Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

you guys know its asbury, right?

woooops

'magic' is great, certainly the best full album of his since....i don't know what.

Magic is a genuine bore, but boring in a different way than D&D and Tom Joad were.

Kick a can in Ashbury Park and out comes BROOSE.
Hence the term "Bruce Juice."

Bruce Juice: Taste The Myths of America

<i>'magic' is great, certainly the best full album of his since....i don't know what.</i>

Since "Tunnel of Love," or perhaps "The River!"

I really love it, I gotta say.

fuck

I can deal with the hits, but mostly I love Nebraska and really like Tom Joad - is Magic worth checking out?

I still have not heard Nebraska despite its various accolades.

I'd say the first half is his best album half, anyway, since Tunnel of Love. The second half is dicey.

I really don't know how anyone can listen to this album without laughing.

GYPSY BIKER! DEVIL'S ARCADE! RADIO NOWHERE!

I have a hard time believing this album was made after 1991.

Mix and match the titles and you get what sounds on paper like an Electric Six album: "Gypsy Arcade," "Radio Biker, "Nowhere Devil."

Tru dat.

Frankie's Diner's
Over on the edge of town
Neon sign spinnin' round
Like a cross over the lost and found

Fluorescent lights
Flicker above Bob's Grill
Shaniqua brings a coffee and asks "fill?"
And says "penny for your thoughts now my poor Bill"

She went away
She cut me like a knife
Had a beautiful thing
Maybe you just saved my life

In just a glance
Down here on Magic Street
Love's a fool's dance
I ain't got much sense but I still got my feet

And the girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes
Pass me by

Are the titles really any worse than the ones on Human Touch, though? (Still haven't heard this 5 star masterpiece, btw.)

yeah, but try telling Jeff Porcaro that the Pearl Jam guy's going to produce you.

The Human Touch ones, aside from "Soul Driver," are more commonplace cliches like "Cross My Heart," "A Man's Job," "Roll Of The Dice," "Real World," etc. The new one's got "Long Walk Home," "Last To Die" and "Your Own Worst Enemy" but its more obviously self-parodying.

or self-paradistic, as I'm not sure he's in on it.

paradistic = parodistic + parasitic

Well yeah, but that's really been Bruce's biggest problem since the dawn of the '90s, I'd say.

has he ever bought a new car?

A downtown window flushed with light
Faces of the dead at five (faces of the dead at five)
A martyr's silent eyes
Petition the drivers as we pass by

you can really hear the parentheses on the track

I kinda dig some of the instrumental breaks on this, Max Weinberg's a pro.

They should have just recorded all the grand backing tracks and let us write our own overwraught americana over it

I'll cite Christgau's remarks on Undercover: "What do people hear in this murky, overblown, incoherent piece of shit?"

OH THE JESUS ON MY DASHBOARD HE AIN'T SLEPT IN FORTY DAYS
AND I'M HOPING FOR A MIRACLE, THAT CRIME ISN'T ALL THAT PAYS

see Bruce should write about that rather than how it's gonna be a long walk home

ohhh the devil's arcade is war

i hope the video stars Barry Pepper

Mr. Hoos keeps talkin' bout Nebraska. I'm afraid to dispute it, I don't know it anyway. But Hoos is usually on to something good.

But he admits he hasn't heard it yet, Bimble.

"Terry's Song"

Well they built the Titanic to be one of a kind, but many ships have ruled the seas
They built the Eiffel Tower to stand alone, but they could build another if they please
Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt, are unique I suppose
But when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now the world is filled with many wonders under the passing sun
And sometimes something comes along and you know it's for sure the only one
The Mona Lisa, the David, the Sistine Chapel, Jesus, Mary, and Joe
And when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

When they built you, brother, they turned dust into gold
When they built you, brother, they broke the mold

They say you can't take it with you, but I think that they're wrong
'Cause all I know is I woke up this morning, and something big was gone
Gone into that dark ether where you're still young and hard and cold
Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

[harmonica bridge]

Now your death is upon us and we'll return your ashes to the earth
And I know you'll take comfort in knowing you've been roundly blessed and cursed
But love is a power greater than death, just like the songs and stories told
And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold

That attitude's a power stronger than death, alive and burning her stone cold
When they built you, brother

[harmonica bridge]

It actually might be genius to wrap an acoustic "nobody like you" coda around the phrase "broke the mold." That this guy was SO UNIQUE that he had to whip out the most trite phrase imaginable to capture it. That he TRULY DESERVED it.

Turns out its about the death of his "long-time assistant."

Hoos hasn't heard Nebraska yet?! Dude, that's impossible.

My longwinded thoughts about his new album (which I don't like much) are toward the bottom of this thread, if anybody is at all interested:

Rolling country 2007 thread

I still have not heard Nebraska despite its various accolades.

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, October 5, 2007 6:00 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

But good lord dude, he claimed to be listening to it on the drunk thread!

The lyrics quoted here are some of the worst abuses of English I've ever read, in any context, by anybody. Seriously. Is that what he really sings on this record? That's horrifying.

Terry's Song": Jeez, that really reads like its fucking over-wrought; I'm kinda simultaneously dreading it and facinated by it! In other words: "same as it ever was."

oops, missing a " at the beginning there.

These titles and lyrics: did Springsteen get into a broken transporter with Robbie Robertson?

Anyone hear some "Don't Fear The Reaper" in "Radio Nowhere"?

some really great discussion btween ally, amateurist and 'spittle' upthread

Neither classic nor dud, but certainly overrated. But give him credit for a consistent vision of what he's trying to do.

Never could stand either of his Borns, neither to Run nor in the USA, but have to say I'm an admirer from afar of Nebraska.

And I have no idea whether or not this feeling will be echoed by ANYONE else, but as an American I will always remember him as the artist who led off the concert for 9/11 relief. Hate most of his music or not, for him to have been there in that space at that time makes him emblematic for me in a way that his somewhat overwrought albums never could.

what on earth are you trying to say?

Hmm, thought I was pretty straightforward, but maybe the following will make sense: I dislike his music, not least because it pretends to some working classman's purity, because it is arrogant enough to suggest that if you grew up in some shithole town in New Jersey, you are somehow rendered heroic, or at least you are if transformed into one of the Boss' songs.

But I liked that he chose to appear on that telethon, and am OK with the idea the producers had that he should go first.

Did I do better that time.

Not sure if there's a thread for the new album (Working on a Dream), but I heard it today. Really liked it. His voice sounds just scratched - not as gruff as Dylan or Young or Waits, but obviously starting to go, and it's starting to acquire some flavor (something that I always thought Springsteen was missing).

Anyone else heard this yet?