But I'm no fan of America's heartland or its prophets in any way
i don't know what this means. it has little or nothing to do with springsteen's body of work.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:22 (nineteen years ago) link
ned:springsteen::me:smashing pumpkins
(except i'm right)
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link
that hits on exactly what i don't like about springsteen in the '90s and beyond. yeah, that particular song was 1984, but he'd been planting the seeds of the problem for a while. the problem being his really awful use of overused, overworked, high-school literary cliches, which reached a sad peak on "human touch" and "lucky town." rain. birds. rivers. over and over and over. blah blah blah. he telegraphs his intended meaning in such a ham-handed way that if he were a basketball player, every pass he ever threw would be stolen.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:48 (nineteen years ago) link
hmm, can't say i've ever heard any humor in his delivery. but in either case, it's the later stuff that bugs me a lot more.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 18:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:06 (nineteen years ago) link
but what i liked about the good half, including the title song, was that it DIDN'T come off like he was trying to will it into being. it sounded like an immediate, gut response to a moment, for better or worse. as opposed to something like ghost of tom joad, which sounds like he spent weeks and months trying to will a classic folk record into being, and the results are nearly unlistenable.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:10 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link
"if i should fall behind" is a good example of a song that remains, for the most part, in the realm of metaphor, but works very well.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:31 (nineteen years ago) link
i mean that in the sense of tuneless, humorless and lifeless. it's been a long time since i tried listening to it, but when i did, my memory is that i couldn't -- didn't want to -- finish a single song.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:31 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:35 (nineteen years ago) link
On the other hand, the case against: Ian Duncan Smith voted "City of Ruins" his favourite song on Desert Island Discs.
― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:46 (nineteen years ago) link
Why do you prefer self-concious show tunes to unintenional ones?
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 19:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 20:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 20:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 20:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 22:46 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 22:50 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 July 2004 22:51 (nineteen years ago) link
1.I think Springsteen's best LPs are his first three, all released before he started to shave. 2. Interestingly, by comparison, Bob Seger (often unfairly-but-not-without-some-justification compared to Bruce) QUIT shaving around the same time, and yet his music likewise declined!3. The near-simultaneous release of the Dictators' "Cars And Girls" might've rendered "Born To Run" unnecessary, but for the fact that "Born To Run" is not only a good song but an amazing production, possibly the man's finest. My favourite, anyways.4. And speaking of producers, I'll never understand what the hell's so great about Phil Spector anyways, my Ronettes and Crystals fandom notwithstanding.5. Aside from the title cut, the Born In The USA single I recall most fondly is "Cover Me", because it's the most inconsequential.6.Live on TV in '92, Springsteen totally surprised me by spicing up the otherwise useless "57 Channels" with some amazingly skronky guitar soloing, beating Sonic Youth at their own game. (And I was still a SY fan back then.)7.As for the importance of cars/driving in Bruce's work and the appreciation thereof, don't ask me. I never much liked driving, haven't had a valid license in 5 years and haven't driven at all in 10 years. (Last time was June '94, 3 days before OJ Simpson's Bronco chase, incidentally! I remember these things.)
― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 22 July 2004 00:20 (nineteen years ago) link
hmmm. i've always thought that was the exact moment where he jumped the shark.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 22 July 2004 02:40 (nineteen years ago) link
exemplary solo: "candy's room." a song that i wouldn't mind hearing stephin merritt cover.
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 22 July 2004 02:48 (nineteen years ago) link
though really what "spare parts" sounds most like is one of the rejected tracks that later turned up on tracks (hmmm, so does "downbound train"). so maybe it's not that bruce's writing really dropped off, but his ability to divide the dross from the good stuff did.
guitarist: what's strangest is that he often has BOTH nils lofgren and s. van zant on stage with him, and *still* takes most of the guitar solos, and generally tends to rock them.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 22 July 2004 02:48 (nineteen years ago) link
I'd like to hear Stuart Murdoch do that one too...(I guess fantasy Bruce covers would be a separate thread)
― spittle (spittle), Thursday, 22 July 2004 14:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― dave q, Thursday, 22 July 2004 14:13 (nineteen years ago) link
dave q i want to hear your thoughts on the lyrics to the rising
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 22 July 2004 14:58 (nineteen years ago) link
ama!" i don't know what this means. it has little or nothing to do with springsteen's body of work.
Oh, I dunno am!. I think it has an awful lot to do with it. Being from the south I always regarded that ultra-sincere midwestern/Jersey roots thing as something a bit exotic...the sound of displaced persons in factories and all that. Of course I know it's not that simple but it never really was my experience. I like stuff folks call "roots" music, a stupid term...I like Los Lobos, who just seem fleeter than Springsteen. Blues and r&b. I'm sure Bruce likes that stuff too. And theoretically I admire his subject matter, since I'm aware of the very real history of "workingman in Detroit" or Cleveland or, wherever. But BS turns it into something mythical and I'm not sure it's the right sort of myth. And musically he's just boring, it's all overdone. Like a lot of people I can stomach "Nebraska" and some of his "Tunnel of Love" material because on the one hand it's stripped of all that pomp, and on the other because it's honestly a bit cheesy pop. In general, though, to give you an example of what my preferences are, I feel that Marshall Crenshaw is far more of a real musical thinker and that Crenshaw's in some ways similar obsessions--guy from somewhere else engages with New York, which is a theme of Crenshaw's "Field Day"--just aren't as ponderous. In my opinion there's plenty of heavy pop music that's worthwhile but overall I see it as a form that ought to be light.
Meltzer maintains that BS took the supposed non-threatening '50s and the "ideological" and "demotic" '60s and combined them into a kind of sitcom version of rock history. Thus discounting what really went on in the '50s, which was fairly brutal and often threatening, and in the '60s, which was of course "demotic," "democratic" but also obsessed with glamour--which Springsteen lacks in a major way. There really was a pretty sharp break between the rock of the '50s and the '60s and the Boss isn't true to either one or to the break itself. I find this hard to refute given my listening to BS (and I have listened to him, since a lot of people I know love the guy, I've had to endure live recordings and all the rest and despite my efforts to appreciate have almost always come away completely unmoved). I mean I sort of appreciate Seger in a way, he does sing well, and it seems closer to my own admittedly personal experience of good ol' boys who went to Detroit City to work and who felt sad about it--I get some of that true melancholy from Seger, and I just get a bad amusement park ride from Springsteen...
― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 22 July 2004 15:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― dave q, Thursday, 22 July 2004 15:20 (nineteen years ago) link
There really was a pretty sharp break between the rock of the '50s and the '60s and the Boss isn't true to either one or to the break itself
why does this matter? he made his first album in 1972.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 22 July 2004 15:21 (nineteen years ago) link
but also obsessed with glamour--which Springsteen lacks in a major way.
His early stuff's pretty glamorous, as are his live shows (if sweat drenched blue-collar chic is its own glamour, which it is.)
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, 22 July 2004 15:47 (nineteen years ago) link
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 22 July 2004 16:10 (nineteen years ago) link
but what would being true to the break entail? and why on earth does it matter? this is one of the most ridiculous criticisms that i've ever read. then again, it's from meltzer. maybe i'm dense but he's always struck me as being extraordinarily full of shit.
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 22 July 2004 17:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 22 July 2004 18:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― mike a, Thursday, 22 July 2004 18:34 (nineteen years ago) link
'happy days' wz first broadcast in '74.
also re: prophet, the bible has some interesting things on that word amt.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 23 July 2004 07:28 (nineteen years ago) link