{"id":68471,"date":"2018-11-05T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=68471"},"modified":"2018-11-04T13:44:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T19:44:24","slug":"were-a-little-bit-older-but-that-doesnt-mean-theres-nothing-new-left-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=68471","title":{"rendered":"“We’re A Little Bit Older, But That Doesn’t Mean There’s Nothing New Left To Say…”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I think I may have mentioned it last week – I saw “Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul” at the Ames Center last Friday.<\/p>\n

First – a word about the Ames Center, a place I’d only been to for a company meeting before.\u00a0 For a room that’s clearly designed for community theater and high school music productions, it’s a wonderful venue for a rock and roll show for people who don’t want to go do the club thing anymore.<\/p>\n

So here’s my TL:DR review.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, Steve Van Zandt’s first album, “Men Without Women”, is one of my five favorite records of the rock and roll era. I’ve written about it before<\/a>. You can even find it online, these days. It’s worth it.<\/p>\n

I looked forward to the show for months – missing the original Disciples was one of my great regrets 35 years ago.<\/p>\n

But I won’t say there wasn’t a little trepidation.<\/p>\n

Reviews I heard from friends who saw earlier incarnations of the band said I may have done well waiting; back then, Van Zandt had a penchant for PLAYING REALLY REALLY LOUD, as in “Husker Du called and said turn it down please” loud, to the point where it was unenjoyable even for unreconstructed rockers like me.<\/p>\n

And of course, back then he was very strident about his politics. He was the guy who wrote “Sun City”, the all-star rock-hop protest song about South Africa, and by far the biggest hit of his musical career…<\/p>\n

…and let’s just say he started at the peak. His musical activism went downhill from there. How far downhill? The Alarm called and said “Hey, maybe dial it back a skosh?”<\/p>\n

Point being, I don’t mind a little cognitive dissonance in my art – if I did, I’d be listening to country and Ted Nugent and little else. But getting browbeaten over politics when you’ve dropped a stack of money on a night out gets old fast.<\/p>\n

But a few months back, I read that after a couple of election cycles of being very politically active, Bruce Springsteen had noted (around the time he got his Tony for his Broadway show) that he was dialing it back; he was starting to realize half his audience was getting tired of being browbeaten (even those of us conservatives for whom his music resonated for reasons utterly connected to our beliefs<\/a>). I think Steve (Bruce’s longtime bandmate) got the message, mostly; at one point, he noted from the stage “…this is gonna be a *refuge* from politics”, to all kinds of cheering. And he largely did. More later.<\/p>\n

And the volume was, well, perfect. Not too loud to feel like we were at an old-folks concert (although there were people at the show in walkers and wheelchairs, which would be just too clever for a writer to come up with if the night had been fiction). Not too quiet, so I could feel just a *little* rock and roll-y.<\/p>\n

The band? Well, for starters, it was yuge. Fifteen people. Five piece horn section (including sax player Ed Manion, who in addition to being a longtime member of the Asbury Jukes and the Max Weinberg Seven, was the only other person onstage who’d played on Men Without Women), guitar, bass, drums, two keyboards (including Lowell Levinger, who was the guitar player in “The Youngbloods” fifty years ago, and doubled on mandolin and some middle-eastern bowed instrument that I couldn’t quite place), a percussionist with more gear than the drummer, Van Zandt on guitar, and three backup singers that didn’t stop dancing for two hours and occasionally almost stole the show.<\/p>\n

And they were really, really good.\u00a0 What’s more to say?<\/p>\n

The music? Well, unless you’re a Jersey shore music trivia buff, you probably don’t know most of it; if you are, most of it has been in your DNA since you were in your teens and twenties.<\/p>\n

They opened with a raveup of “Sweet Soul Music”, the Arthur Conley one-hit wonder from fifty years back, and followed up with:<\/p>\n