Sunday Night Springsteen

Tonight it's not Springsteen himself, but there's still a connection.

The Hold Steady. We'd never really heard of them before seeing them as part of a tribute show in April of 2007, honoring Bruce Springsteen as a fundraiser for the "Music for Youth Foundation". The Hold Steady was the last act (before Mr. Springsteen strode onto the stage), and they did a great reading of "Atlantic City". I've since gotten into their music, and can highly recommend them, especially their most recent album, "Stay Positive".

In this first video, frontman Craig Finn talks about his rock heroes, and says his biggest hero musically is – Bruce Springsteen.



I like this quote, about when he finally met one of his musical heroes: "Meeting your heroes, there’s such an opportunity for them to disappoint you because they can’t live up to all the things that you’ve hung on them. The good news is, if your hero’s Bruce Springsteen, he doesn’t disappoint."

And this is a video with a song about heroes, and trying to be heroes. There are numerous versions of this song on the youTubes, and this live version from Late Night is a good one (albeit the picture is a little odd).



Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer
I think he might’ve been our only decent teacher
Getting older makes it harder to remember…
We are our only saviors …

And, what the heck, let's roll the "Rosalita" from the "Music for Youth" finale. Mr. Finn starts it off, and as I wrote at the time: "But, the honoree made a point of letting the other artists do most of the lead singing. They acted like they were kids again, singing along to the record. It was kind of sloppy, but well ..."