's probably just a whole hell of a lot of fun to play, and to prove that a bunch of 60ish Jersey shore musicians can still rock with the best of them.
No mention of 'My Generation' would be complete without letting The Who show us how it was meant to be played. The following clip is from their infamous performance on the Smothers Brothers' television program. I seem to remember reading somewhere that drummer Keith Moon had paid one of the stage hands to rig the song ending explosion to be a little more powerful than it was supposed to be.
Unfortunately for Pete, he happened to be destroying his guitar directly in front of the explosion site. I believe this was the beginning of Pete's hearing loss in his right ear. Of course, a few more decades of loud performances likely didn't help. You can see Pete putting his hand up to the right side of his head as the smoke clears. Rock 'n Roll is not for the faint of heart.
Happy Friday!
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