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Snedeker on the rise with Pebble win

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Everything about Brandt Snedeker moves at warp speed, including his rapid rise into golf's elite.

He talks so fast that he always seems to be a few words short of a complete sentence. He plays fast, giving his hips a quick swivel to set his position before pulling the trigger. Even his putts go into the hole quickly, most of them struck with purpose instead of hope.

But when he reached the 18th tee box at Pebble Beach, he had to wait for the fairway to clear before taking a victory stroll up one of the prettiest closing holes in golf.

And that was OK with him.

"There's not much better place to be on the planet with a three-shot lead on that tee box," Snedeker said Sunday. "It felt pretty special there."

Indeed, Snedeker is in a special place.

With his 10th consecutive round in the 60s, Snedeker finally had a trophy to show for his astounding start to the 2013 season. He knew the opening seven holes were critical, and he made an eagle and three birdies to build a quick lead. He realized a late birdie would give him a cushion, and he fired at the flag on the par-3 17th to 10 feet below the cup and holed the putt. He closed with a 7-under 65 for a two-shot win over Chris Kirk in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

It was the fifth win of his career, and his fourth in the last 22 months. But it's the last six months that have really turned heads.

He captured the $10 million FedEx Cup prize with a win at the Tour Championship, where he held off the likes of Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Luke Donald going into the final round. He played in his first Ryder Cup. He started this year with a third-place at Kapalua, and runner-up finishes in consecutive weeks to Woods and Phil Mickelson, both of whom had big leads going into the final round.

Go back to the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs last August and Snedeker now has six top 3s in his last nine starts. Since missing the cut at the PGA Championship, he has broken par in 33 out of 37 rounds. No wonder he now is No. 4 in the world, the best ranking of his career.

"Just hard to put into words, to have a stretch of golf like I had the last couple of months," Snedeker said. "Something you dream about. Something you think that you can do, but you don't really know until you actually put it together. And I have.

"I'm really enjoying this, and hopefully can parlay this into the best year of my career."

Snedeker set the tournament record at 19-under 267, one shot better than Mickelson (2007) and Mark O'Meara (1997), who each had a 20-under 268 when Poppy Hills (par 72) was part of the rotation. It has been replaced by Monterey Peninsula, which is a par 70.

Chris Kirk closed with a 66 to finish alone in second, though he was never closer than two shots of the lead on the back nine and finished with a birdie. Kirk finished on 269, a score that would have been good enough to win all but four times at Pebble Beach since this tournament began in 1937.

"We've had a lot of tournaments like that on tour this year where somebody has really just kind of blitzed the field," Kirk said. "I felt like I played well enough to win a golf tournament and came up a little bit short."

Snedeker could have said the same thing — except for Woods at Torrey Pines, and Mickelson going obscenely low to win the Phoenix Open.

He wasn't about to take a back seat to anyone at Pebble Beach.

Snedeker started the final round tied with James Hahn, a 31-year-old rookie from the Bay Area, with Kirk one shot behind. He set the tone early with a 4-iron into the par-5 second hole that was on the edge of the left green. It hit the collar and kicked slightly to the right, rolling toward the pin until it settled 4 feet behind the cup.

"Kind of lucky, but it was a good shot, and to end up where it did was a great way to start the day," he said.

Hahn hit his approach high and pure, and it nearly hit Snedeker's ball before stopping 6 feet away. Hahn missed. Snedeker made. It was like that over the front nine.

Snedeker started to pull away with a 3-wood that came off the edge of the green, ran by the cup and stopped 20 feet away for a two-putt birdie. Then, he holed a 15-foot birdie putt on the seventh and was on his way.

Most impressive about Snedeker this week was bouncing back from bogey. He made five bogeys for the entire week, and four times made birdie on the next hole. On Sunday, his lone mistake was knocking an 18-foot birdie off the green and three-putting for bogey at No. 9.

The answer, like everything else about him, was fast and furious.

He knocked in a 25-foot birdie putt on the 10th, and then holed from 15 feet for birdie on the 12th. Right when it looked as though he would make another bogey on the par-3 12th, he made par from just short of 10 feet.

There's a reason Snedeker led the PGA Tour in putting last year, though it's his driving that has vastly improved. Snedeker studied some statistics last year that showed his odds of hitting the green go way up when he starts in the fairway. And once he's on the green, he's tough to beat.

Hahn, who shot 70 and tied for third, was looking forward to learning something from his debut in the final group, and he saw Snedeker put on a clinic.

"I learned that he is a better guy than he is a golfer. The dude is world class," Hahn said. "He's obviously one of the best, if not the best golfer right now, and possibly for the last year. But how he conducts himself as a person on an off the golf course, that's also world class. He deserved to win today. ... I'm sure if you ask him, it was never a doubt that he was going to win the golf tournament."

Snedeker concurred.

"I definitely didn't want to do anything but win today," he said. "I was out there for one purpose and one purpose only, and I was extremely focused all day. I did a great job of staying patient and I did a great job of playing the golf course the way you're supposed to play it."

And the outcome was just what he expected. The way he has been playing, it shouldn't have been any surprise to anyone.

China needs smog-free air in a can

Label: Lifestyle

Hazardous smog over Beijing

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

This year has been one of the worst for air quality in China

Residents have termed the smog event the "air-pocalypse"

John Sutter says the country should pass a Clean Air Act

It's a matter of human rights and public health, not image

Editor's note: John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion. He heads the section's Change the List project, which focuses on human rights and social justice. E-mail him at CTL@CNN.com.

(CNN) -- Air pollution in China has gotten so bad lately that one environmentalist's wacky idea for a solution doesn't seem all that far-fetched: putting clean air in a can.

Last week, when a thick gray haze blanketed Beijing and several other Chinese cities, sending kids to the hospital, grounding planes and causing the government to order cars off the road, Chen Guangbiao took to the streets in Beijing to hand out yellow and green cans of smog-free, non-carcinogenic air.

"Free fresh air. Open it and drink it and breathe it!" the Guardian quoted the multimillionaire and national celeb as saying. "It keeps you fresh the whole day!"

Ego aside (the bright cans feature an image of Chen's face and the words "Chen Guangbio is a good man" on them), the clever, political stunt is just the sort of thing that China needs these days. Such creative and public protests should help push forward much-needed national reforms to combat air pollution in the country.

A "Clean Air Act" for China is long overdue.

John D. Sutter

And the recent "air-pocalypse," as the suffocating air pollution that hung over several Chinese cities in January has been termed, should be more than enough proof of that.

The pollution during the 2013 Great Smog of China was so thick last month that it was visible from space (from space!). Breathing in Beijing was "akin to living in a smoking lounge," according to an analysis from Bloomberg. Air quality readings literally were off the charts. An index reading below about 50 is considered healthy. Readings for Beijing in January hit 500, the top of the index, and went higher than 700, according to the U.S. Embassy.

"The air has this kind of greenish-gray pallor to it. And it smells like you're standing next to a chemical plant, really chlorine-y," said David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. "It's an awesomely bad smell."

He was telling me about Beijing air on a normal day.

"I'm standing outside my office building but am unable to see its top," one Beijing resident said, according to China's state news agency, Xinhua.

"The new normal in Beijing is sending your kids to school wearing gas masks ..." Christina Larson wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Fixing China's air pollution is not just about the country's image or economy, although those certainly suffer because of smog, too. It's about the right of all humans to walk outside and breathe in air that won't choke them or make them sick.

The AFP reports hospital visits for respiratory problems were up 20% during the air-pocalypse. Last year, small particle air pollution, called PM2.5, in four major Chinese cities resulted in 8,572 premature deaths, according to a December study by Greenpeace East Asia and Peking University's School of Public Health.

Similar deaths can and should be prevented.

And I'm optimistic they will be. For several reasons.

The first is history. It wasn't all that long ago, in 1952, that the "Great Smog" covered London in gray, sooty pollution, resulting in an estimated 4,000 premature deaths.

The government reacted by passing sweeping reforms.

Now London is known for its real fog, not smog.

Air pollution in Los Angeles was handled in a similar fashion.

After the city's car culture created a smog problem, scientists started researching protective helmets to protect people. Others wore gas masks. But, eventually the government took action to reduce the pollution. California led the way for the nation, and in 1963, the United States passed the Clean Air Act.

That law is credited with preventing 205,000 premature deaths, 843,000 asthma attacks and 18 million child respiratory illnesses in 1990, based on the first 20 years of the law.

These changes took time. And it's unfortunate that things had to get bad before they could get better. But China, like others, is finally realizing that its air really is that bad.

Its own people are calling for the change and more vigorously than before.

More than 200 students at a Beijing high school school signed a petition asking the city to "amend air quality regulations and take specific emergency measures," according to Calum MacLeod from USA Today. And on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, Pan Shiyi, a real estate magnate, called for the country to adopt its own Clean Air Act. When he posed the idea to his 14 million Weibo followers in an online poll, nearly all of the 50,000-some people who responded said they supported that type of national legislation.

Maybe that's just one man's social media feed. But there's a history of this kind of thing working in China. In 2011, Pan successfully used his online network to press Beijing authorities to report more smog data, according to the Wall Street Journal's China blog.

It's clear the government has taken notice this time as well. Beijing implemented several emergency measures to curb smog. State media is talking about the pollution.

After speaking with a few experts, it seems clear what needs to be done: China has to reduce its reliance on coal, increase renewable energy, regulate the amount of smog-causing sulfur that can go into its diesel fuel and increase vehicle efficiency.

"It's not rocket science," said Pettit, from NRDC.

There will, of course, be costs and significant challenges. China burns "nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined," according to a recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Beijing catches so much of the pollution from coal-burning power plants because it sits at the center of a ring of mountains, which help trap the smog. Throw a bunch more cars into the mix, 13 million of them were sold in China last year, according to IHS Automotive and the problems start compounding.

Fixes may be expensive, but the United States has made the compelling case that the costs of enforcing clean air regulations are offset by gains in health and worker productivity. China, which does have some air quality regulations, already seems to be realizing this. The country on Wednesday announced stricter fuel standards that go into effect by the end of 2014 for diesel and 2017 for gas, according to the Financial Times. An environmental official, Wu Xiaoqing, also told state media this week that "China will formulate regulations, standards and policies to reduce air pollutants and control coal burning."

The energy industry estimates it will costs billions for China to meet tougher fuel standards. It may be up to people like the artist Ai Weiwei, who posed in a photo wearing a gas mask, and Chen, the man who's peddling cans of clean air, to ensure that the public and the government see that clean air is worth the cost.

"I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: Don't just chase GDP growth, don't chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren, and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment," Chen told Reuters.

If Chinese leaders don't want to drink air from a can, they should listen.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of John D. Sutter.

Stocks end higher for sixth straight week, tech leads

Label: World

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures.

The S&P 500 also posted a sixth straight week of gains for the first time since August.

The technology sector led the day's gains, with the S&P 500 technology index <.splrct> up 1.0 percent. Gains in professional network platform LinkedIn Corp and AOL Inc after they reported quarterly results helped the sector.

Shares of LinkedIn jumped 21.3 percent to $150.48 after the social networking site announced strong quarterly profits and gave a bullish forecast for the year.

AOL Inc shares rose 7.4 percent to $33.72 after the online company reported higher quarterly profit, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales.

Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected, a positive sign for the global economy. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in December, suggesting the U.S. economy likely grew in the fourth quarter instead of contracting slightly as originally reported by the U.S. government.

"That may have sent a ray of optimism," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Trading volume on Friday was below average for the week as a blizzard swept into the northeastern United States.

The U.S. stock market has posted strong gains since the start of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent since December 31. The advance has slowed in recent days, with fourth-quarter earnings winding down and few incentives to continue the rally on the horizon.

"I think we're in the middle of a trading range and I'd put plus or minus 5.0 percent around it. Fundamental factors are best described as neutral," Dickson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000.

For the week, the Dow was down 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq up 0.5 percent.

Shares of Dell closed at $13.63, up 0.7 percent, after briefly trading above a buyout offering price of $13.65 during the session.

Dell's largest independent shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, said it plans to oppose the buyout of the personal computer maker, setting up a battle for founder Michael Dell.

Signs of economic strength overseas buoyed sentiment on Wall Street. Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy.

Separately, U.S. economic data showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Earnings have mostly come in stronger than expected since the start of the reporting period. Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies now are estimated up 5.2 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. That contrasts with a 1.9 percent growth forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Molina Healthcare Inc surged 10.4 percent to $31.88 as the biggest boost to the index after posting fourth-quarter earnings.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, was down 3.6 percent at 13.02. The gauge, a key measure of market expectations of short-term volatility, generally moves inversely to the S&P 500.

"I'm watching the 14 level closely" on the CBOE Volatility index, said Bryan Sapp, senior trading analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "The break below it at the beginning of the year signaled the sharp rally in January, and a rally back above it could be a sign to exercise some caution."

Volume was roughly 5.6 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.

Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by nearly 2 to 1 and on the Nasdaq by almost 5 to 3.

(Additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Nick Zieminski, Kenneth Barry and Andrew Hay)

Michigan, Kansas go down as run continues

Label: Technology

There goes another one, and another one.

No. 3 Michigan, fifth-ranked Kansas and No. 11 Louisville all lost on Saturday, continuing a perilous stretch for the Top 25.

The Wolverines became the third top-three team to fall this week when Ben Brust hit a tiebreaking 3-pointer with less than 40 seconds left in overtime, leading Wisconsin to a 65-62 victory. Brust also tied the game at the end of regulation with a heave from just inside halfcourt.

That's just the way it has gone lately for the top of the poll.

No. 2 Florida lost at Arkansas on Tuesday night, and No. 1 Indiana dropped a 74-72 decision at Illinois on Thursday. This should be the sixth straight week with a different No. 1 in The Associated Press' Top 25, which would be the second-longest streak since the first AP poll in 1949.

The Jayhawks have dropped three straight games for the first time in eight years after they lost 72-66 at Oklahoma.

"It hasn't been a good week for us by any stretch, but let's be real," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "We were ranked No. 2 in the country seven days ago, and you don't go from being a good team to a bad team overnight.

"We've had a couple of bad outings, but we're still a good team."

The current string of No. 1 swapping is the longest since 1994, when Arkansas, North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA and Duke alternated at the top seven straight weeks — the longest streak since Saint Louis debuted as No. 1 in the initial AP poll.

But it isn't just the teams at the top that are having trouble. Top 25 teams all over the country are getting knocked off by unranked opponents.

According to STATS LLC, Top 25 teams lost to unranked teams 36 times from Jan. 17 to Feb. 6 this season, most in at least 17 years.

Louisville lost 104-101 in five overtimes at No. 25 Notre Dame on Saturday night. It was the longest regular-season game in Big East history.

The Irish trailed by eight with 46 seconds left in regulation.

How Obama can end Congo conflict

Label: Lifestyle

Conflict in Congo

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

President Obama can help end the Congo conflict for good, says Vava Tampa

Obama has asked Rwanda to end all support to armed groups in the Congo

FDLR militia gang is a threat to stability and must leave Congo

Obama must push for change in Congolese government, argues Tampa

Editor's note: Vava Tampa is the founder of Save the Congo, a London-based campaign to tackle "the impunity, insecurity, institutional failure and the international trade of minerals funding the wars in Democratic Republic of the Congo." Follow Vava Tampa on twitter: @VavaTampa

(CNN) -- Now that President Obama has taken a public stand on the warlords and militia gangs tyrannizing DR Congo, there is a sense that the next chapter in the human tragedy that has been raging there over the past decade and half is about to be written -- or so we can hope.

In the DRC -- Africa's largest sub-Saharan country -- invasions, proxy wars and humanitarian crises have senselessly shut down millions of lives, displaced millions more from their homes and left countless women and young girls brutally raped with the world barely raising an eyebrow.

The latest murderous attempt by the M23 militia gang to besiege Goma, the strategic regional capital of Congo's eastern province of North Kivu, seems to have backfired.

Vava Tampa

The United Nations says Rwanda has helped to create and militarily supported M23. Although Rwandan President Paul Kagame denies backing M23, the accusation has taken off some of the international gloss he had long enjoyed in the West, and precipitated cuts and suspension of aid money that goes directly to the Kagame regime by the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Britain and the European Union.

The United States, which gives no money directly to the Rwandan government, suspended its military aid. In a baffling expression of a refinement of the U.S. position, President Obama made a rare telephone call to Kagame to emphasize "the importance of permanently ending all support to armed groups in the DRC." That set a firm red line on the situation in that region, the first one by President Obama since becoming president in 2008.

Watch video: Kagame on Congo

This was certainly right and good. Kagame is no fool; the diplomatic but emphatic content of that telephone call, monitored by White House's National Security staff and published thereafter for public consumption, speaks volumes. He clearly understood the implicit threat. But it was not good enough.

Left unsaid is that withholding aid money that goes directly to the Kagame regime has not changed many realities on the ground -- a painful reminder of the limits of what previous half-hearted, ambivalent international attempts to halt the crisis in that country had achieved.

However, the situation is not hopeless. President Obama can help to halt the wars engulfing the Congo. It is both economically and politically affordable.

Here is my suggestion -- a three-point road map, if you like, for President Obama, should he choose to put the weight of the United States squarely on the side of the Congolese and engage much more robustly to help end the world's bloodiest war and human tragedy.

Read more: Why the world is ignoring Congo war

1. Changes in Kinshasa

If we are to be blunt with ourselves, Congo's major problem today -- the chief reason that country remains on its knees -- is its president Joseph Kabila. Paul Kagame is just a symptom, at least in theory.

The crisis of leadership in the capital Kinshasa, the disastrous blend of lack of political legitimacy and moral authority, mixed with poor governance and vision deficiency, then compounded with dilapidated state institutions, has become the common denominator to the ills and wrongs that continues to overwhelm the Congo.

In other words, peace will never be secured in Congo, if the moribund status quo is still strutting around Kinshasa.

Obama's minimum objective in regard to ending the wars and human tragedy engulfing the Congo should be to push for changes in Kinshasa. He must make this one of the "10 Commandments" of the Obama Doctrine.

Circumstances demand it to re-energize Congo's chance of success and to enable the renaissance of a "New Africa." And given the effects of Congo's mounting death toll and the speed at which HIV/AIDS is spreading because of the use of rape as a weapon of war, the sooner the better.

2. Keep Kagame in the naughty corner

The wars and human tragedy engulfing the Congo have many fathers and many layers. Rwanda, and to some extent Uganda -- run by Africa's two dearest autocratic but staunchly pro-American regimes -- are, as they have been many times in the past, despite their denials, continuing to provide support to warlords and militia gangs terrorizing the Congolese people.

This is not an apocryphal claim, it's an open secret in Kinshasa, Kampala and Kigali as much as it is in Washington or White Hall, and as real as Charles Taylor's role in Sierra Leone or Iran's support to Hezbollah.

If President Obama is remotely serious about saving lives in Congo, then fracturing Rwanda's ability to directly or indirectly harbor warlords ... is critical.
Vava Tampa, Save the Congo

Indeed, reporters across Congo and across the region would testify to this. Kigali has been, one can safely argue, the sole shareholder in the M23 militia gang -- and its elder sisters CNDP and RCD-Goma.

It cannot wash its hands in Pontius Pilate fashion of either the ICC-wanted M23 warlord Bosco Ntaganda, also known as The Terminator, or Laurent Nkunda, who is wanted by the Congolese government for war crimes and is under house arrest in Kigali.

Read more: Prosecutor seeks new Congo war crimes warrants

If President Obama is remotely serious about saving lives in Congo, then fracturing Rwanda's ability to directly or indirectly harbor warlords, support militia gangs, militarize or ethnicize the wars in Congo for control of Congo's easily appropriable but highly valuable natural resources is critical, however politically disgruntling it may be to some in the State Department.

It would reduce the scale, scope and intensity of the killing, raping and uprooting of the Congolese, it would crush Kinshasa's ability to use external support to warlords and militia gangs as an alibi for a lack of progress and, above all, decrease the growing unease of the Congolese towards Rwanda over the crimes of FDLR and the role played by their government in Congo.

3. FDLR

The continued existence in Congo of FDLR, a Rwandan militia gang made up largely of Hutus -- whose leadership took part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsi -- remains one of the most persistent and serious threats to stability in Congo and the region.

Addressing this crisis is of significant importance from both a political and humanitarian viewpoint.

Though there are no definitive statistics on the exact numbers of FDLR fighters, the good news is that experts tell us that the vast majority of its rank and file are in their 20s and early 30s, which means they were too young to have taken part in the genocide in 1994.

The United States, together with the U.N., the EU and African Union, should appoint a special envoy for the African Great Lakes region to midwife a conducive political arrangement in Kigali that could see them returning home -- and see their leaders and fundraisers in Europe arrested.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Vava Tampa.

Stars salute MusiCares honoree Bruce Springsteen

Label: Health

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Be it concert or charity auction, Bruce Springsteen can bring any event to a crescendo.

Springsteen briefly took over auctioneering duties before being honored as MusiCares person of the year Friday night, exhorting the crowd to bid on a signed Fender electric guitar by amping up the deal. The 63-year-old rock ‘n’ roll star moved the bid north from $ 60,000 by offering a series of sweeteners.

“That’s right, a one-hour guitar lesson with me,” Springsteen shouted. “And a ride in my Harley Davidson sidecar. So dig in, one-percenters.”

That moved the needle past $ 150,000. He added eight concert tickets and backstage passes with a bonus tour conducted by Springsteen himself. That pushed it to $ 200,000, but he wasn’t done.

“And a lasagna made by my mother!” he shouted as an in-house camera at the Los Angeles Convention Center cut to his 87-year-old mother Adele Ann Springsteen.

And with an extra $ 250,000 in the musicians charity’s coffers, Springsteen sat down and spent most of the evening in the unusual role of spectator as a string of stars that included Elton John, Neil Young, Sting, Kenny Chesney, John Legend, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne took the stage two nights before the Grammy Awards.

“Here’s a little secret about Bruce Springsteen: He loves this,” host Jon Stewart joked. “There’s nothing he’d rather do than come to Los Angeles, put on a suit … and then have people talking about him like he’s dead.”

Alabama Shakes kicked things off with “Adam Raised A Cain” and over the course of the evening there were several interesting takes on Springsteen‘s voluminous 40-year catalog of hits. Natalie Manes, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite played a stripped down “Atlantic City.” Mavis Staples and Zac Brown put a gospel spin on “My City of Ruins.” John added a funky backbeat to “Streets of Philadelphia.” Kenny Chesney offered an acoustic version of “One Step Up.”

Jim James and Tom Morello burned through a scorching version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” that brought the crowd out of their seats as Morello finished the song with a fiery guitar solo. And Mumford & Sons took it the opposite way, playing a quiet, acoustic version of “I’m On Fire” in the round that had the crowd leaning in.

Legend offered a somber piano version of “Dancing in the Dark” and Young shut down the pre-Springsteen portion of the evening with a “Born in the USA” that included two sign-language interpreters dressed as cheerleaders signing along to the lyrics.

“John Legend made me sound like Gershwin,” Springsteen said. “I love that. Neil Young made me sound like the Sex Pistols. I love that. What an evening.”

Springsteen spoke of the “miracle of music,” the importance of musicians in human culture and making sure everyone is cared for. And he joked that he somehow ended up being honored by MusiCares, a charity that offers financial assistance to musicians in need run by The Recording Academy, after his manager called up Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich to seek a performance slot on the show in a “mercenary publicity move.”

In the end, though, he was moved by the evening.

“It’s kind of a freaky experience, the whole thing,” Springsteen said. “This is the huge Italian wedding Patti (Scialfa) and I never had. It’s a huge Bar Mitzvah. I owe each and every one of you. You made me feel like the person of the year. Now give me that damn guitar.”

He asked the several thousand attendees to move toward the stage — “Come on, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll” — and kicked off his five-song set with his Grammy nominated song “We Take Care Of Our Own.” At the end of the night he brought everyone on stage for “Glory Days.”

___

Online:

http://grammy.com

___

Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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