Radio Bruce

Today I co-hosted Dave Marsh's morning show on E-Street Radio, a Bruce Springsteen radio station (yes, such a thing exists), talking about my essay that will be pubished in a book about the rock musician in May.

My contribution was based on a presentation I gave at a Bruce Springsteen Symposium in 2005.

My relationship with Springsteen's music has changed since that time but the essay gives a snapshot of how my fandom developed.

Some have viewed my fandom with mocking scepticism. Why turn to a rock star who is so far removed from your day-to-day life for inspiration and guidance, some would say to me? Isn't that what we all do as teenagers and then grow out of it?

I can understand this point of view but Springsteen's music is not just for teenage phases - or only for men for that matter, the gender that makes up most of his audience. I believe it is for anyone stuck in a spiritual rut.

Springsteen once said it wasn't his job to carry the dreams of his fans, only to inspire them to carry their own. I am sure he feels the pressure from fans and his own image to act a certain way. Who knows what its really like for it to be routine to have hundreds of thousands of people screaming out your name, on a regular basis since you were 25 up to your sixties?

It's a completely different world to the ones fans usually inhabit despite his regular Joe Schmoe image. But Springsteen never asked us to trust him in the same way he asked us to trust his music. I feel some fans find it hard to extricate the two - not that it's an easy thing to do.

My relationship with his music has changed because I have. I don't listen to his music manically anymore and I don't feel the need to queue for three days to get a front row position at one of his gigs. But his music is a tool that I have used to find my place in the world.

In a way, that's what all art should do. Rather than try and enchant us with the cult of personality that surrounds its maker. Even if this is so enmeshed with art in modern times.

My New York debut

Many come to New York with a pipe dream. It's fabulous to have dreams if we don't get carried away with the fantasy and focus on our own strengths and passions to make them come true.

A few months ago I realised one of my own on the upper west side of Manhattan: I played guitar and sang in public for the first time in my life. When I first started to sing a few years ago it was a mystery to me what my voice would sound like, especially because my speaking voice is soft-spoken. 

At the end of my performance of a Bruce Springsteen and a U2 song, complete strangers clapped and came up to tell me how they had enjoyed my "soothing" and "rich" singing and playing. I then repeated the feat at a house party last night where again - people I did not know - were hanging on each word I sang.

I am looking forward to developing my singing and playing further and discovering other parts of me that I only dreamed existed but which have become real in New York.

Light of Day 2011

Yesterday night I attended the Light of Day benefit concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Great show for a great cause (to help raise money for sufferers of Parkinson's disease). Unbilled and unsurprisingly, Bruce Springsteen played a 90-minute set. Kelly-Jane Cotter from the Asbury Park Press described Springsteen as the 'gift with the purchase' for those with tickets. And you know what to expect when Springsteen plays NJ.

The clichés: the gig was mostly attended by affluent, middle-aged men, many in gold jewellery, who would not be out of place in an episode of the Sopranos and ladies looking like New Jersey housewives. Not a typical Springsteen crowd outside of NJ. Another cliché: Springsteen stole the show. Well, he's going to isn't he? That's not to say the other performers are not stellar artistes. But Springsteen's mantle as spokesman of joy, broken dreams, hopes and romantic nostalgia has pierced the consciousness of more than one generation of fan. This means he's going to affect more listeners than those whose work hasn't been given that platform and investment. Third cliché: grown men blubbering "I love you Bruce!" and screaming in desperate joy as he begins fraught-father-son-relationship song, Adam Raised A Cain. Fourth cliché: ultra-tetchy bouncers and security trying to control over-zealous Springsteen fans' attempts to shoot to the front of the stage.

I am sure there are many others. Springsteen joined Jesse Malin, Willie Nile and others on duets before belting out his own The Promised Land, Atlantic City, Your Own Worst Enemy and more to satiate a salivating audience - and an irrepressible Springsteen! An unexpected punk highlight was photographer, Danny Clinch's harmonica on simple and fun, Pink Cadillac.

Alejandro Escovedo played a soulful, acoustic set that ran the gamut in emotion, style and rhythm. Jesse Malin and the St Marks Social's fresh chemistry buoyed the audience with songs from Malin's latest album, Love it to Life. Willie Nile horsed around yet sang with heart and conviction, including the rousing, One Guitar.

Springsteen played one of the longest sets he's ever done for a Light of Day show. Could this be any indication of a tour in 2011? Let's hope.

Music is life's blood

Bruce Springsteen once said music was his "life's blood. Nothing means as much to me or ever has". That was when he was young. Before he got married and had kids. He may phrase his passion for music differently now. But he had a point.

Sometimes music is all that people have. When I interviewed Holocaust survivor and pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, for the north London newspaper, Hampstead and Highgate Express in 2002, she told me music had been the "food of life" for prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.

Music entertains, it relaxes, it expresses. But not in some lite fashion: it sometimes has the power to make people hang onto life because it IS the expression of life. Music is important outside of commercial considerations, with which it is visibly entangled. This may seem obvious, but music is too often synonymous with the charts, celebrities and fame. And its other appeal is not merely to lift down-at-heels kids out of the ghetto so they can express themselves and become rich and famous. It has a proven ability to improve the quality of life of those suffering from traumatic experiences and illnesses. Organisations like Nordoff-Robbins are one of the lead practising and representative bodies for the music therapy field.

Academics say music is often the first thing many babies are exposed to when the mother (or other primary caregiver) sings and/or makes baby talk with a newborn. Music is rhythm, tone and vibration, according to Inayat Khan, the founder of the Sufi movement in the west. In his book, The Mysticism of Sound and Music, he said: “The music of the universe is the background of the little picture which we call music.” English writer Aldous Huxley said: "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, "Without music, life would be a mistake."

Nevertheless, music probably still evokes Lady Gaga, Beyonce or some intangible, feelgood feeling we have for a song or an artist's work, rather than these profound musings. It's all about who's in the charts or what's playing at that hip club. As I handed in my final project about music therapy to Columbia Journalism School this week, I reflected on how my views on music had changed while writing it.

I can conclude that I have even more reverence for it. Music means a lot to us as listeners - and players - but why we love it is not always explored. Music is not just an indulgence or only about youth, different scenes or the latest download. It is something more basic, it gives expression to life's heartbeat, the layers beneath the everyday. It even has the potential for concrete medical results like rewiring brains, a study from Harvard found this year. It would be nice if we could keep this in our minds when we listen to the next chart hit.