Cover Me: Sociedade Alternativa

Now this is how you win over an audience.

Raul Seixas was an immensely popular rock star/songwriter in Brazil until his death in 1989. Known as the father of Brazilian rock with a catalog of 21 albums across 26 years (one more album than Bruce has released in almost twice that time), Seixas produced a massive body of work across multiple genres.

Over the course of his career, Seixas gravitated increasingly toward counterculture, and by the time of his second solo album Gita in 1974, he was singing openly of the Sociedade Alternativa, the Alternative Society. His song by that title was as much mission statement as rock anthem.

Influenced heavily by Alistair Crowley’s Law of Thelema (Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law), Seixas credo captures the essence of rock and roll pretty well, too.

If you’re a touring rock band visiting Brazil, odds are pretty good that you’re going to hear someone shout “Toca Raul!” (“Play Raul!”) at some point during the night. It’s kind of the Brazilian equivalent of “Freebird!”

So when Bruce took the stage for each of his two Brazilian shows in 2013–his first visit to the country in a quarter-century–he satisfied the “Toca Raul” contingent before they even had a chance to utter a single one.

Enjoy this professionally shot, Clearmountain-mixed, and Zimny-edited performance of “Sociedade Alternativa” by Bruce Springsteen and the super-sized E Street Band, featuring a spectacular mid-song trumpet solo by Curt Ramm.

Bruce may not have played there for 25 years, but by the end of that opening song that Rio crowd was part of E Street Nation.

Sociedade Alternativa
First performed: September 18, 2013 (São Paulo, Brazil)
Last performed: September 21, 2013 (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil)