Bono and The Edge: Tiny Desk Concert

I was a bit busy in March, so I missed this wonderful Tiny Desk Concert.

Catching up now -

Robin Hilton | March 17, 2023 It's hard to overstate the kindness and good-natured humor Bono and The Edge brought to the Tiny Desk. When they first arrived at the NPR Music offices, Bono spoke on an imaginary phone, "The talent's here! The talent's coming through," poking fun at their own fame, while carrying The Edge's guitar. (The Edge called Bono the best roadie he's ever had.) The two never stopped beaming, like two overjoyed newcomers thrilled at the chance to play for someone. The performance was a preview of U2's new album, Songs Of Surrender, featuring stripped-down versions of songs from across the band's catalog. To help pull off several reimagined songs from the 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, Bono and The Edge invited a teen choir from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., to join them. During rehearsals, Bono told the students to think of "Beautiful Day" as the kind of "post-drinking" singalong you'd bellow with friends after leaving a bar. He then quickly realized none of them are old enough to drink, before feigning a heart attack. Traveling without bassist Adam Clayton or drummer Larry Mullen Jr., Bono and The Edge made the trip from Ireland to the States specifically for the Tiny Desk, arriving in D.C. after five days of rehearsals at Bono's New York apartment. When they settled in for the performance, they treated the office to four songs, including a deeply emotional version of "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," written for the late INXS singer Michael Hutchence, and a reworked version of "Walk On," which Bono said was inspired by and dedicated to the people of Ukraine. SET LIST "Beautiful Day" "In a Little While" "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" "Walk On" MUSICIANS Bono: vocals The Edge: guitar, vocals Duke Ellington School of the Arts Choir: Petra Munter, Ayan Yacob, Kirsten Holmes, Jayla Norwood, Dyor Taylor, Jaylyn Pickney, Jevon Skipper, Joshua Jennings, Jordan Freeman Patrick Lundy: choir director Special thanks to: Sandi Logan (principal/HOS), Isaac Daniel (assistant principal) TINY DESK TEAM Producer: Bob Boilen Director: Joshua Bryant Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Series Producer: Bobby Carter Editor: Maia Stern Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Sofia Seidel, Michael Zamora Audio Assistant: Alex Drewenskus Production Assistant: Jill Britton Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer, Pilar Galván VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann #nprmusic #tinydesk #u2 #bono #theedge

Trina: Tiny Desk Concert

From NPR: "As a rapper, Trina has been pushing P since before her successors were even sitting up in Pampers and her wild ride of a Tiny Desk concert, 25 years after making her rap debut, only further proves why she is the blueprint.

Decked out in leather, diamonds and a wavy jet-black bussdown, the vet got comfortable behind the Desk quickly, ready to give fans the best of her sprawling discography. Trina temporarily fought back tears as she recited "Mama," a dedication to her late mother who died of cancer in 2019. The crew made the breakup anthem "Here We Go" feel even more aching. The energy in the space made a seismic shift when the band took on the bass-bumpin' classic "Da Baddest Bitch," infusing the live arrangement with nimble guitar, charismatic drums and background vocalists so entertaining, their delivery felt like epic narration from the chorus of an ancient Greek play or, just as epically, a group homegirls hyping up their friend at the function. In the middle of it all was the 305 Queen herself, killing her verses with breath control, authority and bougie hair flips.

"I believe in who I am. The game didn't make me; I made the game. I made it," the Diamond Princess declared in her Louder Than A Riot interview before recording this Tiny Desk concert. "I already came in with a motive and an initiative to know who I am from. That's why I breed a whole universe of bad bitches." To hear Trina's full interview, subscribe to NPR Music's Louder Than A Riot podcast."

SET LIST

"Mama"

"Da Baddest Bitch"

"Single Again"

"Here We Go" 

"Nann N****"

MUSICIANS

Trina: vocals

Bigg D: guitar

Alton Coley: bass

Jon Anderson: drums

Cory Irvin: keys

Asher Makeba Williams: vocals

Nia McClain: vocals

Shannon McClain: vocals

Corey "C.O." Evans: vocals

TINY DESK TEAM

Producers: Bobby Carter, Sidney Madden

Director: Maia Stern

Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin 

Editor: Joshua Bryant

Creative Director: Bob Boilen 

Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Sofia Seidel

Audio Assistant: Neil Tevault 

Production Assistants: Jill Britton, Alanté Serene

Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Maia Stern, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer, Pilar Galván

VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

#NPRMusic #TinyDesk #Trina

Michelle Obama talks parenting, partnership and turning your rage into change

From NPR:

"Former first Lady Michelle Obama knows not everyone is motivated by her famous quote from her 2016 DNC speech. In fact, she knows some voters have been downright frustrated with her call to "go high." 

In her new book, "The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times," Obama acknowledges a generational rift in views over the pace of societal change and political action, in addition to opening up about other deeply personal details on how she's coped with changes – both in public, and in private.

Generational shifts are a theme throughout the former first lady's latest book, which strikes a different tone from her 2018 book, "Becoming." In her first memoir, Obama peeled back the layers of her and her family's personal story, giving the world an intimate view. While "The Light We Carry" includes plenty of personal details, it serves as more of a guidebook in which Obama uses her own lived experiences to answer questions many people ask about life, including how to have a strong partnership and how to let your children become confident in their own abilities.

Whether it's the pandemic, racial injustice, or economic uncertainty, Obama said the past few years have been a collective struggle for many, and she's received lots of questions from people searching for ways to keep their hope alive. Obama spoke with NPR about her marriage and what advice she might give those trying to figure out a partnership today, how her relationship with her daughters has evolved as they've become adults and what "when they go low, we go high" looks like in action." 

Anna May Wong will be the first Asian American Featured on U.S. Currency

My Anna portrait hangs in my new house now -- but here's where she resided during my first few months in this beautiful, sometimes brutal city. She reminds me to hold on to my ferocity. I still love staring at her unflinching gaze, depicted by fellow SoCal resident @greggchadwick pic.twitter.com/fOG89TaI7k

— Ailsa Chang (@ailsachang) October 19, 2022

Anna May Wong

36"x48"oil on linen

painting by Gregg Chadwick

Ailsa Chang Collection 

Fierce!

Just purchased this painting of Anna May Wong, and I love how fierce she looks. Thank you @greggchadwick for your lovely note. My first art purchase for my new LA home — based on an LA woman by an LA artist who heard me interviewing his LA friend from my LA guest bedroom. pic.twitter.com/UKaJpzLMQ0

— Ailsa Chang (@ailsachang) July 2, 2020

Oh @greggchadwick I absolutely love it. Anna is going in my main hallway, where I can pass by her unflinching gaze everyday and channel her ferocity.

— Ailsa Chang (@ailsachang) July 2, 2020

"Land of Hope and Dreams" from Springsteen on Broadway

Gregg Chadwick
American River (for Greil Marcus)
24”x36” oil on linen 2016
Audis Husar Gallery, Beverly Hills

                

Bruce Springsteen has pre-released an album from his Springsteen on Broadway engagement.

His album announcement is accompanied by a first taste of his Broadway recording: an acoustic version of his train metaphor song "Land of Hope and Dreams." 
Lauren Onkey writes about the song on NPR Music:

"Land of Hope and Dreams" is the penultimate song of the Broadway show, an uplifting end to a night that features a lot of heartbreaking stories of characters — including Springsteen himself — who fall into isolation. Rooted in the gospel song "This Train" and The Impressions' 1965 gospel-soul hit "People Get Ready," "Land of Hope and Dreams" imagines a communal train where all are welcome — saints, sinners, whores, gamblers, thieves, lost souls, fools, kings, the brokenhearted — as it heads off to unknown future. It's classic Springsteen: grand, optimistic, spiritual and open-ended enough to be embraced by a big audience....
Springsteen has performed "Land of Hope and Dreams" often for benefit concerts and political rallies, including campaign stops for Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. It seems no coincidence, then, that he's released it on the eve of the midterm elections, and into the teeth of a violent and divisive time in American life. It's an assertion that we're all in this together.

The Gospel and Blues of Rocky Ground

by Gregg Chadwick

Rocky Ground

(Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball)

 ''The verses are the blues, the chorus is the gospel."

- Bruce Springsteen in Conversation With Jon Pareles in The New York Times July 14, 2002

Gregg Chadwick
The Luminist
12"x12" oil on linen 2010 

As if reaching out from the past into the present, Bruce Springsteen's song Rocky Ground (Listen Here) opens with a  ghostly voice calling out the refrain "I'm a soldier."

This verbal fragment was culled from a historical performance of the Church of God in Christ Congregation's rendition of  I'm A Soldier In The Army Of The Lord,  recorded by musical historian Alan Lomax in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942*. 

The song then shifts to the chorus, sung by the gospel singer Michelle Moore:

We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

Only after this spiritual initiation does Springsteen sing the first verse:

Rise up shepherd, rise up

Your flock has roamed far from the hills

The stars have faded, the sky is still

The angels are shouting "Glory Hallelujah"

Springsteen's voice is yearning, soulful, bluesy. The music behind the singer brings to mind Springsteen's mournful song Streets of Philadelphia. Understated piano, a looped, patterned drum rhythm and atmospheric guitar wash across Rocky Ground. Mournful horns set a Van Morrison vibe.

Jacob Lawrence's magnificent Migration Series comes to mind. These paintings documented the African American movement from the rural south to the urban north between the World Wars. From his small studio in Harlem, Jacob Lawrence let loose with a flurry of deeply resonant and poignant words and images that encapsulated the hopes, fears, and dreams of a community moving into the unknown; often bolstered only by faith. The promise of a new day was coming, but the road was hard.

Jacob Lawrence

The Migration Series, Panel no. 3:
From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north.
12"x18" tempera on gesso on composition board 1940-41 
The Phillips Collection, Washington DC

As if to mark in music the history of this Great Migration, Springsteen's Rocky Ground moves from a folk recording from 1940's rural Mississippi, to Michelle Moore and the Victorious Gospel Choir to a more contemporary musical style: rap.  

Jacob Lawrence
The Migration Series, Panel no. 58:
In the North the Negro had Better Educational Facilities
12"x18" tempera on gesso on composition board 1940-41 
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Moore's rap flows smoothly into the structure of the song setting us up for a powerful dose of spoken word blues:

You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best

That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest

You raise your children and you teach 'them to walk straight and sure

You pray that hard times, hard times, come no more

The lyrics turn from hope to fear and doubt:

You try to sleep, you toss and turn, the bottom's dropping out

Where you once had faith now there's only doubt

You pray for guidance, only silence now meets your prayers

The morning breaks, you awake but no one's there

The intoning voice from the 1940's attempts to give strength. The choir provides a chorus of resilience.  Springsteen returns and sings, "There's a new day coming." But as this morning breaks we are alone in our struggles. This existential moment at the abyss is chilling. No one's there. 

Gregg Chadwick
Under the Copper Sky
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011 

In 2002 Springsteen explained to Jon Pareles in The New York Times that in his music he has to "come to grips with the real horrors that are out there. And that all people have is hope. That's what brings the next day and whatever that day may bring. "

Springsteen goes on to explain that "hope is grounded in the real world of living, friendship, work, family, Saturday night. And that's where it resides. That's where I always found faith and spirit. I found them down in those things, not some place intangible or some place abstract. And I've really tried to write about that basic idea my whole life.''

Unknown Fiddler from Southern US Field Trip, 1959
photo by Alan Lomax

In Rocky Ground Springsteen adopts the traditional sounds and imagery of gospel, but for Springsteen faith and spirit are not found in the realm of angels but instead in the doggedness of daily life. Rocky Ground poignantly reminds us that hope is found in the courage to live each day to its fullest, in the sacrifices that parents make so that their children perhaps will have a more fulfilling life, and in the loving community of friends and family that brings meaning to our shared existence.

*NOTE:

 Alan Lomax was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the twentieth century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain. Lomax recorded in the plantations, levee camps, prisons and railroad yards where the men and women of the blues came from and the music was born. 

All lyrics from Rocky Ground -  Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Don't Miss This Upcoming Event on NPR:

NPR Music will broadcast Bruce Springsteen's keynote speech from the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. The live webcast of that address will take place on NPR Music on March 15 at noon Central time.