Film Posts 34: The Danish Girl, 12th Jan 2016

The opening shot of the film sets the impression that will last to the end: this is a very painterly film. Every scene is shot artistically – you feel that you could take any individual shot from the film and hang it framed on a wall.

The film centres on two artists, Gerda and Einar Wegener, and Einar’s realisation that he is a woman who happens to have been born a man. Set in Copenhagen in 1926, a time when the world had no concept of transgender, Einar’s transformation into Lily Elbe is traumatising both for herself and for Gerda, whose happy, married life is so completely overturned as what started as a game unlocks the hidden Lily, and the man she has loved for years becomes a woman.

Alicia Vikander as Gerda

Eddie Redmayne has the eye-catching role as Lily, but Alicia Vikander is wonderful as Gerda (in writing this I’ve just seen she’s won the Screen Actors Guild Award).

The Danish Girl deals with an interesting subject, it’s well-acted (Oscars likely) and sumptuous to look at. Lily’s process of learning how to be a woman – how to look, how to move, how to stand, how to express emotion as a woman – is handled well, but in the end, for me, it felt more of a well-made curiosity rather than an immersive emotional experience.

 

….and as Lily

Eddie Redmayne as Einar….

There’s been some criticism of the movie from the transgender community, arguing that here was a chance to cast a transgender actor, rather than Eddie Redmayne in a dress. But if the movie’s aim is to attract an audience so that the issues raised can be considered and discussed then casting Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne is surely a better bet than an unknown (but more authentic) choice.

It certainly shows how far we’ve come in the past 90 years to move from a position where the very notion of “transgender” was inconceivable to the medical profession and the general public to one where the debate is whether the film is sufficiently trans.

 

How I Got Into….The Decemberists

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Several posts ago I talked about how I got into Joni Mitchell, thanks to the free CD on the cover of a magazine.

The same thing happened with The Decemberists.

They were just one of several bands I’d never heard of who were featured in the cover CD of whichever magazine it was (probably The Word). The track was The Shankhill Butchers, taken from The Decemberists’ 2006 album The Crane Wife, and (another theme of these posts) it was interesting enough to send me off to Spotify to listen to the rest of the album. Which I immediately loved.

The Decemberists are a band from Portland, Oregon, fronted by singer-songwriter Colin Meloy, who fall roughly under the “Indie Folk” label. But they’re more difficult than that to categorise – there’s prog rock (Jenny Conlee’s keyboards on The Island sound a lot like Keith Emerson), there’s pop, there’s musical theatre (check out The Mariner’s Revenge Song).

They provide a great live experience, brilliantly attuned to their audience, and always thoroughly entertaining.

I like bands who are serious about their music, but don’t take themselves too seriously, and The Decemberists are the embodiment of that attitude. The songs are well-crafted, the musicianship is excellent, but there’s a knowing smile in much of it. Often it’s the juxtaposition of subject and tune – many of the songs feature characters who die, often in violent circumstances, but the tunes are never downbeat, with a black humour sitting behind it all. Must be that Portland weirdness.

Voodoo Doughnuts and “Keep Portland Weird”

Of all the posts in this series, this was the most difficult to select links for – I’ve been back and forth and up and down the list so many times, trying to find songs that illustrate what I like about this band, what would make people who were coming to them for the first time get the idea.

Colin Meloy at the launch of “What a Terrible World…”

I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but if any of this catches your interest do go and listen to The Crane Wife, or Picaresque, or The King Is Dead, or What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World (probably not The Hazards Of Love, though, at least not first – Wikipedia’s description: “The Hazards of Love tells the tale of a woman named Margaret; her shape-shifting lover, William; his fey forest queen mother; and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake, who recounts with spine-chilling ease how he came “to be living so easy and free” in “The Rake’s Song””).

So here are some links – I know there are more than usual but the list could have been many times longer. I hope this inspires you to look further into this band and spread the word, and you really should go to see them live.

Make You Better, with an appearance from Nick Offerman as the creepy host of an 80s-style German rock show. Not taking themselves too seriously.

Eli The Barrow-Boy, which illustrates the contrast between what’s a really nice tune and a very tragic story (just the two deaths here, though, so quite restrained by The Decemeberists’ standards).

The Mariner’s Revenge Song, great theatrics in a song. A callous lover, an abandoned mother, a giant whale, and a tale of revenge. Often used to close a live show, with audience participation as the doomed ships’ crews.

Lake Song. Just chose this because it’s rather lovely, especially Jenny Conlee’s piano, and I love the line “seventeen and terminally fey”.

We Both Go Down Together, another great chorus in the midst of a tale of a doomed, abusive relationship ending in joint suicide. But how can you not love a song with the lyric “Meet me on my vast verandah, my sweet untouched Miranda”? I think sometimes he writes these things for the challenge (or for a bet).

Sons And Daughters, selected by my wife for this list, and rightly so. Colin Meloy says he wrote this when he’d learned his first two chords on the bouzouki. It’s got bouzouki. It’s got accordian. It’s got the word “dirigible”. And it’s got a tune that everyone can sing along to.

If you’ve read this far down this post, thank you. Sons And Daughters is the final track on The Crane Wife, and a brilliant way to close an album.

And it’s also the way I’m closing this series of posts.

This will be the last of these weekly “How I Got Into….” posts, though there may be occasional ones in the future if I think there’s something worth sharing and a story to go with it.

Thanks for reading, and particularly for the nice comments that you’ve all left over the past few months. I hope you found something here you liked.

How I Got Into….Arcade Fire

I got into Arcade Fire by mistake.

In the early 2000s we watched the Alan Ball’s brilliant TV series Six Feet Under, about a family who run a funeral home. In amongst the angst there was a lot of dark humour – each episode opened with a death, which got progressively odder and more inventive over the course of 63 episodes. The series was beautifully written and acted, and introduced us to Michael C Hall (Dexter) and Rachel Griffiths (Brothers and Sisters).

The second soundtrack album, featuring Arcade Fire and others

Without giving away any spoilers, the final moments of the final episode were possibly the best ending I’ve seen to any long-running series. As one character drives through the landscape in a re-painted hearse, we see flash-forwards to the deaths of the characters who have survived to the end of the series, and it’s quite wonderful – very few series give you that sense of a true ending, where you know how everything will play out for these characters you’ve lived with for five years.

And over this final scene plays a truly epic piece of music. I didn’t know who it was by or what it was called, so when I was in my local CD shop (remember those?) I checked the soundtrack album. Final track – Cold Wind  by Arcade Fire. That’ll be it, then, I thought.

I was already aware of Arcade Fire as being the darlings of the kind of music press I was reading, famous for the freeform nature of their gigs, including marching off stage, down the aisles and finishing gigs on the steps outside the theatre. They were very hip.

Funeral

So I bought their first album, Funeral. And found that that epic final music from Six Feet Under wasn’t actually Arcade Fire at all (it was a track called Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie – set yourself aside 7 minutes and 55 seconds and enjoy that too).

Ok, so the Six Feet Under  thing hadn’t worked out. But I’d accidentally discovered a really good band. They’re from Montreal (though Régine Chassagne is from Haiti) and tend to be classed as “Indie”, but some of their music is particularly grand. I wasn’t keen on their latest album, Reflektor, but it may grow on me in time. And Neon Bible and The Suburbs were both excellent collections of songs.

Win Butler and Regine Chassagne: husband and wife sharing lead vocals 

And they’re well worth seeing live. Arcade Fire are a big band, at least six members with two or three more added for tours, and there’s always something energetic going on on stage.

A happy accident, then.

One other thing: when Google launched Chrome Arcade Fire released a video feature based on their track The Wilderness Downtown which links to Google Earth images of whatever address you type in – give it a go, it takes a few seconds to get going, but very interesting (I suspect it will only work with Chrome, but I haven’t tried it with anything else).

The Suburbs from 2010 – accessible and brilliant

And if you visit their website www.arcadefire.com  there are some other interesting interactive videos – this is a band that like to experiment,

Here are a few links to some of my favourite Arcade Fire tracks:

Intervention: For some reason, this YouTube link sets the song to footage of The Battleship Potemkin.

Sprawl II: From The Suburbs – “Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains”.

Wake Up: This is the song that closes the concerts – big singalong bit that the crowd are still singing when they leave the building. If they haven’t played it, they’re coming back for an encore; when they play it. it’s time to go home. Looking for a link for the song, I found this live version with David Bowie (who was a big supporter of Arcade Fire).

 

How I Got Into….Rock Music (thanks to David Bowie)

I’ve nothing to add to the millions and millions of words generated about David Bowie this week. I was an admirer rather than a big fan, though Life On Mars?, Changes and Heroes are three of my favourite pop songs.

But thinking about a subject for this week, I realised that Bowie was instrumental to my love of rock music.

Growing up in the early ’70s, my music listening was either what my parents listened to or pop music (daytime Radio 1 and Top Of The Pops). I wasn’t listening to John Peel, or watching The Old Grey Whistle Test, or in any way exposing myself to the wider possibilities beyond the three minute pop song.

A 1970s Music Centre  

Then we got a Music Centre. This was a single device, consisting of a turntable, cassette player and radio with a hinged clear plastic lid – very popular at that time. This device would become the centre of my musical world over the next few years – countless hours listening through headphones while poring over record sleeves, copying records onto cassettes, creating mix tapes, recording songs or concerts from the radio.

But it started with Bowie.

I’m thinking it must have been early in 1976 when we got it. The only problem was, I didn’t own anything to play on it. So my cousin, a few years older than me, lent me three albums. One was by Leo Sayer (very popular at the time), one by Uriah Heep (not sure I ever listened to that, certainly not more than once)….and Space Oddity by David Bowie.

The cover of the 1972 reissue of Space Oddity, as loaned by my cousin

This was like nothing that I’d ever experienced. Sure, I’d heard Bowie’s singles, loved Starman, but this was something else. Some of these songs went on for ages – Cygnet Committee is over 9 minutes long – and had incomprehensible lyrics: for some reason, the lines from Unwashed, And Somewhat Slightly Dazed – “I got eyes in my backside that see electric tomatoes on credit card rye bread” – impacted themselves on the brain of a sheltered 14-year-old and have lived with me all these years, though they make no more sense to me now than they did then. And the other-worldly sounds that were created (which I now know were largely down to Rick Wakeman’s Mellotron) were way beyond the typical Radio 1 playlist.

For some reason, this didn’t make me a David Bowie fan, and by the end of that summer (assuming I’m right in remembering it was 1976) I had my first Rick Wakeman album and was off down the Prog Rock Road.

But it was David Bowie (thanks to my cousin) who got me into rock music.

The links:

The Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud: “And the hangman plays the mandolin before he goes to sleep”

Memory Of A Free Festival: “Oh, to capture just on drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon….the sun machine is coming down and we’re gonna have a party”

Cygnet Committee: “I gave Them life, I gave Them all, They drained my very soul….dry”

 

As I’ve gone back to finding and re-listening to those tracks from Space Oddity, and re-reading the lyrics, I’m thinking that maybe I missed something quite important by not being a David Bowie fan all these years, and I need to go back and see what I’ve missed. There may be a new “How I Got Into….” on David Bowie in the future, that dates back to this post.

Film Posts 33 – Branagh Theatre Company Live: The Winter’s Tale, 3rd January 2016

This was the first time I’d seen The Winter’s Tale, which apparently is one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”. How did it get like this?

(William Shakespeare calls on Richard Burbage at The Globe Theatre)

BURBAGE: Come in, Will. Now, about that new play of yours.

SHAKESPEARE: The Winter’s Tale?

BURBAGE: Yes, that one. Got a couple of notes for you from the rehearsal.

SHAKESPEARE: Do you?

BURBAGE: Yes. It’s not very funny, is it?

SHAKESPEARE: It’s not meant to be. It’s a tragic story of jealousy and guilt.

BURBAGE: I can see that, but the audience doesn’t want another tragedy, they want a laugh.

SHAKESPEARE: I could throw in a comedy gravedigger.

BURBAGE: Again? You did that in Hamlet, and it wasn’t funny then.

SHAKESPEARE: Local craftsmen and artisans?

BURBAGE: You did that in Dream.

SHAKESPEARE: Country folk? Haven’t done them for a while.

BURBAGE: Yes, that’ll do it – country folk. Shepherds, maybe. Bit of singing and dancing, frolicksome bucolic garden party. I reckon you could get a good 20 minutes’ funny material there.

SHAKESPEARE: (sighs) Right. Anything else?

BURBAGE: Yes. It’s running a bit long. You need to take out a half-hour, maybe more now you’ve added the singing shepherds.

SHAKESPEARE: But that’s a whole Act! How am I going to do that and the story still make sense?

BURBAGE: I shouldn’t worry about that. How about a voiceover? “During the Interval, sixteen years have passed…” kind of thing.

SHAKESPEARE: Already done. Wrote it after last night’s run-through.

BURBAGE: Well, you need to find something else. How about getting rid of the reconciliation scene?

SHAKESPEARE: But the play’s been building up to that.

BURBAGE: You don’t need it. We’ll drop the curtain, you can get a couple of the funny farmers to do a turn at the front to explain what’s happened, and while they’re doing that we can be setting up the stage for the finale.

SHAKESPEARE: The audience won’t be happy. That’s the payoff they’ve been waiting for.

BURBAGE: They’ll see it as an interesting piece of theatre craft. Trust me on this.

SHAKESPEARE: (sighs deeply) Is that it?

BURBAGE: The ending.

SHAKESPEARE: What about it?

BURBAGE: Bit of a downer.

SHAKESPEARE: It’s a tragedy.

BURBAGE: So you said. But now we’ve got the singing and dancing bit, the ending needs a lift. That queen who died in Act III….

SHAKESPEARE: Hermione?

BURBAGE: Yes, her. How about…..she’s not really dead!

SHAKESPEARE: She is dead. The king went to see the body.

BURBAGE: Then how about….she’s a statue that comes back to life?

SHAKESPEARE: Seriously?

BURBAGE: Yes, it’ll be brilliant. We wheel her onstage while the curtains are closed, there’s some chat about how sad everyone is, bit of mystical magic stuff, then – TA DA!!! – back to life, everyone friends again, crowd goes home happy. Can’t fail.

SHAKESPEARE: (sighs very deeply) OK, leave it with me. (Turns to leave)

BURBAGE: Oh, Will, one more thing.

SHAKESPEARE: What?

BURBAGE: My son got a bear costume for his birthday, absolutely loves it, won’t take it off. I said he could wear it in the play tonight.

SHAKESPEARE: Really? You want me to write a part for a bear?

BURBAGE: He’ll be thrilled.

SHAKESPEARE: He’ll be a laughing-stock. He’s eight.

BURBAGE: I’m sure you can do something, Will. Put him behind a screen, lit from below, giant shadow, that sort of thing.

SHAKESPEARE: Sure. Maybe he could eat Antigonus after he abandons the baby.

BURBAGE: Brilliant! Off-stage, though – we don’t have a budget for special effects. He’s going to be so excited. Look, here he is now. Doesn’t he look fierce in that costume?

SHAKESPEARE: Oh, good grief. (Exit, pursued by a bear)

(With thanks to PD for additional material)

 

Setting aside the problems with the cobbled-together feel of the play itself, one of the interesting things about the production was seeing Shakespeare performed on a “conventional” proscenium arch stage. Most Shakespeare I’ve seen live recently has been at the RSC, with the thrust stage (audience on three sides), and the on-screen broadcasts have been from the National Theatre (very big stage) or Royal Exchange (very compact and “in the round”). This staging in the beautiful Garrick Theatre feels “conventional” by comparison – actors on stage, audience out front, footlights, curtains.

The performances are, as expected, really good. Kenneth Branagh, in a pre-recorded piece before the broadcast began, talked about his philosophy of “conversational Shakespeare”, to be spoken as natural speech, not declaimed in a sonorous voice, and he makes the role of Leontes feel believable (at least, within the confines of the plot). Dame Judi Dench is radiantly matronly as the tragic Paulina.Jessie Buckley and Tom Bateman play the lovers Perdita and Florizel with charm and passion, and John Dagleish’s Autolycus is wonderfully rogueish. And the singing and dancing in Act IV was spectacular.

But the bear was off-stage – I guess it’s hard to pull off a convincing man-in-a-bear-suit effect for a modern audience.

 

How I Got Into….First Aid Kit

There’s no big story here, just a recommendation from a friend.

Martin and I had been colleagues at work for several years, then both moved on over time to other places. A couple of years later work brought us back together in an official capacity – Martin was working for the industry regulator and visited the company I was working for to discuss some aspect of our operation.

Once we’d finished reviewing the approach to Non-Half Hourly Data Aggregation* (or whatever the focus of the meeting was) we got onto catching up on music, and Martin gave me the names of a few groups he thought I might like. We don’t agree on everything, but there’s enough crossover in our taste for it to be worth checking out.

As usual, it was off to Spotify at the first opportunity and although I don’t remember the other names Martin gave me, one jumped out – First Aid Kit.

First Aid Kit are two sisters,  Johanna & Klara Söderberg, from Sweden – here I go again with female vocalists from the north – and their music is somewhere between folk and Country & Western (a genre which generally doesn’t do anything for me). They write their own songs, and very good songs they are – which I find astonishing considering how young they are – their first album was released in 2010 when Johanna was 20 and Klara 17. And they sing the most exquisite harmony.

Johanna doing her trademark hair thing

I  saw them live at the start of 2015 in the impressive Symphony Hall in Birmingham. Unfortunately, a couple of songs in there was a hitch – Klara disappeared off stage for 5 minutes due to a wardrobe malfunction leaving Johanna frozen in panic – and the delay sucked the energy out of the audience, leaving them struggling to recover. But then they performed an a capella version of Ghost Town – just two young women, one guitar, no microphones, singing harmony in the acoustically wonderful Symphony Hall – and those few beautiful moments of magic pulled the whole thing back together, and the audience loved them right through to the end of the encore.

If you’ve not heard First Aid Kit before, check out their albums The Lion’s Roar and Stay Gold, but do also dig out some of their lovely cover versions of songs like America, Universal Soldier or Abba’s Chiquitita.

 

And here are a few links:

Emmylou: their signature song with the signature harmonies, and with Emmylou Harris in attendance, moved to tears

The Lion’s Roar: this may be better listened to without the weird video

Cedar Lane: can’t decide if this is my favourite track from Stay Gold or the next one….

The Bell: ….actually, it doesn’t matter, they’re all good.

Thanks for the tip, Martin.

• for more information on Non-Half Hourly Data Aggregation in the UK Electricity Industry, read this.

How I Got Into….Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Isn’t it easy to be judgemental about things for no good reason?

I was aware that there existed a TV show called Buffy The Vampire Slayer but dismissed it, without ever having seen it, as being some kind of trashy American show aimed at teenagers (I’m talking about the TV show here, not the earlier movie). So for years I never watched it.

Which turned out to be a very big mistake.

What changed it was a chat with a work colleague, who was describing his Friday evening. He lived away from home during the week, and travelled home on Friday. He’d join the family for dinner then they’d sit down to watch that week’s episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which he said was very good, despite the title.

Since he’s around ten years older than me, this made me think that maybe I’d been missing something – maybe it’s not a trashy teen show after all.

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers (with stake)

Then one Friday night I put the TV on when I went to bed, and there was an episode of Buffy showing on BBC2. It was an episode from towards the end of Season 5 (the Scooby Gang are trying to rescue Dawn from Glory and her minions…which will mean nothing to anyone who doesn’t know the show), so the plot and characters made little sense, but that didn’t matter – something interesting was happening, there was action and humour, and the dialogue was sharp and snappy. These were characters I wanted to spend time with. I watched again the next week, and the next, and so got to the end of Season 5 (still nothing made sense).  Then BBC2 started showing Season 2 so I watched that (this was before box sets or on demand viewing became a big thing, so you took what was on offer). And I was completely sold on it.

Eventually I treated myself to the box set, went back to the start and followed it through to the end. And what a treat it was.

Joss Whedon created the character of Buffy Summers as a response to the archetype of the screaming, blonde, teen victim in horror films – this time, the blonde teenager is the one the monsters have to be afraid of. Whedon used Buffy over the course of seven seasons to explore a lot of ideas about growing up, dealing with typical teenage issues (romance, isolation, uncertainty, optimism, obsession and so on) whilst also keeping running the underlying thread of “the chosen one” fighting vampires, demons and an assortment of other villains to keep the town of Sunnydale (and, by extension, the world) safe.

And it was always entertaining, playing with the ideas of thrillers, horror, and teen fiction.

Buffy and the gang

Some episodes are rightly revered, particularly “Hush” which is almost entirely silent, “The Body” where Buffy has to deal with the death of a loved one (a rare natural death being so much harder to handle than the many unnatural ones across the series), and the utter genius of the musical episode “Once More With Feeling”.

So Buffy also led me to Joss Whedon, which then led to Firefly, Serenity and Dollhouse. I’d probably have got there in the end – someone else would have given me the recommendation, especially for Firefly – but why did it have to take so long?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer remains one of my favourite TV series, so why had I been so sniffy about it for so long without ever having watched it?

 

 

Film Posts 32: Star Wars: The Force Awakens – 24th December 2015

I had mixed feelings going into the new Star Wars film.

Excited, obviously – the “original” Star Wars (now Episode IV: A New Hope) came out when I was 16, and was just the most awesome thing that had been in the cinema ever. Like many people in the cinema the day I saw it, I looked over my shoulder as the Star Destroyer makes its first massive entrance at the top of the screen, and ducked and dodged as the X-Wings make their final run down the canyons of the Death Star. The world changed that day as George Lucas redefined the spectacle of movies.

Imperial Star Destroyer from Episode IV – no, it’s not actually above your head

As everyone knows, The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch, but I do have fond memories of Return of the Jedi, queuing outside the Odeon in Newcastle on the day it opened, cinema staff saving time by selling us tickets before we even got through the doors, then watching the film in the most packed cinema I’ve ever been in – people sitting on the steps between the rows of seats and (for all I know – I was glued to the screen) standing at the back.

And so that sense of excitement carried through to The Phantom Menace in 1999. At the time we all enjoyed it – Darth Maul, pod-racing – but I watched it again recently and it really isn’t very good. And although we dutifully turned out for the release Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I’m not sure I’ve seen either of them again since.

So, mixed feelings of anticipation and apprehension as the family took a Christmas Eve trip – the trailer looked good, JJ Abrams was now in charge (George Lucas nowhere near it), Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote Empire and Jedi) wrote the screenplay. But would it be a letdown again?

In a word, no.

We loved it. From the opening titles crawl to the final shot which sets up the remaining episodes, it’s a fun ride. X-Wings, Tie-Fighters, light sabres, cute droids, dashing heroes (and heroines) – everything you want from a Star Wars movie.

Sure there are things you can quibble over, though as I’m not going to say anything that could be a spoiler, so I won’t go into details, but they’re trivial when you’re having such a good time.

Rey, Finn and BB8 being chased by a Tie Fighter – if you’re a Star Wars fan, there’s enough in this one still to make you want to see the movie.

Daisy Ridley as Rey is a dynamic herione – finally, Star Wars gets a female action hero – and she and John Boyega (Finn) should become major stars on the back of this series. It’s good to see some familiar faces back, but the film doesn’t overplay that – the new characters are the main focus of the story.

The script is sharp, frequently funny, with little of that dire Lucas dialogue from the earlier films, and it nods to the fans of those films without alienating anyone coming to this as their first Star Wars experience (but why would anyone do that?). And JJ Abrams reins in the lens flare while delivering some truly spectacular visuals.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a top class and very worthy new addition to the Star Wars cycle, and I’m already looking forward to Episode 8, due in 2017.

 

All pictures: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Ph: Film Frame © 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Right Reserved..

Spring is here

Nice to see that Winter is over and Spring has arrived.

Our garden, 19th December 2015.

How I Got Into….Bruce Springsteen

There’s been a recurring theme in this column of me just not getting it with music legends to start with, then discovering later that I’d been missing out on something wonderful for years. So now, following on from Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, here’s The Boss, who I was completely ambivalent to until I saw him playing live.

When I say “playing live”, there’s a bit more to it than that. On holiday on the East Coast of the USA in summer 2001, we were staying a couple of weeks in the lovely town of Hyannis on beautiful Cape Cod. We brought away lots of good memories, which is something you want from a holiday.

What I didn’t expect to come away with was a musical revelation.

We were visiting the shopping mall in Hyannis and wandering round one of those American department stores that seemed so exotic to a British visitor (the gap’s closed over the years, but it was exciting back then). I was in the technical section looking at TVs, and on the biggest screen, demonstrating the merits of the TV picture, the DVD player (this was the early days of DVD) and the stunning sensurround sound system (or whatever), was a rock concert. It was Bruce Springsteen, and as I stood and watched for several minutes a light went on in my head. This man was awesome on stage.

This was the DVD that got me started

Even in those few moments you could see what was special. He was dynamic, enthusiastic, working with the audience, putting on a show without resorting to showmanship – no special effects, no pyrotechnics, no elaborate stage sets. Just Bruce and the E Street Band playing what the audience wanted to hear and looking in that moment as though there was nowhere else on Earth they would rather be than up on that stage playing for those people.

I’d spent years largely ignoring Springsteen, apart from Born To Run, which had been my singalong cassette of choice on many a long (solo) car journey. I’d known people over the years who’d loved his albums, but it was only the odd song that ever made an impression.

So naturally I now wanted to see him play live in person. Foolishly, I’d decided I only wanted to see him with the E Street Band so, missing out on the 2002 The Rising tour, I was disappointed that he went back to recording solo stuff and then the Seeger Sessions Band tour (with hindsight, that’s one I should have seen – even people who don’t like Springsteen should watch the DVD of that tour).

So it wasn’t until 2008 that I got the chance to see Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in Cardiff. And here’s where the magic worked again. My wife was completely indifferent to Springsteen’s music, but agreed to come with me to Cardiff Millenium Stadium. We didn’t want to stand, so with unreserved seating tickets we queued for an hour or so to be let in, then waited another hour or more before Springsteen came on stage (there’s no support band at a Bruce Springsteen gig).

By the time he left the stage three hours later, my wife was up and dancing with the rest, completely won over. He was energetic, engaging, and so clearly enjoying playing the music. He talks to the audience (see Van Morrison for comparison), tells stories, chats. The crowd is part of the show – we soon realised the places where you’re supposed to join in, like singing the first verse of Hungry Heart while the band just plays, or punching the air at the right moment in Born To Run, or just singing all the choruses and riffs.

It doesn’t sound like much written down, but in a crowd of 60,000 people, it’s infectious. And he plays requests – a lot of the audience have brought handwritten signs that he collects then chooses what to play. He’s having fun, and so are the thousands of people watching.

My wife’s been with me to see Springsteen and the E-Street band three times since, and each time has been an event. I’ve written before about wanting to see bands on their home-town gigs, so when I found out that Springsteen was playing Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ at the same time that were going to be in the area on vacation we had to rearrange the holiday itinerary to get there. At Manchester he was playing the first tour since the death of his long-time friend and sax player Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons, which included a perfectly staged and perfectly observed and very moving two minutes’ silence.

The late, great Clarence Clemons with Bruce Springsteen

And in Coventry the gig was on the day that actor James Gandolfini died – a close friend of the band, and particularly of Steve Van Zandt who had appeared with Gandolfini in The Sopranos. I’m sure it must have been hard to go on stage that night, but Springsteen put the band on his back and carried them through it, still entertaining the crowd, and playing the whole of the Born To Run album by way of a tribute to Gandolfini.

After years of indifference to Bruce Springsteen, ignoring college friends who tried to convince me, even shunning Wembley Stadium when he played there on the Born In The USA tour despite living close enough to be able to hear the sound from the stadium, I finally got it.

And his recent albums have been packed with terrific songs – he’s still doing great things, and I’m glad I wasn’t too late.

Springsteen’s just announced dates for a tour at the start of 2016 – USA dates only so far, but I’m keeping me eye out for UK dates. If you get a chance, just once, go and see what it’s all about.

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Each week when I’m thinking through who or what to write about in this series, there are three things I’m thinking about – the “origin story” of how I got into the subject, a bit about why the subject matters to me, and what links to include, particularly for musical subjects.

The first part of this one was easy, but I’ve started and then deleted no end of sentences trying to explain why Bruce Springsteen matters to me, and I just have to give up. Maybe there’s another post to come some day where I try to wrestle those thoughts into some kind of order, but that feels like a whole separate piece of work.

As for the links – this is Bruce Springsteen, for goodness’ sake. Apart from the 40-odd years of material, and especially the epically monster albums and songs, surely everyone knows everything they think they want to know about his music. You can go and check out the albums on Spotify or You Tube – if anyone wants a playlist from me, let me know, but last time I did one (to get my sons up to speed before that Giants Stadium gig) there were around 30 songs on it and it could easily have been twice as long.

So here are four very different links that I think illustrate aspects of what makes Bruce Springsteen so damned special….

Born To Run: An acoustic version, that makes this a completely different song from the version everyone knows.

The Ghost of Tom Joad: started life on an acoustic album, but this version with Tom Morello guesting on guitar is explosive.

Dancing In The Dark: Springsteen always pulls a woman from the audience to join him onstage for Dancing In The Dark (famously, Courteney Cox in the video). This time, he got his Mum and his sister, and it’s joyous. And this gives you just a short taste of how much fun a Bruce Springsteen concert is.

Pay Me My Money Down: With his Seeger Sessions Band – there’s not a single person in that entire building, whether on stage or in the crowd, who isn’t having fun.

This will be the last “How I Got Into….” post of 2015 as next Friday is Christmas Day. So a very Merry Christmas to anyone who’s still reading all the way down here, and I’ll see you in the New Year.