Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

It's kind of crazy how he managed a fusion of Dylan and balladeer and funk-soul review on that album.

Here's how it was put in that book of essays I was just reading: "His debts to Phil Spector, the girl groups, Dylan, Elvis, Motown, the Byrds, New Orleans and James Brown are obvious. His synthesis is not."

I feel like there’s a strong sonic overlap between the E Street Band and the Saturday Night Live Band.

A question, for people who like The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle - do you like "Wild Billy's Circus Story?" And if not, why not? I think it's great, but it seems like a lot of people who are into that album don't like it, and I can't figure out why.

I keep trying to get into the Boss, but why is everything so frenzied all the time? It feels like every second (of the early records at least) he's shouting and cramming as many words in as possible while there is also a saxophone solo AND a keyboard solo all simultaneously and the band is playing at 10. Obviously the songwriting is masterful, and he seems like a great dude and a lot of my favorite people love him, but it's a bit like listening to an Albert Ayler record at times while also trying to make out lyrics.

I always recommend the Live 1975-85 album, which made a true believer out of me. Such breadth: storytelling, theatricality, intimate club sets vs stadium rock, "Racing in the Street"!, "The River" (with story)! And Roy Bittan as the unsung hero.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

def. prefer the scruffy wool-cap bruce to the vein-popping super-sized bruce. anyone else ever envision bryan ferry covering "sandy"?

I haven't, but I've wanted to hear Nick Cave cover the entire Darkness.

Haha, great description, TSF.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

Listen to the Dire Straits songs he guests on and it really underscores how much he brings to the table. I'm thinking of all the great stuff he does here, especially at the start and toward the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4_eH_DBSc

Boy, that video is weird! I guess the made two different ones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTw7vb9Jo8

Or you might try listening to The River and seeing if the quieter songs are the sort of thing you'd like to hear more of. It's a very bipolar album, so it's a pretty good representation of all the sides of Bruce, and there's a lot that's a blueprint for stuff he's going to do later on. "Wreck on the Highway" is one of my favorites.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

I'd hardly say any of the E-Street band members could be called "unsung". Really, it's the most celebrated backing band ever, surely the best known in the RHOF (and actually the only one I'm aware of)

But I'd argue Bittan, Weinberg, Van Zandt and Clemons, each in their own way, made integral contributions to the "magic trick". If the only thing we had from Bittan were his performances with Bowie he'd still be a giant.

FWIW I had an ambushed by unexpected emotion moment today with Racing in the Streets

Totally expected, though, because it is a beautiful, heartbreaking song.

There's a whole subset of Springsteen songs about life being so shitty you just have to get into your car and drive away, to escape, or worse. "Thunder Road," "Racing in the Streets," "Stolen Car," "State Trooper," "Hungry Heart" ...

"Cadillac Ranch."

"worse" is when you have to meet some guys and do them a favour and along the way you pick up debts that no honest man can pay.

Careful out there.

Also, when a dream is a lie that don't come true.

sometimes you're just tearing into the guts of *something* in the night

woaaaaaaaa ohhhhh ohhhh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I kid but it's his best moment

Yeah it almost seems to the point of being a joke except that the songs are really good. xp

Oh, and "Born to Run," of course, with suicide machine vs. death trap a pretty horrible choice.

no way man

also that gave us the Sopranos best moment

Rhonda let's drive this chevy out into the switchblade night
let's take all our shattered dreams and toss em out into the creek
that runs behind the pollution factory where the drunks all
sing about the prom queen that they almost married

what's this, you got an advance copy of his poetry book?

There's a whole subset of Springsteen songs about life being so shitty you just have to get into your car and drive away, to escape, or worse. "Thunder Road," "Racing in the Streets," "Stolen Car," "State Trooper," "Hungry Heart" ...

And another subset (related) about finding love and happiness but then being tempted away by the irresistible lure of easy money/the open road/unspecified "things."

I went to Rutgers and spent some time living and working in Jersey after so it's interesting to me how much the Boss and that whole aesthetic and emotional landscape is both a reflection of and an influence on a lot of people I know. There is a lot of *place* in his songs. I think the density of his lyrics is partly a reflection of the density of the place -- it's like a more packed form of country music where the country is industrial wasteland, suburban sprawl, and boardwalk towns.

Today I Learned that man alive is actually an AI Springsteen generator.

I think the density of his lyrics is partly a reflection of the density of the place -- it's like a more packed form of country music where the country is industrial wasteland, suburban sprawl, and boardwalk towns.

I like how - especially in Nebraska - he can take all that realist detail and give it a subtle twist through another dimension. You think this is all a John McPhee-level stacking-up of mundane detail, and then you gradually notice that everything's just a bit off kilter.

I think my favorite instance is "Open All Night," where it seems like he's just cataloguing a night drive - gas stations, pay phones, gospel radio and all - and then it dawns on you that he had two hours to go at the beginning of the song and he has three hours to go at the end, and this is Looking Glass Country and he's never going to get home.

i always wanted a little fact check wrt the guy who never smoked pop supposedly and lines like "Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps/
Interstellar mongrel nymphs"

No real stoner would manage to match the syllable count on those two lines, Springsteen is a cop

A Cop Who Never Smoked Pop.

he's never going to get home

It's almost as if he went out for a ride and he never went back.

Rhonda let's drive this chevy out into the switchblade night
let's take all our shattered dreams and toss em out into the creek
that runs behind the pollution factory where the drunks all
sing about the prom queen that they almost married

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 10 October 2019 15:45 (one hour ago) link

Rhonda I know there's still magic somewhere out in those stars
and I think we can find it if you have sex with me tonight in my caaaaaaaaaaarrrr!!!!

<Big Man takes a sax solo>

lol

Re: Bruce never smoking pot - yeah, and then there's this performance of "Wild Billy" where he a.) seems super stoned and b.) introduces the song by offering to trade a song dedication for weed? (I think - he's mumbling so much it's hard to tell.) Great performance, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAUrofM9DDs

To man alive: good, but it needs more road references or some place names, like

You're not sure if you should put out or wait
The answer is somewhere on the interstate
Baby don't make me read between the lines
All the wisdom I need is beneath these Jersey pines

I feel like someone needs to either code an auto-Brucenator, or start a crowdsourced Boss-imitation thread called "Sprilxsteen" or something

Well I thought I saw the Jersey Devil out behind the WaWa last night
Carly calls taylor ham pork roll but I don't mind
So let's ride this jughandle til the wheels fall off this '87 pontiac
I'm heading out to Six Flags and I don't know if I'm comin' back

how's that YMP?

First-rate!

Just make sure you get a Steinbeck character into the chorus and it's done.

"Last night" is the touch that really makes it.

You might need to add a dream sequence and some father issues, though. And a gypsy curse.

<Big Man takes a sax solo>

this is killing me rn

Out from under the shadows of the pulasky skyway
Speeding past the Sbarro sign at the Walt Whitman rest area
We can ride this turnpike all night but the ride ain't free
just tell me what exit and I'll punch your ticket baby

Never knew my daddy, but he was a union man
Gypsy woman told him "do all that you can"
I walked in a dream past the boardwalk sights
Saw John Steinbeck in those neon lights

We're almost there. Just need some chugging Roy Bittan chords through a Leslie speaker.

Not so fast - if you want to beat Dylan at this game, you'll need crime, a character of indeterminate gender, and some sisters.

wait so this song opened with sex in the caaaaarrrr?

Lily Dale, you could be helping here - at least sketch out a verse, sheesh.

I am the Jon Landau of this song. I don't help, I just provide highbrow criticism.