Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

oh, right. so is davies listed on every storytellers episode?
i guess that "making of darkness on the edge of town" doc is on hbo tonight? wish i had hbo.

oh shit is it

I saw that Ray Davies "Storyteller" tour. It was fascinating I thought(I didn't know alot about him)--his tales of growing up and making music with his brother and the solo material he sang.

yeah tonight at 8 central

kind of a terrible poster but
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9xo1kzEKT1qzjvwlo1_400.jpg

Didn't someone suggest that Springsteen never did all this self-analysis of his songs before he met Jon Landau and Dave Marsh? I read that somewhere.

I like that poster. One Bruce goes one way, the other Bruce goes the other way, and this guy's sayin', Whaddya want from me?

xpost i'm sure that having those rock crits whispering in his ear made him think differently about his songwriting.

speaking of da boss did we talk about this?
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/09/28/_MG_87402copy_370x278.jpg
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20017938-10391698.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CBSNewsPCAnswer+(PC+Answer%3A+CBSNews.com)
Bruce Springsteen Makes Cameo in Couple's Engagement Photos

dave marsh always seems like such a creeeep

The doc is great. Lots of Springsteen admitting his control freakery was hard on everyone else, intercut with old home video footage of said control freakery. I watched it while reading the boxset's reproduction of his notebook from the Darkness sessions, so I felt very much immersed in the craft aspect. Lots of lists of potential song titles (some of which sound like someone playing with Springsteen fridge magnets) and to-do lists ("Rent Badlands movie" made me laugh). It supports the comments above about how he's into explaining the mechanics and doesn't have any of the mystery or ambiguity of Dylan or Young but as a long-time Springsteen sceptic (or, as I'm beginning to suspect, just a Clarence Clemons sceptic) who's currently obsessed with Darkness I was happy with that.

haaaa "Rent Badlands movie"

"read Grapes of Wrath"

i'm kinda of a captain-save-a-ghost-of-tom-joad

i heard glory days in CVS yesterday and realized i never want to hear it again

"downbound train" is the jam off of born in the usa

There's something really disarming about how bluntly he channelled his influences. Landau gets him into movie adaptations of Steinbeck, Bruce goes off and writes Adam Raised a Cain, bosh.

"I'm Goin' Down."

"Bobby Jean" gets me every time, for some reason.
Darkness is my favorite album, though.

Springteen's one of those guys who thinks "darkness" denotes seriousness of intention.

i never really got into darkness tbh, will have to watch this doc tonight to see if it clicks for me

"la la laaa la la la la la laaaa....once again, there is an unspoken subtext about the power of rock n roll here. what do the la la las say? they say 'sing with me,' they also say 'stand by me and we will stand together in this'"

i like bruce a lot and i think he's an incredibly thoughtful guy. but i remember seeing this when his storytellers originally aired and thinking he needed an intervention, ideally one that would consist of bob dylan, chuck berry and the surviving members of the cramps running onto the set and beating the crap out of him.

Yes. I'm a huge Springsteen fan (it's hard not to be in NJ) but the Storytellers thing could be his low point, surpassing even his LA studio musician phase. It was tough to watch because Bruce is always likable, but there he comes off as a pretentious gasbag.

darkness is a pretty uneven album, but the high points are indeed high. points, i mean.

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9xo1kzEKT1qzjvwlo1_400.jpg

this is like one of those movie posters where, like, christian bale is in the middle looking angsty and the two supporting players are on either side doing what they do. EXCEPT THEY ARE ALL BRUCE.

i think it's helpful to remember bruce's first two albums, esp. the first, where he is clearly struggling to be the next dylan. his more laconic, less wordy writing style that he arrived at later was clearly a deliberate choice. and yes he can be a huge gasbag.

yeah the first two can be borderline goofy but i kinda like the quirkiness and fun of them, they seem more lively

yeah, i like the first two as well but they put the lie to the "brooce-as-salt-of-the-earth" persona.

"la la laaa la la la la la laaaa....once again, there is an unspoken subtext about the power of rock n roll here. what do the la la las say? they say 'sing with me,' they also say 'stand by me and we will stand together in this'"

this reminds me of christgau's review of "born to run":

Just how much American myth can be crammed into one song, or a dozen, about asking your girl to come take a ride? A lot, but not as much as romanticists of the doomed outsider believe. Springsteen needs to learn that operettic pomposity insults the Ronettes and that pseudotragic beautiful-loser fatalism insults us all. And around now I'd better add that the man avoids these quibbles at his best and simply runs them over the rest of the time. If "She's the One" fails the memory of Phil Spector's innocent grandeur, well, the title cut is the fulfillment of everything "Be My Baby" was about and lots more. Springsteen may well turn out to be one of those rare self-conscious primitives who gets away with it. In closing, two comments from my friends the Marcuses. Jenny: "Who does he think he is, Howard Keel?" (That's a put-down.) Greil: "That is as good as `I Think We're Alone Now.'" (That's not.) A

i just noticed that xgau doesn't even write "operatic"--he writes "operretic." ouch.

yeah, the pre-born to run stuff tries REALLY HARD, and kinda fails to be as epic/awesome as bruce wants it to be, but the overall enthusiasm/vibe is pretty charming.

shit like this makes me grin totally:

Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps
Interstellar mongrel nymphs
Rex said that lady left him limp
Love's like that (sure it is)

the way he throws out (sure it is) is pretty dope

btw i heard the manfred mann cover of "blinded by the light" on the radio the other day. that rarely gets revived, but it was a minor hit and was probably the first time a lot of people heard anything by springsteen. funny to think about that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2-GqYkwjTM

actually the station played this and then a live version of the same song by springsteen himself. which is, like, 15 minutes of "blinded by the light." that might be too much.

actually it was a bit more than a minor hit. even though born to run came out two years before the manfred mann single topped the charts, i suspect that more people heard the latter.

despite time and newsweek covers, etc.

or maybe i'm wrong. anyway, there it is.

It hit #1.

"wrapped up like a douche" from the manfred mann version is the all time misheard lyric

I like the pre-Born to Run stuff best.

the first two ... put the lie to the "brooce-as-salt-of-the-earth" persona

how so?

he seems more like a little cutey pie scuzzball pothead poet dude on those IMO...there's that one great concert DVD where he's wearing a big dirty knit stocking cap, he looks kinda williamsburg (no whiney)

(tho i know he says he never smoked pot but who knows?)

GOD I hear the Manfred Mann "Blinded" every time I turn on a midwestern classic rock station.
Much prefer the original.

He's maybe the only major rock and roller who's an ascetic (I've seen one photo of him drinking a beer).

v true imo that all the pre btr stuff is very sorta scuzzy boho in vibe, btr was where he decided he wanted to be a novelist imo

first couple records are definitely more "urban"

they've got hip-hop beats?

He's maybe the only major rock and roller who's an ascetic (I've seen one photo of him drinking a beer).

i don't know about nowadays but in his glory days he was not shy about being completely sloshed in public. anyone who lived on the jersey shore in the '80s, for example, can tell you stories.

baby he was born to rap

x-post The Storytellers ep is classic if only for his hilarious tale of his evil doppelganger, the one that gets spotted drinking, smoking and going to strip clubs:

"One time," continues Bruce, "as I reached the parking lot, a man and a woman spied me and said, 'Bruce, you aren't supposed to be here.' I could see where they were going with the whole thing, so I said, 'I'm not. I am simply an errant figment of one of Bruce's many selves. I drift in the ether over the highways and byways of the Garden State, often touching down in image-incongruous but fun places. Bruce does not even know I'm missing. He is at home right now, doing good deeds.' That usually stupefies and satisfies them. Hey, I gotta get through the world somehow."

anyone who lived on the jersey shore in the '80s, for example, can tell you stories.

Share, by all means.

v true imo that all the pre btr stuff is very sorta scuzzy boho in vibe, btr was where he decided he wanted to be a novelist im

seems to me that a scuzzy boho poet in a wool cap has as much if not more of a claim to salt-of-the-earthness as a novelist who measures his words. but maybe i'm not understanding what salt of the earth means in this context. generally, i think of him as someone who has long sung about salt-of-the-earth types. what he is himself, i've never particularly needed to know.

right what i was getting at w/the novelist thing was that he decided to get really deep into the whole "writing with depth and a great degree of craft about a specific kind of american life" thing, not that he himself was necessarily of what he wrote about