Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.

Your papa says he knows that I'm a filthy capitalist

Everybody sells out
Baby that's a fact

Adam raised a bitcoin

57 Channels and Jim Cramer's On

the record company, rosie, just gave me HALF A BILLION DOLLARS

Glory Pays

the river OF CASH

He ain't gonna ride in no used car again, that's for sure.

Getting made at any artist past 70 for selling their catalog is idiotic. Robbie Robertson talked about this in his Rolling Stone interview when they discussed similar sales by guys like Dylan - to put it succinctly:

"I certainly understand, seeing when some people pass away, like Prince or Tom Petty, and then the families are stuck with a mess and everybody hates one another and all of that shit. It’s not a bad idea to get this shit sorted out while you’re still around."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/robbie-robertson-interview-the-band-the-weight-stage-fright-bob-dylan-1122213/

I guess he could leave it to specific family members and hope they don't license his stuff (and also be okay with administering his catalog as another job - even then that on its own won't last), but regardless, he can't live forever and has to relinquish control eventually.

Wasn't there also something about the economics of the value of catalogues changing because of streaming, not sure.

Let's go easy on Bruce. His daughter needs a reserve horse to augment her backup horse in case something is wrong with her main horse

Wasn't there also something about the economics of the value of catalogues changing because of streaming, not sure.

Yeah Robertson mentioned that. Basically, publishing was the most valuable bond in the music business - he said he learned from the start NEVER sell your publishing, but that's longer the case as the economics have changed so much.

*no longer the case

I guess the alternative is throwing it all into the public domain or setting up some kind of charity, but I would not be surprised at all if he does some *major* donations in the next few years.

Me and her went for a ride, sir,
And 500 million dollars later…

Let's go easy on Bruce. His daughter needs a reserve horse to augment her backup horse in case something is wrong with her main horse

She's an easy target, but tbf one of his other kids is a firefighter, so maybe they balance out.

"what may be the biggest deal in music for an individual body of work"! That's really something.

I don't understand why I, as a fan of any of these people, would care if they decide to sell their catalog? It doesn't change anything about the delivery of that music or how I might hear it, aside from maybe hearing "State Trooper" in a Geico ad in five years.

I already suffered through this Volvo ad so I don't know that anything can be worse on that front.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FFCBAY4G-g

I hear Sony wouldn't sign on the publishing piece until Bruce resolved the "dress sways/waves" lyric issue.

lol morrisp

https://www.theonion.com/bruce-springsteen-relishes-finally-telling-off-foreman-1848228552

WELL IF SHE WANTS TO SEE MEAH
YOU CAN TELL HER THAT IM EASILY FOUUND

so they pulled the two No Nukes individual concerts (released December 24, 2018) from live.brucespringsteen.net to sell the film's soundtrack 2CD (with tracks from both nights) instead? Okay, there is some overlap, but still - both nights were great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen_discography#Live_archive_releases -> "No Nukes 1979"
vs "The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts" https://live.brucespringsteen.net/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=Nukes

new remaster & mix though

Plus a film of the performance!

That is on its way, yes :-)

https://i.imgur.com/CvHJMtE.png

Omg Lionel’s teeth

Band photos where one member refuses to play along

Spotify (sorry Neil) doesn't have any of the many live releases, but it does have those weird thematically linked Live Series compilations. Love songs, covers, etc. They also have this one massive compendium that afaict includes, well, all the tracks on all those various Live Series albums. Fan made? Who knows. It's 105 songs and 10 hours long. Anyway, I decided to play that one, which is like in essence listening to the weirdest set list of all time, beginning with "Born to Run" and flouting expectations and flow at every turn. Still, it's a blast, and it reminded me that for all its innate corniness, I really like "Waitin' on a Sunny Day." I don't know why, but I've always thought the song just kind of ... profoundly sad. Which is odd for a song whose Genius entry doesn't have even a single footnote.

I have a migraine and am stuck in bed with nothing to do. Does anyone feel like giving me a Bruce-related writing prompt and/or discussion question to get my brain going?

it's bruce springsteen, and the year is ___. he can't sleep, so he decides to go on a drive. but his engine breaks down, way out there. a pair of headlights appear from around the curve.

oops, I should have specified no creative writing prompts. My brain doesn't do creative, only analytical. I'll see what I can do, though.

Does anyone remember Springsteen's first marriage? I'm betting he barely does.

Wasn’t he married to Elton John briefly in the 70s

LOL

Bruce-related writing prompt

what exactly are the roles of the two very good lead guitar players who've spent the better part of their lives in the backing band for a guy who's a pretty great lead guitarist on his own and seems to take most of the leads himself? how (and why) are parts divided among the three?

(my favorite non-bruce e street live lead: nils on "because the night")

fact checking cuz, you've neatly located the area of Springsteen's work that I have zero idea how to talk about, but I'd love to know the answer if anyone has it.

tbh, I really don't like the guitar solo on "Because the Night." Not the solo itself, exactly, more the fact that it exists. Every time Bruce writes one of his "please have sex with me because I am sad" songs, he slaps a big old showboating guitar solo on it to remind you that he's still a dude, and sometimes that works for me but in "Because the Night" it always takes me out of the song. There he is, undercutting traditional gender roles and ideas about working-class masculinity, showing us a blue-collar worker who is stressed and vulnerable and in need of refuge, and then he takes a three-minute break in the middle of the song for a guitar solo that is none of those things. I don't like it, even when it's Nils doing the playing. It feels like a cop-out.

Because the Night is both my least favorite Bruce song AND my least favorite Patti song. It isn't quite my least favorite Natalie Merchant/10K Maniacs song, but that's only because I haven't thought enough about them to decide on a least favorite.

My philosophy is that sex is a metaphor for connection. So a song about longing for sex is a song about longing for connection, which means that a song that explicitly asks for sex is fundamentally about loneliness.

The relationship songs that reach the most profundity are the ones where the relationship is already established, and the participants are trying to work out how to manage it or process its meaning. Hence "One Step Up," "Brilliant Disguise," plus some verses of "My Home Town," "Thunder Road," "The Rising."

i am going to need a minute

i feel winded

the solo on “because the night” is fucking great

like you cannot go from that huge chorus into some lowkey noodly feelingsy type shit it HAS to go to that type of solo because regardless of gender roles & whatever garnish he’s putting over in the lyrics the bottom line (dare i spell it out) is that he is ~horny~ & this is a ~rock song~ and they are gonna ~do it~
that’s what the solo is for!!
sorry but thats just facts

That song’s BS, anyway…. we all know the night belongs to Michelob.

the solo on “because the night” is fucking great

haha yes i obviously agree. it sounds especially free to me when they do it live. like it could go off the rails at any moment in a way that bruce/e st solos rarely do.

tbh, I really don't like the guitar solo on "Because the Night"

but i'm intrigued by lily's take, which is from an angle i've never thought about! it would be far from alone in the bruce oeuvre as a song where the words and music are in some sort of conflict with each other, but usually that's a conscious choice, the one providing an emotional counterpoint to the other. i never noticed that conflict in "because the night." i've always had the same basic reading as vg -- horny song, horny solo, voila! but could there be two mismatched impulses here? an unintended, revealing conflict? and/or maybe the gtr solo *is* the refuge you're referring to, lily? i don't know. i kind of feel i want to sit with this idea for a minute.

I love 'one step up', so much.

That song’s BS, anyway…. we all know the night belongs to Michelob.

New compilation coming from Ace Records in the UK:

https://acerecords.co.uk/ladies-sing-the-boss

Part of the inspiration for this compilation came from me going to see the all-female Bruce tribute act the She Street Band at the Clapham Grand in 2019 and experiencing how these songs, which I had known all my life, took on another perspective when seen through the filter of a female protagonist.

What the tracks on this collection do is allow the singer to own the essence of the song and claim it as theirs. Anna Calvi is the driver of the car in ‘Fire’, it’s Moa Holmsten’s hand that slips up the woman’s skirt on ‘Highway 29’, and Emmylou Harris totally owns the dreamscape anxiety of ‘My Father’s House’.

Here's to good friends
The night is kind of special

The beer we pour
Must say something more

Somehow

Low key obsessed with the Hammersmith Odeon version of his Detroit Medley. Better than coffee

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