Bruce Springsteen just played Los Angeles on his Land of Hope & Dreams tour, which is featuring Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine) on guitar along with The E Street Band.
And while he’s covered it before, Springsteen broke out his first performance of The Clash‘s “Clampdown” in 12 years. Singing the first verse, letting Morello take the second before the two trade off lines in the bridge, the performance very much invokes the line in the song, “anger has a power if you know how to use it.” Springsteen has opened shows with a speech about the importance of standing up for what’s right and fighting those with anti-American ideas, namely President Trump. (He adds the line “in these days of evil El Presidente” to the song, so it’s not hard to figure out what he’s lashing out at.)
The anger and fury that has made the shows on this tour so affecting continues in this performance. You have zero doubt that Springsteen and Morello strongly believe in standing up for what is right. If this performance doesn’t get you up and energized, I don’t know if anything else will.
Springsteen’s “Land of Hope & Dreams” tour runs through the end of May.
You sort of know where you are with Portland’s Dandy Warhols. Their grungy fug of elemental electronica and gritty guitars rarely disappoints, nor does it stray far from their narrowly defined template. Applying a sheen of intelligent and informed dumb to everything they touch, cover versions have always proven sure ground for the quartet, making Pin Ups, their second set devoted thereto, something to relish. Given, too, the influences in their original songs are never that hard to spot, they nail more personality into the songs of others than you might reasonably expect, making this so much more than swoozy re-runs.
Nouvelle Vague is back with a new collection titled Should I Stay or Should I Go? I’m going to hesitate in answering that question, as there is the one more demanding, about how this lot are still going. No offense intended, mind; back in the day, Nouvelle Vague’s bossa nova revisiting of punk and new wave songs was really something to behold, with both the novelty and the application well worthy of praise and merit. But now? I know a version has been touring, but I hadn’t appreciated they were still marketing something new, or, more to the point, new to them. So, is this a soft sophisticated samba swirl through the song cycles of Eilish and Swift, Sheeran and whoever else the young people adore? Ummmm, nope. This is a further trawl through the hallowed dusty halls of the last century. Or, more to the point, hoping the audiences who loved them near two decades ago will still love them now, and are still listening to their tired old record collections.