Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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

How has no-one else posted about THIS

http://www.backstreets.com/Assets/Images/2022/news2023EuropeDates.jpg

Oh yeah European tour

part of me is like
YESSS us tour next year wahoo

the other part of me is like
WE MUST PROTECT BRUCE AT ALL COSTS HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT BE TOURING

Tempted to try to buy a ticket to see him in Hamburg as I haven't been to Europe in five years and have friends I'd like to visit. Feels like a risky plan to make this far in advance, though - who knows what things will be like next summer?

you can always unload the show ticket(s).. just book the travel and stuff a lot closer to the date

when do the North American dates come out?

They said US dates will begin in February, iirc, and then resume after the European dates (which I think have already been expanded a little beyond the ones listed). Might try to see him with a friend in Sweden. All I know is that the last tour, back in 2016, was the first time he seemed a little older and slower to me, and of course it's been six years since then. I have no idea how he (and his voice!) will hold up, but I'm hoping for the best. Then again, he sounded pretty good at that Steve Earle benefit a few months ago, and of course he sounds great on "Letter to Me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyR_VpBTWA

oh come on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6w3xLqR_Os

I know, right?

noooooo theyre putting their boring stink all over him right before a tour!?

also kinetic floors & bicycles oh please kindly fuck off

LMAO. My partner is a big, big Coldplay, so it was inevitable that we’d go to a show. THIS was the show so it was a pretty damn welcome surprise. (McCartney’s got a show coming up in the same place, the last of the North American leg of the tour - bet Bruce pops in for that.)

I can’t dump on the band but I will say in the lead up to the show, I started thinking how bewildering and fascinating everyone from Jay-Z and Beyoncé (who were at the show) to Frank Ocean to U2 and R.E.M. are Coldplay fans. The one time everything comes together for me is “Yellow” which I wouldn’t call atypical (probably quintessential if anything) but it’s the one time where their stuff lights up for me and it was actually pretty memorable to witness it at the show.

They kind of remind me of the nicest, most straight-laced upperclassmen I went to school with, guys who got elected to student council, won track meets and went to good schools, probably good jobs as well and a family raised in a posh suburb. I kind of feel like that’s reflected in their work, if you know what I mean - I can’t say it translates into the things I personally find interesting or compelling in art, but my partner gets an immense amount of enjoyment in it.

Beyond music, the environmental friendly aspects of their tour is great - who else powers a stadium tour with completely renewable energy? That should be the case for everyone, to the point where it’s nothing anyone brags about. And there were a bunch of moments, while looking around at the lighting arrangement they devised for the show, where I thought “if you were into acid, NOW would be an perfect time to drop.”

So that’s all the nice things I have to say about them.

I have been to a couple shows where the artist indicated that the tour was carbon-neutral - by which I gather they meant offsets. (You buy a ticket, someone plants a tree in Norway or something.) Can't remember who. A 90s indie songstress of some sort. KT Tunstall, Eliza Carthy, Michelle Shocked?

They did not mean that their amps were solar-powered, or that the lights in the venue were run by windmills, or that their tour bus was electric. Not sure what Coldplay is doing but yeah, that's something every artist should be doing.

They had a detailed description of what they were doing on the screens before the show actually started. I was very impressed - power came from a variety of sources, enough to charge up everything before each show. And in terms of environmental impact, even the plastic wrist lights they handed out (which you return in bins before leaving the venue) were made from renewable materials, I'm guessing plant-based resin instead of common petroleum-based plastics.

Even though they're roughly middle-aged, it was kind of like a boy-band pop show. I've only been to one other show at MetLife - the Stones. They were singing about sex and murder with projections of Mick et al looking like they were consumed by hellfire - the highlight, "Midnight Rambler," was like a ghost train barreling straight through hell. (This was three years ago, before I went to any shows with my partner.) Coldplay's show was aesthetically the complete opposite in every possible way.

Even though they're roughly middle-aged, it was kind of like a boy-band pop show.

Didn't they work with Max Martin on their most recent records? They know what they need to do to keep filling arenas.

Bruce and SVZ just showed up at McCartney's show and played "Glory Days" (perfect choice - Paul turns 80 in a few days) and "I Wanna Be Your Man"!

Actually Van Zandt didn't join (though he was at the show).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxIS1XTZAQA

And he came back out for "The End"

Paul McCartney e Bruce Springsteen tocando “The End” no MetLife Stadium, em East Rutherford (16/06) #PaulMcCartneyGotBack
📸: edkeller66 pic.twitter.com/kxCK0ay4gO

— The Beatles BR 🍏 (@TheBeatleBR) June 17, 2022

(Apologies, the Twitter link actually misses all but one of Springsteen's turns at a guitar solo.)

I'm biased, but it's kinda amazing how he can just command the stage next to Paul friggin McCartney. Also, that they are both really old, too. Octogenarian Macca making me more hopeful for the Bruce tour.

If I had to pick between Bruce and the Beatles, it would have to be the Beatles, but I absolutely agree, it's impressive how Springsteen completely takes the show when they launch into "Glory Days." Some credit goes to McCartney - I want to say being in the Beatles gave him a natural inclination to cede the spotlight and make room for someone else when he knows he's backing them up - but the song actually makes Springsteen look like the greater songwriter. It's a cliché that McCartney's songwriting is pretty lopsided, where he's unmatched as a melodist and arranger but frustratingly uneven as a lyricist. While both of them can come up with immensely catchy ear worms that can seem corny in the wrong context, Springsteen's usually has a lot more going under the surface, and that's exactly what I get from "Glory Days." Musically, it starts off like a lot of McCartney's poppier hits, but with every line and every verse, there are nuances and a level of detail in the storytelling that's typically absent in McCartney's post-Beatles output. McCartney's pop hits can feel like nothing songs in comparison.