Music Examiner

Danny Federici, secret weapon, RIP

Crap. The first member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band to die is keyboardist Danny Federici. Check out the end of that March 20 concert video on The Boss' site -- I think Bruce whispers "My brother" to him, but I'm not sure. In any case, everybody seems teary. This is the last concert appearance of a 58-year-old musician about to pass away.

Some regard Federici, an old Springsteen buddy who'd been around since the early days of Steel Mill and so forth, as an inessential member of the band. That's true on a lot of songs -- Springsteen began downsizing his sound somewhere around 1984's Born In the USA, and Federici's big organ mostly gave way to Roy Bittan's more economical synths for the next decade or two. But I can't imagine "Sandy" without Federici's accordion, or "Kitty's Back" without his organ solo. And he certainly became essential again around The Rising, as the AP obit points out.

As an organist myself, who always notices the Booker Ts before the Steve Croppers, I always regarded Federici as one of the great unsung sidemen in rock.

Check out this two-part "Kitty's Back" video, which I believe is from the 1975 Hammersmith Odeon DVD released a couple years ago. Federici's solo is towards the end of Part One:

  

Clive Davis and the music biz

Last summer I tracked down a copy of Clive, the out-of-print 1975 book by veteran music-business mogul Clive Davis, on Amazon for something like $35. (I see three copies now for as low as $9.91, so the joke's on me.) He wrote it shortly after then-extremely-powerful... Read More

Hooray for volume!

Man, I hope XM and Sirius merge -- and lower the monthly subscription prices! I've been paying $12.95 a month for a year for XM, which I absolutely love. My favorite channel is The Rhyme, an old-school hip-hop extravaganza that plays a great song every... Read More

Speaking of Jolene

Dolly has been singing "Jolene" live for some time -- my wife and I saw her do it about two years ago at the Denver Convention Center. (For the record, her best song there was Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover," in... Read More

Not really dumb, not really blonde

Spent a great, relaxing Sunday catching up on new music and watching the Tigers and Kenny Rogers get crushed.Here's a review of the first one. More coming soon.Dolly Parton, Backwoods Barbie. Good for Dolly for ditching her record label(s) and putting... Read More

My teams suck

Why couldn't I have picked the Yankees as "my team"? Or the Celtics?No, I grew up in Detroit, so am stuck with the Tigers. (It's getting to be an obsession -- every day there's some new injury to Google-news: Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, Curtis... Read More

What isn't funny about the comics

Every morning, my 5-year-old wants to read Heart of the City and Family Circus in our morning newspaper. She likes the strips with characters close to her age who sort of talk like she does. So every day I read them to her, and she stares blankly and... Read More

Stones, dude

So, Metamorphosis. How could I have missed this one? Amazon says it's the only Stones' rarities collection, rushed into print by ex-manager Allen Klein after a lawsuit. Of course I know "Heart of Stone," but the rest are new to me. I'm not... Read More

Old fart needs new music

As a 39-year-old still stuck in the Dinosaur Land of buying music on little pieces of plastic, I'm finding it harder and harder to discover new songs. There's so much good stuff on the Internet, and tracking it all via MySpace, blogs, eMusic, iTunes,... Read More

Hey everybody

Thanks to coaxing (and one excellent free lunch) from my pal Gil, I'm the new Music Examiner on this site. I'll be writing about music I like, where to find it, occasional music-business issues and various personal crap.By way of introduction: I cover... Read More