Friday, October 23, 2009
Cream Calendar The Gaslight Anthem Tonight at Mercy Lounge
Posted by Adam Gold on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Check out the above clip of The Gaslight anthem rockin' with the Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the only known footage of Bruce playing a Les Paul. Springsteen plays St. Louis on Sunday (guess who's making THAT road trip) and has tonight off. Maybe he'll swing through to town to join Gaslight at the Mercy Lounge. (It's unlikely but not impossible, right? Fingers crossed.) Anyhow, the band are friends with the Boss and sound like Social D. They're one of the only contemporary pop-punk bands that doesn't make me super jealous of Helen Keller. I expressed those sentiments a bit more eloquently in this week's dead tree edition of the Scene. Peep it:
With lyrics like "No surrender, my Bobby Jean," New Jersey natives The Gaslight Anthem wear the influence of another Garden State rocker proudly on their sleeves. It isn't often that you hear a pop-punk band that sounds familiar with music made before 1993. At this past summer's Glastonbury Festival, Bruce Springsteen himself anointed the band as potential heirs to his Jersey Shore throne when he joined them onstage to play the title track from their 2008 release That '59 Sound, only to later invite singer Brian Fallon to join him on "No Surrender" during his headlining set. True to their influences, their music retains that earnest "Us against The World" working-class ethos of obvious heroes like Social Distortion--who, this year, tapped them as an opening act--The Clash and, of course, Springsteen. With rousing shout-along choruses, walls of power chords and hair-trigger, meat-and-potatoes presentation, The Gaslight Anthem play pop-punk for adults, letting them know how the genre would've sounded had it retained some measure of meaningful songwriting and dignity after 1989--instead of having been hijacked and marred by polka beats, castrated, nasal vocals and scatological lyrics.
Comments (5)
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Those Gaslight dudes are good news. I booked 2-3 shows to help them out a few years ago when they were slummin' it across American in a 1980's cargo van. We played The 5 Spot and Spencer's Coffeehouse in Bowling Green. I'm sure no one remembers it since both shows were poorly attended, but I can assure you that those guys are insanely nice dudes and deserve every bit of success that they are having.
And that video is one of several appearances they've done with Bruce. He's quite the fan.
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Whatta cool clip. I'm borrowing that. That sealed the deal on tonight's show. I'm goin'.
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