Today, Bruce Spring­steen pub­lished on his web site a revised ver­sion of the eulo­gy he deliv­ered last week for Clarence Clemons, his friend and band mate. It’s equal parts hon­est and mov­ing. The talk builds momen­tum as it goes along, kind of like a Spring­steen song, with the rhythm real­ly pick­ing up here:

I think per­haps “C” pro­tect­ed me from a world where it was­n’t always so easy to be an inse­cure, weird and skin­ny white boy either. But, stand­ing togeth­er we were badass, on any giv­en night, on our turf, some of the bad­dest ass­es on the plan­et. We were unit­ed, we were strong, we were right­eous, we were unmov­able, we were fun­ny, we were corny as hell and as seri­ous as death itself. And we were com­ing to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Togeth­er, we told an old­er, rich­er sto­ry about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of friend­ship that tran­scend­ed those I’d writ­ten in my songs and in my music. Clarence car­ried it in his heart. It was a sto­ry where the Scoot­er and the Big Man not only bust­ed the city in half, but we kicked ass and remadethe city, shap­ing it into the kind of place where our friend­ship would not be such an anom­aly. And that… that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and dou­ble down on that sto­ry on a night­ly basis, because that is some­thing, that is the thing that we did togeth­er… the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fuck­ing big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tat­too it over your heart. Accept it… it’s the New World.

And final­ly the crescen­do:

SO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN… ALWAYS LAST, BUT NEVER LEAST. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE MASTER OF DISASTER, the BIG KAHUNA, the MAN WITH A PHD IN SAXUAL HEALING, the DUKE OF PADUCAH, the KING OF THE WORLD, LOOK OUT OBAMA! THE NEXT BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVEN THOUGH HE’S DEAD… YOU WISH YOU COULD BE LIKE HIM BUT YOU CAN’T! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BIGGEST MAN YOU’VE EVER SEEN!… GIVE ME A C‑L-A-R-E-N-C‑E. WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! … amen.

Get the full text here.

H/T to @opedr

If you’re look­ing for­ward to this week’s release of the Bud­dy Hol­ly cov­er album Rave On (and you should be, if only for John Doe’s awe­some take on Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried), then you’ll def­i­nite­ly get a kick out of the croon­er’s first ever known record­ing. The song is from 1949, and the sound qual­i­ty isn’t great, but no amount of sta­t­ic can block out the kid’s famil­iar war­ble. His voice may not have changed yet, but he’s already Bud­dy Hol­ly.

We have added this Bud­dy Hol­ly clip to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons. There you’ll find great writ­ers, daz­zling film­mak­ers and musi­cians, bril­liant philoso­phers and sci­en­tists pre­sent­ed in video and audio.

via Fla­vor­wire

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

A quicks heads up: If you like Herb Alpert and Engel­bert Humperdinck, then this BBC doc is def­i­nite­ly for you. Here’s what you get in 90 min­utes:

In-depth doc­u­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion into the sto­ry of a pop­u­lar music that is often said to be made to be heard, but not lis­tened to. The film looks at easy lis­ten­ing’s archi­tects and prac­ti­tion­ers, its dan­gers and delights, and the mark it has left on mod­ern life.
From its emer­gence in the 50s to its hey­day in the 60s, through its sur­vival in the 70s and 80s and its revival in the 90s and beyond, the film traces the hid­den his­to­ry of a music that has reflect­ed soci­ety every bit as much as pop and rock — just in a more relaxed way.
Invent­ed at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll, easy lis­ten­ing has shad­owed pop music and the emerg­ing teenage mar­ket since the mid-50s. It is a genre that equal­ly sound­tracks our mod­ern age, but per­haps for a rather more ‘mature’ gen­er­a­tion and there­fore with its own dis­tinct pur­pose and aes­thet­ic. Con­trib­u­tors include Richard Car­pen­ter, Herb Alpert, Richard Clay­der­man, Engel­bert Humperdinck, Jim­my Webb, Mike Flow­ers, James Last and oth­ers.

You can watch Part 1 above, and the remain­ing ones here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

via Boing­Bo­ing

Talk about an inti­mate venue. A group of friends in Eng­land have built an unlike­ly enter­tain­ment fran­chise, film­ing per­for­mances by the musi­cians they admire–in the back­seat of a Lon­don taxi­cab. The project is called “The Black Cab Ses­sions,” and the method is sim­ple: “One Song. One Take. One Cab.”

It start­ed in 2007 as some­thing of a lark–an impro­vised col­lab­o­ra­tion between mem­bers of a music pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny, Hid­den Fruit, and a film com­pa­ny, Just So Films–but the project soon took on a life of its own. Musi­cians respond­ed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, embrac­ing the whim­sy and chal­lenge of play­ing in such cramped, unsteady quar­ters. Now there are per­for­mances by about 100 artists on the Black Cab Ses­sions web­site.  Most of the musi­cians are young indie acts, but there are some vet­er­an per­form­ers as well, includ­ing Martha Wain­wright, Richard Thomp­son and Bri­an Wil­son. There are some famous groups, like Weez­er, Mum­ford and Sons, My Morn­ing Jack­et and (yes, of course!) Death Cab for Cutie, but many of the most inspired per­for­mances are by musi­cians you might not have heard about.

The music ranges widely–from Delta blues to beat­box, and from hip hop to Pagani­ni. One of the most pop­u­lar ses­sions isn’t music at all, in the strictest sense, but a mes­mer­iz­ing poet­ry per­for­mance by Ben­jamin Zepha­ni­ah. The one rule, accord­ing to Black Cab Ses­sions co-founder Jono Stevens, is that the film­mak­ers love the artists’ work. “Big or small,” Stevens said in a TV inter­view, “It real­ly does­n’t mat­ter. It’s about some­one we real­ly, real­ly feel pas­sion­ate about.”

There’s a lot to dis­cov­er on the Black Cab Ses­sions web­site. You can dive right into the col­lec­tion here, or start by sam­pling a few of our favorites, includ­ing Death Cab for Cutie singing No Sun­light above, and:

Lykke Li
Aman­da Palmer
Lang­horne Slim
Kil­la Kela
Sea­sick Steve
Beach House
Ben­jamin Zepha­ni­ah
Char­lie Siem
My Morn­ing Jack­et

Clarence Clemons, the sax­o­phon­ist who played along­side Bruce Spring­steen for four decades, passed away today at 69. The Big Man and his sound will be missed.

Above, a sim­ple mourn­ful reminder of what we’ll be going with­out: First up, a soul­ful solo from “Jun­gle­land,” per­formed in Mil­wau­kee back in March 2008. And then a return to the ear­ly days, a youth­ful per­for­mance of “Thun­der Road” record­ed at the Capi­tol The­atre, Pas­sa­ic, NJ (1978). Clarence takes over at the 6:12 mark.

H/T to David Rem­nick for bring­ing this vin­tage clip to the suface.