Pete Townshend has been working on remaking The Who’s Quadrophenia (1972) into a symphonic project in the upcomign album Classic Quadrophenia. The first video from the project features English tenor Alfie Boe showing his chops on “Love Reign O’er Me.”
Boe is joined on the song by the London Oriana Choir and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. And the video includes scenes from from the movie Quadrophenia (1979) intercut with new images of Brighton Beach. I suppose the beach scenes are appropriate for a song featuring the lines “Only love can make it rain / The way the beach is kissed by the sea.” Check out the video below.
Deutsche Grammophon is releasing Classic Quadrophenia on June 9. Meanwhile, Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and the rest of The Who are touring North America as part of the band’s “Who Hits 50!” tour.
What do you think of the operatic “Love Reign O’er Me”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Starting in the early 1980s, I haunted the used record stores of Cleveland searching for any music related to Bruce Springsteen. At the time, the Boss had released only a handful of albums, and it seemed like forever between new releases. So, I soon discovered bootlegs with their unusual titles and cheap cover art on the outside and hidden gems inside.
An Accidental Discovery
On one occasion, I found a full-sized 45-rpm album with only two songs on it. The record said it was by “Bruce Springstone” and was titled “Live at Bedrock.” But I figured it was a clever bootleg. I took the 12-inch single home and listened to the first song on side one, “Bedrock Rap/Meet the Flintstones.”
It was definitely in the spirit of Bruce Springsteen. It had a chatty introduction like the ones I had heard on the bootlegs. And there was the saxophone playing a big part just like it was Clarence Clemons. Plus, the wailing at the end was all “Backstreets.” Yet, I soon realized the voice was not actually Springsteen. But I still loved it.
Then I flipped it over to listen to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I liked it even better than the A side.
Who Was Bruce Springstone?
In those days, we did not have the Internet to answer every question we had. So it would be years before I found out more about Bruce Springstone.
The record, which was released in September 1982, featured Tom Chalkley. He was a Baltimore journalist and editorial cartoonist who also drew the picture on the back of the record showing “Springstone” sliding into home plate carrying his guitar.
The idea for the record came when Chalkley and some childhood friends were playing music at a party and began goofing on Bruce Springsteen’s style. So Chalkley and his friend Craig Hankin arranged the music and released the 12-inch single with Chalkley singing and Hankin playing rhythm guitar on “Meet the Flintstones.”
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
Chalkley and Hankin needed a B-side for their Flintstones cover song. So, Chalkley found inspiration when he saw the 1927 lyrics for the verses to”Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on sheet music in a store. He thought that the name Nelly Kelly sounded just like a Springsteen heroine (a 1908 version featured the name Katie Casey).
So, using the little-known verse lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” they made the record. Among others, rock guitarist Tommy Keene played lead guitar and Ron Holloway filled in for Clarence Clemons’s saxophone
In case you are just used to hearing the chorus of the song, here is how the opening Nelly Kelly verse to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” sounded when sung by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the movie Take Me Out to the Ballgame(1949).
Response to the Bruce Springstone Record
The album was originally released by Clean Cuts, a local jazz label, but today it is still in print by Rhino. At the time of the record’s release, Bruce Springstone’s version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Meet the Flintstones” received airplay on various radio stations. Reportedly, Bruce Springsteen sent Chalkley a postcard complimenting his work.
Springstone’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was even featured in the 1995-96 Guinness Book of Sports Records for Longest Continuous Airplay of a Sports-Related Song. It was played more than 57,000 times straight.
Hanna-Barbara approved the use of “Meet the Flintstones.” But the company complained when MTV was going to show a video that Chalkley and Hanklin made.
Chalkley did write some other songs in the Springsteen style like one called “Ugga Bugga” (excerpt below), but Bruce Springstone never released another album.
People remain curious about Bruce Springstone, so much so that a few years ago Chalkley launched a Kickstarter campaign with Craig Hankin to raise money to create a graphic comic book about the record. Or, as they describe it, the book is about “the bonds of friendship, creativity, youthful ambition and, of course, the staying power of a well-crafted novelty hit.” The book will be called, If I’d Known Back Then: A Graphic Memoir.
Chalkley and Hankin, who taught drawing and painting at the Center for Visual Arts at Johns Hopkins University from 1980-2018. received the money they needed from the Kickstarter campaign to create the book. So it is too late to pitch in now. The book is not out yet. [2024 Update: It appears the book has yet to be released, but Chalkley’s website seems to still list the book as a work in progress, although with a new name, Novelty Record.]
Meanwhile, Chalkley and Hankin continue to make music. Here, in 2015 they created a video for their 1979 song “Jackie” for the Small Guitar in Motion Project.
But their legacy will always be as Bruce Springstone for me. Who would have guessed that thirty years after its release, we would still be talking about this parody record I purchased by accident? Which song by Bruce Springstone do you like best? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The odds are pretty good that you might have missed even hearing about a movie last year directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones that also featured Hillary Swank, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson, Hailee Steinfeld, and several other stellar actors. But through the miracle of DVDs, you may now catch up on the odd but fascinating movie The Homesman (2014).
The movie is based on a book by Glendon Swarthout, who wrote several books that have been made into movies, including Bless the Beasts and the Children and The Shootist. Although the actors and crew argue about whether or not The Homesman is a Western, the film is set in the 1850s of what was the West at the time, the Nebraska Territory (although much of it is filmed in northern New Mexico). And, like many Westerns, the film features beautiful images of the open landscape with wonderful cinematography (by Rodrigo Prieto).
Much of The Homesman centers on Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank), a resourceful, intelligent, and lonely woman living on the frontier. In several disturbing scenes, the movie shows us how harsh conditions and tragedies affect the mental health of three women who live near Cuddy. As a result of their deterioration, the townspeople select Cuddy to take the mentally ill women back to civilization. As she prepares for her journey, Cuddy encounters George Briggs, who through some odd circumstances she recruits as the “homesman” of the title, a term for someone who takes immigrants back home.
Threads of mental illness, loneliness, and the harsh landscape run throughout the movie, which features haunting images throughout. Few movies present such scenes of oddness that touch on the fact that the Old West must have contained many disturbed characters, although we see flashes of it in somewhat odd movies like Missouri Breaks (1976) (with Marlon Brando in an odd portrayal of a character talking to his horse) and Dwight Yoakam’s interesting but messy South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000). Similarly, there is a standout strange scene in Dances With Wolves where Costner encounters a soldier driven crazy by his time on the frontier.
Homesman is made up of many such images but ties them together in a fascinating story that seems real and honest. None of the characters are perfect and they all have their own demons and weaknesses. Because of that, the movie strays from the traditional Western format that focuses on heroes who save the day. The movie is not predictable, and while not perfect, you will not soon forget it. Tommy Lee Jones continues to show a unique directing eye as he did in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) and The Sunset Limited (2011).
Conclusion? If you have a taste for an unpredictable honest raw movie about unusual but real characters, and if you enjoy beautiful shots of the desolate Western United States, you might enjoy The Homesman. While it is not a great classic, it is a memorable unusual film that generally received good reviews and is worth your time.
{Missed Movies is our continuing series on good films you might have missed because they did not receive the recognition they deserved when released.}
What did you think of Homesman? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell are following up their duets album Old Yellow Moon (2013) by teaming up again on The Traveling Kind. The album, which will be released May 12, is produced by Joe Henry and will feature eleven songs, with six written by Harris and Crowell.
Below is the title track from the new album, “The Traveling Kind.” Check it out.
An English-language trailer for the upcoming film The Little Prince has been released, following an earlier French trailer version. The much-anticipated movie, which will bring Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel to the big screen, intertwines the story of the prince with a story about a little girl and her mother.
An all-star cast provides the voices in the movie, and they include Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Jeff Bridges, Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Ricky Gervais and James Franco. Check out the new trailer.
