A Little Night Music in the Garden

Bruce and Leonard


"30 Years!"
Oil on canvas
12 x 9 inches

Tomorrow night I'm heading to Madison Square Garden with an old friend to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and I'm psyched. I've heard that the second album, "The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" will be played in it's entirety and I'm especially looking forward to hearing "New York Serenade." It was the first Springsteen song I'd ever heard on the radio, that piano intro is mesmerizing and it was the song that made me a believer :-). The song was performed at the 2001 show that I attended so here I'll be, 8 years down the road, enjoying it once more. As Springsteen and the members of the great E Street Band get older and in the sad case of Danny Federici pass away, these concerts - legendary really - might not be in the future. So, I'm gonna really, I mean really, savor Saturday's show.


Photo on a marquee, 2009

Which brings me to the concert I saw, also at the Garden, a few weeks ago. Leonard Cohen, 75 years old, the master poet in the tower of song. He held the crowd in the palm of his hand, as one song after another were sung by the man himself and his incomparable back-up singers and band. When I was a kid, I was a real folkie. Got a guitar and learned a few chords. One summer I attended a music and arts camp - it was there I was first introduced to oil paints and made the decision to become an artist and it was there that I learned a version on the guitar of one of Cohen's early hits "Suzanne." He sang that song along with so many others with his "gift of a golden voice" at the concert I attended and the night was truly unforgettable.

Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen - two master singer/songwriters and performers. Their songs are part of the soundtrack of my life and how lucky am I to have been able to get tickets to see them doing what they do best.