Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Springsteen is damaged by fans (I'm one) fetishizing his songwriting and thinking.

like, New Criticism exists for guys like him to put his ecstatic fans in place.

I don't think Dream, Baby, Dream had been played by Springsteen at all until his most recent solo tour, but he did talk about Suicide in interviews at the time. Springsteen was very much amidst that NYC milieu, working with Lou Reed, Patti Smith, et al. He was definitely very aware of all that stuff, and later viewed acts like the Clash as much as peers as competition. Springsteen also remains one of the few megastars who makes a point of following contemporary and critically acclaimed music, or at least hiring someone to help (Robert Plant and Elton John are reportedly two other musically curious guys). It's to Springsteen's credit, I think, that he rarely aped the acts he was reportedly listening to. He had and has a very firmly established notion of identity.

I think Springsteen's relationship with his fans, especially lately, has been very ... conciliatory? He's more aim-to-please as ever, as if he recognizes the weird balance he teeters on between nostalgia and relevance.

I remember springsteen giving props to a Matmos record in a rolling stone interview a few years ago

alan vega is probably 10 yrs older than springsteen, so maybe they bonded over 50 rock n roll

Springsteen played Madrid last night, and performed apparently the longest set in his career: three hours and 48 minutes.

Even so, when he finished, most of Madrid still hadn't eaten dinner.

dang yeah vega is 73 according to wiki!

After he survived that cave-in at the Mercer Arts Center described in Love Goes To Buildings on Fire he could survive anything.

I think Bruce is basically a little embarrassed by it. It's a fun song, but pretty generic and repetitive, musically. He often jokes about its oral sex implications.

I'd rather hear bruce fooling around w/oral-sex double entendres than intoning righteous platitudes but that's probably why I'm not that into him

"we take care of our own" is nearly unlistenable, sounds like a wheezing self parody to my admittedly jaded ears

I'd rather hear him singing entendres than the overt "Reno"

he should do an album of his between-song patter narratives

Having Fun With Bruce On Stage

1) he should have left "downbound train" off of born in the u.s.a. and stuck "pink cadillac" on there

2) like a lot things the boss says, this is faintly embarrassing: "it's good for a laugh, and probably one of my most insightful songs about men and women." bruce has basically cut out the middle man these days: he'll make music, and he'll provide the exegesis too.

ha -- just last week a friend and I wondered why "Pink Cadillac" is so beloved by Bossheads.

Nebraska tape demo of "Downbound Train" is great, it's a Roy Orbison song there. On BITUSA it's a lesser number for sure.

seeing this guy at Wrigley in September, not sure how excited I should be

Sounds pretty damn exciting to me.

yeah I think I am! saw him in shite seats in 2000 at a big basketball arena in Indy & it wasn't that great, except for "Youngstown" which rocked righteously.

If you didn't like him on the 2000, I'm really not sure you'll like him on this tour, unless you really like the new album.

"Pink Cadillac" was a "Nebraska" leftover, too, like much of "BitUSA:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjZ1WO-0YME

like a lot things the boss says, this is faintly embarrassing

Come on, dude is frequently making fun of himself when he calls something his most serious song about men or women or whatever. But then, I love his corniness.

he should do an album of his between-song patter narratives

Having Fun With Bruce On Stage

― (REAL NAME) (m coleman), Monday, June 18, 2012 2:03 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/09/snl-ben-stiller-tells-bruce-springsteen-stories_n_1002406.html

Would buy.

I don't at all agree "Downbound Train" is a lesser track. The album's original sequence requires it: the darkness at the edge of town after the characters in "Working on the Highway" and "Darlington County" force smiles. The part when Bruce sings over nothing but organ = perfect.

yeah that's a pretty haunting moment

i don't agree w/ the thesis but the 33 1/3 on BITUSA makes a pretty strong case that it's his best album because of the balance of comedy and tragedy where albums like Darkness and Nebraska lack levity

The only song I might discard is "No Surrender."

I'm in the BITUSA = best album camp although TOL is close.

i'd happily lose Glory Days. Downbound is one of the top 3 or 4 tracks on the album eeeeeasily.

nooooooooo not Glory Days ;_;

clarence being reduced to hitting a cow bell in the terrible cheesefilled
video is the moment where the E Street band of old dies for me.

its not even a cowbell though, its a triangle, or something equally
non saxy.

There's a huge swath of Bruce sans much Clarence. Like almost all of "Darkness," for example.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2582vpx.jpg

Man, I'd rather see him like that than sitting in a big chair with an oxygen tank next to him, which is how he was half the time in recent years. Poor Clarence. :(

even so, I literally kinda freeze up at the thought of seeing Bruce now sans Clarence. I don't know if I could handle it. And if they have a section to honor him, like they did in one youtube clip I saw recently, oh my god I will be a sea of tears

funny to see the "downbound train" discussion cuz i almost revived this thread this morning just to capslocklyric

NOW I WORK
DOWN AT THE CAR WASH
WHERE ALL IT EVER
DOES IS RAIN

also yeah have always loved "i'm goin down". cheerfully apocalyptic.

NOW I WORK DOWN AT THE CAR WASH
WHERE ALL IT EVER DOES IS RAIN

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, April 3, 2011 12:36 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't the protagonist of that song have like three different jobs in the course of the song?

how much were the wrigley tickets? are they gone?

yeah he has an unspecified but apparently pleasant job at the beginning, and then the downbound train takes him through the car wash to the railroad gang. sobering!

xp heh. well.

amateurist, this post of yours about "we are the world" is so otm, whenever i catch the moment of bruce singing in the video, i cringe.

WATW isn't so bad, really. brooce is really embarrassing on it, though. kind of makes you wonder about him.

― amateurist, Monday, August 3, 2009 5:01 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"kind of makes you wonder about him" lol

What is it about conservatives and Springsteen. David Brooks just went to Europe to see Bruce do a bunch of shows there. Here's part of his column(much of which is just filled with him marveling over Spaniards singing along to "Born in the USA"):

It makes you appreciate the tremendous power of particularity. If your identity is formed by hard boundaries, if you come from a specific place, if you embody a distinct musical tradition, if your concerns are expressed through a specific paracosm, you are going to have more depth and definition than you are if you grew up in the far-flung networks of pluralism and eclecticism, surfing from one spot to the next, sampling one style then the next, your identity formed by soft boundaries, or none at all.

(Maybe this is why younger rock bands can’t fill stadiums year after year, while the more geographically defined older bands like U2, Springsteen and the Beach Boys can.)

The whole experience makes me want to pull aside politicians and business leaders and maybe everyone else and offer some pious advice: Don’t try to be everyman. Don’t pretend you’re a member of every community you visit. Don’t try to be citizens of some artificial globalized community. Go deeper into your own tradition. Call more upon the geography of your own past. Be distinct and credible. People will come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/brooks-the-power-of-the-particular.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120626

Pluralist and eclectic kids get off of my lawn

Any pictures of Brooks trying on jeans like George Will did?

I'm waiting for a group photo of Will, Brooks and governor Christie all wearing jeans, Springsteen t-shirts and black leather jackets

They say you’ve never really seen a Bruce Springsteen concert until you’ve seen one in Europe, so some friends and I threw financial sanity to the winds and went to follow him around Spain and France. In Madrid, for example, we were rewarded with a show that lasted 3 hours and 48 minutes, possibly the longest Springsteen concert on record and one of the best. But what really fascinated me were the crowds.

Oy veh

Is it really true that huge crowds of Spanish youth dig Springsteen? If so, then I at least have to hand it to D-Brooks that he told me something about the world I didn't know.

Not sure about spain, but it's basically my impression that every rock group that ever released a record on a major label can headline arenas in japan and brazil

Springsteen is pretty popular everywhere, but definitely in Western Europe.

It's weird. It's almost as if he's one of the most famously convincing performers of all time. Hmm, I wonder how Prince fares in Spain or Italy? I have a hunch he does ... well.

Prince was huge in Europe; in the late eighties his records were selling better there than in America.

lol josh otm

The issue though is whether Brooks is right about the age of Springsteen followers in Spain and why they are younger (if he is correct):

Springsteen crowds in the U.S. are hitting their AARP years, or deep into them. In Europe, the fans are much younger. The passion among the American devotees is frenzied, bordering on cultish. The intensity of the European audiences is two standard deviations higher. The Europeans produce an outpouring of noise and movement that sometimes overshadows what’s happening onstage.