Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

"Individual Album BOXES" even

so easy to find most of these used on vinyl - kind of hard to justify paying big bucks for remastered versions of 5-buck records

Yeah, I don't want to rebuy the remastered versions of BtR or DatEoT. But it has been s l o w going with the box sets. Is it too much to ask for a once a year box set remaster? My favorite albums of his are the ones not remastered to this point - the ones encompassing The River through Tunnel of Love.

It's true that the boxes have been slow coming out, but jeez, he made a movie for each one!

Two in the case of Darkness...(the doc and the new live performance of the album)

At the pace they were going, The River set would be 12 discs (the album, outtakes, two docs, three concerts plus a replica Little Steven beret).

I wish they'd bang out single-disc or double-disc versions of the outtakes + alt versions etc for each record. I'm perfectly happy with 2-cd version of "The Promise" over the 6-cd box. I appreciate that stuff being available in a manageable package for people without $ or inclination to wade through the whole she-bang - would be nice if people did this more. A nice best-of of the new Self Portrait stuff would be fine for me, for instance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/books/review/bruce-springsteen-by-the-book.html?action=click&contentCollection=Baseball&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Books he has been reading

Who is your favorite novelist of all time, and your favorite novelist writing today?

I like the Russians, the Chekhov short stories, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I never read any of them until the past four years, and found them to be thoroughly psychologically modern. Personal favorites: “The Brothers Karamazov” and, of course, “Anna Karenina.”

Current favorites: Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy and Richard Ford. It’s hard to beat “American Pastoral,” “I Married a Communist” and “Sabbath’s Theater.” Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” remains a watermark in my reading. It’s the combination of Faulkner and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns that gives the book its spark for me. I love the way Richard Ford writes about New Jersey. “The Sportswriter,” “Independence Day” and “The Lay of the Land” are all set on my stomping grounds and, besides being poignant and hilarious, nail the Jersey Shore perfectly.

He has done a lot of book reading since the age of 29

it'd be cool to be bruce springsteen and rich and have a lot of time to catch up on great novels you've missed

Yeah, he's such a rich slacker, isn't he? Just sitting home year 'round, counting his money.

on Friday i turned on my local classic rock station and they were celebrating 'Springsteen Halloween' and playing nothing but Bruce the entire day. they were playing a lot of cuts not usually played on the radio much, it was fun, although i can't imagine any other stations are doing it.

Don't forget the cross-country motorcycle trips that Springsteen regularly does

i think this "springsteen halloween" sounds made up

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack / I went out for a ride and I never went back Baltimore Halloween, Baltimore classic rock radio Halloween

x-post--Didn't critic Dave Marsh start giving Bruce books?...

I skipped most of college, becoming a road musician, so I didn’t begin reading seriously until 28 or 29. Then it was Flannery O’Connor; James M. Cain; John Cheever; Sherwood Anderson; and Jim Thompson, the great noir writer. These authors contributed greatly to the turn my music took around 1978-82. They brought out a sense of geography and the dark strain in my writing, broadened my horizons about what might be accomplished with a pop song and are still the cornerstone literally for what I try to accomplish today.

If Fred Goodman is to be believed, Jon Landau taught Bruce the alphabet, while Marsh propped Bruce's eyeballs open Clockwork Orange-style forcing him to watch John Ford films.

Screen door slams
Mary's dressed weird
Like a vision she dances across the lawn
Wearing Mr. Spock ears

The Marsh books also mention Jon Landau passing books onto Springsteen in the Darkness era, I think.

yeah i think jon landau sort of self-consciously decided to turn springsteen into an "organic intellectual"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bruce-springsteen-on-outlaw-pete-and-not-sheltering-kids-from-the-realities-of-life/2014/11/03/877967a0-6394-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html

And now he has a book out himself

disappointed that Mo Rivera is the baseball reading he cites

Had no idea Keith Richards was also in the burgeoning business of children's books.

Bruce's buddy Joe beat him to the punch by 3 years:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dkY4CPIeL.jpg

My friend Sarah wrote this and it's wonderful: http://consequenceofsound.net/aux-out/how-bruce-springsteen-helped-me-face-my-childhood-bullies/

Classic: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/two-wealthy-fans-paid-300000-to-eat-lasagne-with-bruce-springsteen-9847063.html

Springsteen started off the annual Stand Up For Heroes event by playing an acoustic set, then offering the instrument to the highest bidder.

When bidding reached $60,000, he threw in a guitar lesson, which someone offered $250,000 for. At this point, he offered up a lasagne dinner at his house, a ride around the block in the sidecar of his motorbike and the shirt off of his back.

Bidding reached $300,000 between two clearly die-hard fans, who agreed to both pay the agreed amount and split the prize in two. Let’s hope that lasagne is home-made.

The event raised more than $1 million, with Springsteen's packages making up over half of the contributions.

good old bruce, always looking out for the ordinary joe with 150k to spend on a sidecar ride and half a plate of pasta

yep, what a totes fraud getting that much money from rich superfans, and for a meaningful charity no less

He's a total shitheel, obv

got a wife and kids in baltimore, jack / i went out for a ride and . . . wait, who called me a hack?

Remasters are out now. "The River" sounds great. Biggest boost seems to be the clarity of the horns and Danny's organ playing, but there are all sorts of things I'm noticing - backing vocals, extra guitars. It almost sounds remixed, tbh. Definitely pretty different. FWIW, the little I've listened to the new "Nebraska," despite its lo-fi austerity, has been revelatory as well. Apparently even the recently remastered "Born to Run" and "Darkness' have been re-remastered as well.

Actually, the bass on "The River" - like, there is bass playing - is pretty revelatory at times, too. "Crush On You," of all things, sounds great.

I didn't properly appreciate Tallent until I watched that Houston show on the Darkness box. Really amazing player, as essential to the E Street dynamic as Max.

got a wife and kids in baltimore, jack / i went out for a ride and . . . wait, who called me a hack?

― Daniel, Esq 2, Friday, November 7, 2014 4:58 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I got very confused for a sec because a "hack" is what they call a gypsy cab in Baltimore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np3LcKxolts

Holy crap, "BitUSA" got a bottom end!

And now there are some spooky synths or vox (I can't quite tell) at the end of "My Hometown" that I have never noticed before.

Just officially released the 1978 Cleveland Agora show, a classic, one of his best shows of all time: http://live.brucespringsteen.net/live-music/0,11757/Bruce-Springsteen---The-E-Street-Band-mp3-flac-download-8-9-1978-Agora-Theatre-and-Ballroom-Cleveland-OH.html

Winterland Night is also officially available now and would surely be the one to go for if you only need one '78 show.

There are also these two, which look unofficial to me but are being sold on Amazon so maybe they are kind of semi-official?

This one also from '78:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theatre-Atlanta-Georgia-30th-September/dp/B00PCJAD3S

and this weird mishmash of live and radio recordings:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LIVE-COLLECTION-Bruce-Springsteen/dp/B00PCWSPP8/

I've long had a bootleg of that Agora show and it is terrific. My understanding is that these are the original source tapes and have been really cleaned up, so I may need to grab the official anyway.

Winterland my all time fave.

way to go, Bruce, for first and letting the bootleg circulate for decades, then finally release it when no one pays for music anymore.

Wow, had never seen this live page before.

Agora show RULES

Looks pretty good.

it's a real rowdy fun show

xpost Winterland is not legit released yet, don't know where you saw that. Agora/Cleveland is the only '78 show he's selling right now.

oh man that agora show is unbelievable and I'm not even the world's hugest springsteen dude.

Winterland is not legit released yet, don't know where you saw that

Oh yeah you're right, I was looking at this and assumed it was official as it is being sold on Amazon but on closer inspection it is a bootleg:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Winterland-Night-3cd-Bruce-Springsteen/dp/B00OU04976

Since when did Amazon start dealing in bootlegs, by the way? Or is this some kind of grey area thing like the two I linked above?

I will say, regardless, that anyone who has never heard the Cleveland show will be absolutely agast and baffled that it was never released in any form before now.