"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen -- who really enjoys this overproduced crappy glop?

I hated Born to Run for years .. only in the last two or three have I decided that it's a pretty good tune except for that horrible, misplaced sax solo. I'm glad my reflexes made me shut it off over the past 20 years, but I kinda like it now - although I would never put it on intentionally.

xpost.. (Ken L is one of my favorite ILM posters these days...)

"Trapped" is awesome. As is everything Springsteen did from '78 to '81. Ever heard the song he wrote for Donna Summer, "Protection?" Great great great.

no.
Alex asked "who enjoys this overproduced crappy glop" and matos answered by raising his hand (I think).

Everything I say on this thread is a lie, including this.

ilm is so testy lately!!!

ilm is so testy lately!!!
Must be all that post-holiday testosterone.

"I wanted to make a record that would sound like Phil Spector. I wanted to write words like Dylan. I wanted my guitar to sound like Duane Eddy". I hated it. I couldn't stand to listen to it. I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I had ever heard. I told Columbia I wouldn't release it. I told 'em I'd just go to the Bottom Line and do all the new songs and make it a live album".

What, where?

I love me the Frankie version very much. And that is all I will say.

Well, yeah. That's what makes them precursors.

Bruce's "1-2-3-4" vs. Holly's orgamzogroans.

As a bit of trivia, John Peel mentioned on more than one occaision that he couldn't stand Springsteen, said he had asked for a Peel session and John turned him down. Although I did buy the single of "Hungry Heart" when I was a kid, I must say today I would not be caught dead buying a Springsteen record or listening to one. Also Fiendish, I marvel at how you can rate Dylan worse than Brooce. Not that I'm a big Dylan fan at all, but it does puzzle me.

Burned-out Single songs:

Rolling Stones - Start Me Up, Jumpin' Jack Flash
Jimmy Buffet - Margaritaville
Sister Sledge - We Are family
Van Morrison - Brown-Eyed Girl
The Police - Roxanne
Steppenwolf - Born To Be Wild
Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven, Rock-n-Roll
Kool & the Gang - Celebration
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird & Sweet Home Alabama
Queen - We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions & Bohemian Rhapsody
Roy Orbison - Pretty Woman
George Thorogood - Bad To The Bone
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze, Hey Joe, Foxey Lady
Don Henley - Boys Of Summer
Sister Sledge - We Are Family
Derek & The Dominoes - Layla
Bachman Turner Overdrive - Takin' Care Of Business
The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
All covers and remixes of the above songs

Burned-out Groups:

All Village People songs
All James Brown songs
All Motown songs
All Foreigner songs
All Bob Seger songs
All Beach Boys songs
All Boston songs
All Bee Gees songs
All AC-DC Songs
All Doobie Brothers hit songs
All Eagles songs
All Bad Company songs
All Steve Miller Band songs
All Pat Benatar songs

Songs/"Artists" that just plain SUCK!:

Bette Midler - Wind Beneath My Wings (A close 2nd for worst song ever)
Journey (Steve-I'm-such-a-wimp!-Perry ruined this band)
Chicago (Peter-I'm-a-wimp-too!-Cetera ruined the band)
Stevie Nicks (extremely irritating voice & repetitive lyrics)
Celine Dion (we ALL know why)
Bon Jovi (Bad pop music masquerading as hard rock. Just plain despicable!)
Lionel Ritchie (extreme schmaltziness)
Eddie Money (Was this guy a tard?)
Tom Petty (Bland music with chorus lyrics derived from Bartlett's Quotations)
Bruce Springsteen (Bland music with schmaltzy lyrics sung by a man who just stubbed his toe)
David Bowie (Alot of people like him, he's a "legend". I think he sucks!)
Pearl Jam (Bland Alt Rock with unintelligible gravelly lyrics)
Any song with the word "Jump" in the title
Any song with the name "Jane" in the title (EXCEPT Lou Reed's classic "Sweet Jane")
Any song ever played on any "Adult Contemporary" radio station

Worst song ever:
Labelle - Lady Marmalade (extreme screeching and caterwauling)

Paul Bass, you are PUNK
but misguided, cloth-eared, and
corny to the MAXXX

Speaking of montage music, "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" in "School Of Rock" evokes similar feelings for me (leaving aside the debate about the quality difference between the two songs).

That said, I've always suspected Bruuuuce of being a genius who works on two levels: he knows he can get your garden-variety classic-rock fan to pump his fist in the air and sing drunkenly along to an anthemic chorus. But he also knows that he has some really quite eloquent and crystal-perfect lyrics--a delicacy that some proportion of his fans are missing in their sweaty frenzy.

I have no proof of this, but I think he knows that he's casting pearls before swine a large part of the time. More like irony than condescension: I think he loves the trucker AND the intellectual in equal measure, but in different ways.

Not too long ago I saw a video of him playing live, and I thought I saw a twinkle in his eye that spoke untold volumes. He sang the line "a close band of happy thieves," then looked as if he were thinking, "You know, I just tossed that line off, and it's really apt and articulate. I'm a fucking poet, and half this audience doesn't notice or care. And I'm at peace with that."

Maybe I'm imagining it. Heck, I probably am imagining it. But that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

This morning while feeding the offspring breakfast, I was subjected to another moldy Bruce oldie, fuckin' "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out". WILL THE TORTURE NEVER END?

Q104 must have some iron-clad condicle in its by-laws that prevents the station from playing anything recorded after 1982 with the lone exceptions being Nevermind by Nirvana and Achtung Baby by U2.

Supposedly, "Hungry Heart" was written for the Ramones (and fuckin' imagine that!), but Springsteen was convinced to keep it for himself.

But the less-over-the-top things, like "Atlantic City" or the totally underrated "I'm on Fire" rank among my favorite pieces of music. Much of Nebraska acts as a counterweight to the saxophonic sludge of the rest of Mr. Springsteen's career.

darkness on the edge
is stripped-down and is my fave
springsteen of them all

Well, I guess I plain fucking hate music then.

-- fact checking cuz (factcheckingcu...), January 5th, 2005.

These are both kinda OTM though....His albums...starting after The Wild, The Innocent, really, start to get less interesting rhymically and arrangement wise....I like the first two the best still (although Nebraska and Darkness kind of make a virtue of the stripped down stiffness that crept into his work, at least alot more than like say the River does)....I really like the wild, over the top arrangements and sense of daring of the first two....

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), January 5th, 2005.

yeah, but you like Iron Maiden, so you can't be all bad!

you seriously don't like any of the big motown singles?

misplaced sax solo
saxophone sludge
I have to say I sometimes have a little bit of a Clarence problem. Not every rock and roll sax player is King Curtis.

There is some sax usage in softer rock songs that I find appropriate: Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," and Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" both have elegant sax solos (regardless of how you feel about those songs/artists as a whole).

But in a more rockety-rock song I usually find the saxophone superfluous, if not unwelcome. I am, of course, not averse to horns taking their traditional place in ska, jazz, etc.