Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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.)

hmmm. i've always thought that was the exact moment where he jumped the shark.

exemplary solo: "candy's room." a song that i wouldn't mind hearing stephin merritt cover.

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.

I'd like to hear Stuart Murdoch do that one too...(I guess fantasy Bruce covers would be a separate thread)

dave q i want to hear your thoughts on the lyrics to the rising

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...

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.

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.)

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.

'happy days' wz first broadcast in '74.

also re: prophet, the bible has some interesting things on that word amt.

and you can fuck off with your precious pithy putdowns of other people's loves.

i still don't understand what julio wrote. hence, it's cryptic *to me.*

i'm not in a bad mood at all, ned, believe it or not.

Well, if you feel it's something that must be done, but personally that sounds a little strange to me. For myself, I don't insist anyone has to or must 'engage' with any artist I like before they're entitled to an opinion, what's the point of that? Just tell me whether you've heard it or not and what you think! An opposing viewpoint from me won't make anyone change their mind based on their own tastes, the only decision or change of opinion that matters is one's own.

I outlined what I thought about La Bruce way up top, how I heard him and 'engaged' with him, if you must use the term. I find him irrelevant to my interests.

i'm not in a bad mood at all, ned, believe it or not.

Which is good.

was it all for this
that andrew shut down this place?
HAVE WE LEARNT NOTHING

It mattered to some people in '72 because the '60s were a huge explosion of culture and they didn't want what was perceived to perhaps be a cartoon to take its place. Meltzer once went up to the stage at an Eagles concert and pounded on it with his fist.

Tim, so Meltzer = rockist hippie desperate to save the purity of his decade from the post-modern recontextualization onslaught of The Eagles? Does that make Springsteen the Momus of his time??

Dancing to "Born In The USA" outside the wine bar at Glastonbury with nobody I knew: wonderful.

Is Springsteen sentimental?

(I can sympathise with Meltzer but I wasn't there and couldn't have been there so pfft)

with his fist? that showed them, i'll bet.

I ws wrong, I never posted. phew etc.

That's all really, the happy days part of my post was after eddie's bit abt how meltzer (I do love the guy, this thread actually reminded me to order a copy of 'aesthetics or rock' from the library and that has just come through so I'm off to get it) thought of springsteen as the fonz, which to me wz hilarious and I could totally see => even though I've heard that one song used on that movie ('philadelphia' or whatever). oh, and 'born in the usa'.

On the q of 'engagement': yeah you do need to engage with things for a while, I didn't like ppl on the alvin lucier thread just saying its 'bawring' (ENRQ-- who came across as a jaded indie fan). Its the diff between eddie and jack cole's posting on this thread.

(yes I have been very guilty of dismissing things in the past i know i know mea culpa)

...for what purpose, though? If you want to argue that it's one of trying to advance a detailed covers-all-bases argument -- and that need not be essay-length or anything -- I see the point. But that's not how we listen to all music all the time, never has been, surely.

Ned, to put it very bluntly: because people feel strongly about the music they love, and thus (even tho it's all subjective and yadda yadda yadda) hearing their fave artists get flippantly dismissed tends to make them angry...or, well, maybe I shouldn't say "people", it makes me angry, anyway, even tho I know that's silly. So really, if you don't wanna "dig deeper" as it were, why express your opinion at all? No one's forcing Springsteen on ya!

But saying that because one doesn't want to 'dig deeper' brings into the question of 'why have an opinion to start with?' -- that I'll object to strongly. Opinion and reaction is not quantifiable on a universal scale (yes, an obvious trope, but bear with me) -- it didn't take even a full song for me to start REALLY hating Rage Against the Machine 12 years ago, and I couldn't have been more engaged with it if I tried, I was at a show surrounded by tons of fans, including a slew of friends, and they were all going crazy with excitement. Similarly earlier this year when I saw the Mars Volta open for A Perfect Circle, I thought they were pretty good, then asked my friends about it -- one said, "I hated it from the first minute in and couldn't wait for it to get finished," and the rest agreed. Am I supposed to say, "You're not FEELING it, man!" or something? Heavens no, it was said, it was valid, we talked about it for a bit, talked about other things a lot more, saw A Perfect Circle (who were great) and I lost no sleep. The conversation didn't need to be interesting, however that's meant to be measured, for the opinions to matter.

(At his most rock nostalgiac, Springsteen's vision of the fifties and the sixties is really more a wised-up vision of the early sixties: Spector, Pitney, Del Shannon et al with 'poetic' Dylan damage.)

Mind you, I'm not saying that engaging or "getting" an artist has to result in liking or even tolerating them: I'm just saying that I think it's kinda necessary to at least *try* to see the other side's point of view and see how that effects your own judgement, otherwise I don't see the point. It's a lot to do with how you go about things, of course: "you're failing to engage with the artist" can just as easily be interpreted as "OMG YOU'RE LISTENING ALL WRONG!!", which I agree is a silly statement, as it can be interpreted as "well, why don't you look at it this way?", which I think is one of the main purposes of discussing music...trying to figure out what someone else hears in it to enrichen your own listening experience, be it positive or negative.

Looking at Bruce in the other ways described above are interesting enough, I suppose, but they just don't change the core feeling that I'm exhausted by his music, bored with his singing, unmoved by his subject matter, nonplussed with the combination in toto. The cartoon pop Tico alludes to above is about all I can or would want to stand these days, and even that well runs dry swiftly. The one observation I find quite moving in recent posts is Lauren's take on hearing "Atlantic City" in a silent but packed arena, a striking image. Then again, were I there I would be resisting the urge to shout or scream or just do something to disrupt the hush (because I wouldn't want to be then beaten up).

Now let's use the Pumpkins again as a counter-example -- everything I lurve about them is so specifically keyed in to my own particular set of expectations and ability to be thrilled that something like my 136 list essay on Mellon Collie -- like just about everything else I write, I'd wager -- reads less like a call to engage with something or a response to objections than a simple explanation of why I like something. Does something like what I wrote actually enrichen anyone's negative viewpoint on the band? How?

Ok, so none of the explanations given on this thread have managed to make you look at DA Boss in a different light, too bad. But surely you're not suggesting that NO explanation EVER will possibly be able to do that? Because that sounds kinda sad to me (sad as in sad, not sad as in pathetic.)

You might be right about the casual conversation thing; I guess it's just a bit hard to distinguish between who's in Serious Analysis Mode and who's in Casual Banter mode sometimes, which might account for a lot of the conflict on this thread. For what it's worth, I still don't see the attraction of the "hey btw guys, I really hate this" post; it strikes me as childish, flippant and smug...but then, I guess I just hate flippancy in general, especially because I tend to engage in it so much myself despite knowing better, so different strokes for different folks, I guess.