JOHN CAVANAUGH
From left, Flavor Flav, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Jon Bon Jovi perform at the “Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us” concert at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, June 5.
Near the end of the second of two “Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us” shows — celebrating the June 13 opening of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University — Springsteen reminded us that he had performed on campus, back when it was still Monmouth College, at the start of his career.
“If you had told me then, in 1969, that anything like this would ever, ever occur, I would have told you, ‘You are out of your fucking mind, my friend,’ ” he added.
Presumably, he was talking not just about the creation of the $50 million, 32,000-square-foot museum and archive, but about the two “Music America” concerts that took place at West Long Branch university’s 4,100-seat OceanFirst Bank Center, June 4-5.
The June 4 concert, which focused on American music up to World War II, featured Kenny Chesney, Rosanne Cash, Trombone Shorty, Dropkick Murphys and others; read my review HERE. The second show assembled an almost entirely different but even more star-studded cast, and ran for about a half-hour longer.
Since the show had a chronological format, surveying American music from Elvis Presley to hip-hop, it started with a bang, in the form of two Elvis hits — “Jailhouse Rock” and “Burning Love” (see videos below) — performed by Springsteen himself. He was capably backed by show’s house band, Stevie Van Zandt’s Disciples of Soul, led by guitarist Marc Ribler.
Springsteen later returned to sing a soaring version of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” (see video below) with Sheryl Crow. Larry Cambell & Teresa Williams added backing vocals, and Campbell took a guitar solo.
JOHN CAVANAUGH
Bruce Springsteen at The OceanFirst Bank Center at Monmouth University, June 5.
Later, Springsteen led the show’s four-song closing sequence.
First, he teamed with Gary Clark Jr., Nils Lofgren and Jimmie Vaughan for Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Further on up the Road.” He and Clark sang, and all four took guitar solos, as did Ribler. Next came Eddie Floyd’s “Raise Your Hand” (see video below), with most of the evening’s performers onstage; and then a warm, uplifting version of the Asbury Jukes classic “I Don’t Want to Go Home” (see video below), sung by Springsteen, Van Zandt (the song’s writer) and Jon Bon Jovi. The evening ended Springsteen’s intimate solo performance of his own “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
Highlights from earlier in the evening included Mavis Staples’ soul-stirring version of The Band’s “The Weight” (see video below); Darlene Love’s first-set-ending, appropriately over-the-top rendition of the over-the-top rock symphony “River Deep — Mountain High”; and a ferocious take on Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” (see video below) by Nils Lofgren (guitar and vocals) and Bon Jovi (vocals).
Surprises included Gary Clark Jr. paying tribute to Jimi Hendrix with a relatively obscure song from his catalog (“Power to Love,” aka “Power of Soul,” from the Band of Gypsys album); and original E Street Band keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Will Calhoun (of Living Colour) kicking off the second set with a sonically adventurous jazz-fusion number, “Sleight of Hand.”
Public Enemy (rappers Chuck D and Flavor Flav, and DJ Johnny Juice) contributed an explosive version of their anthem “Fight the Power,” and unintentionally set up the evening’s most amusing moment, when Flavor Flav and Chuck D repeatedly referred to The Disciples of Soul as The E Street Band.
JOHN CAVANAUGH
Mavis Staples at The OceanFirst Bank Center at Monmouth University, June 5.
“Wait’ll I tell The E Street Band they’ve been fucking fired,” Springsteen joked, when he returned to the stage. “The E Street Band is gone now! This is the new E Street Band … change of wardrobe and everything, man.”
As in Night 1, the show had an educational element, with Springsteen Center executive director Bob Santelli introducing the songs with brief discussions of different artists, genres and periods of American musical history. Even with two marathon shows, though, they couldn’t get to anything. Genres and artists worthy of more attention included punk, bebop, salsa, psychedelic-rock, ragtime, show tunes, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead … you could go on forever.
Springsteen himself noted that there was no Motown in the show; he then sang a line from The Temptations’ “My Girl,” a cappella, and mentioned the song’s co-writer, Smokey Robinson.
More attention could have been paid, for that matter, to Springsteen’s own songs. There was no discussion of his impact on American music, and only one song he wrote himself, “Land of Hope and Dreams.
But the Center is not opened yet. There will surely be more concerts to come — at the small theater inside the Center itself, as well as Monmouth University’s other venues — that can explore all kinds of things.
In his final remarks, Santelli mentioned the Center’s upcoming opening, and told the crowd, “We’d really like to see you there, and we’d like to see your friends there. We want to bring your kids there, your grandkids. It is going to be basically our home here, our spiritual home, our pilgrimage home for all the bands from all over the world to come here and understand the power of music — not just with Bruce, but all of American music.”
Or as university president Patrick F. Leahy said, at the start of the evening (after mentioning that he was repeating something Santelli told him), “What Washington, D.C., could do — that is, build an institution, place it right there on the Mall in Washington, dedicated to the preservation and celebration of American music in all of its forms — what they could do in D.C., we just did, right here on the campus of Monmouth University.”
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JOHN CAVANAUGH
Nils Logren and Jon Bon Jovi at The OceanFirst Bank Center at Monmouth University, June 5.
Here is the show’s setlist, with some videos, and a photo gallery by John Cavanaugh, underneath it. All songs featured The Disciples of Soul unless otherwise noted.
SET I
“Jailhouse Rock,” Bruce Springsteen
“Burning Love,” Bruce Springsteen
“Johnny B. Goode,” Jon Bon Jovi
“Bye Bye Johnny,” Stevie Van Zandt
“I Fall to Pieces,” Sheryl Crow
“Catfish Blues,” Gary Clark Jr.
“The Wanderer,” Dion
“A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” Sheryl Crow (solo)
“I Shall Be Released,” Bruce Springsteen and Sheryl Crow, with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
“River Deep — Mountain High,” Darlene Love
SET II
“Sleight of Hand,” David Sancious & Will Calhoun (duo)
“Texas Flood,” Jimmie Vaughan
“The Weight,” Mavis Staples
“Power to Love (Power of Soul),” Gary Clark Jr.
“Abraham, Martin and John,” Dion
“For America,” Jackson Browne
“I Am a Patriot,” Stevie Van Zandt & Jackson Browne
“Rockin’ in the Free World,” Nils Lofgren & Jon Bon Jovi
“Fight the Power,” Public Enemy
“Further on up the Road,” Bruce Springsteen, Gary Clark Jr., Nils Lofgren and Jimmie Vaughan
“Raise Your Hand,” Bruce Springsteen & Ensemble
“I Don’t Want to Go Home,” Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt, Jon Bon Jovi & Ensemble
“Land of Hope and Dreams,” Bruce Springsteen (solo)
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