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

This is very interesting, on a number of other musically related levels I don't even feel like going into right now.

Early Billy Bragg ("Back To Basics" CD compilation of vinyl stuff is absolutely essential) is at least 7 times more brilliant than Springsteen. Just him and his guitar. He should have stuck with that formula, even if I appreciate a few things here and there of his later stuff.

I don't think Berry Gordy et al. should be viciously maimed or anything, I just don't like the music)

Well that's good. Because Berry Gordy's record label Qwest was the first record company in the U.S. to release New Order records.

Also, if you can't deal with Diana Ross, well, fair enough. But you must watch "Lady Sings The Blues" someday and tell me it's not a good movie, first. As for me, I'm still racked with guilt for not having Marvin Gaye's "What Goes On" album despite meaning to purchase it for years.

Confession: Strangely I always enjoyed Foreigner's "Urgent". I never bought the record, but it had a certain resonance. In fact, when I first discovered as a kid that there were big books about rock n'roll at the library, it seems to me that song was in my head looking through those books. They talked about the Knack in those books. Stuff like that.

Cure are very fine indeed on "A Night Like This", saxophones or no.

I thought Qwest was Quincy Jones' label.

the grimly station bar jukebox five (every fucken time, much to the old regulars' annoyance):

meat loaf: two out of three ain't bad OR dead ringer for love
brooce: born in the usa (why not born to run? i dunno)
simon and garfunkel: the boxer
bowie: heroes
neil diamond: forever in blue jeans

now that is music to drink to

All I'm saying is: think about it.

Same large-banded arena-concert ethos. Same playing of Greatest Hits to the diehard fans with their fists in the air. Same or similar poetic ambitions. Same level of bombast (even if it is a different flavor of bombast). Almost the same amount of faux populism, or rather the same gosh-gee-I'm-still-just-a-bloke-from-the-old-neighborhoodiness.

Bonus coincidence: They've both been known to have their wives on stage with them.

Special extra credit bonus coincidence: compare the letters in their most overblown material: "Band on the Run" ~ "Born to Run" = "B*n*n* RUN"

I do see some of the same stridency in Mr Hewson's work.

But U2 puts more focus on their status as a band qua band, rather than a solitary superstar with a rotating cast of backup guys.

And I think Springsteen has a capacity for irony that Bono frankly lacks. Some of the same quality can be seen in McCartney, a little bit of wink in the voice, a la "I know this is a bit corny but humor me." Bono seems to take his corn seriously, and always sings as though he believes it.

Has anyone ever wondered if the use of the name Wendy in BTR points to the Beach Boys somehow? I have, but aside from the common grounds of driving fast and Phil Spector I got nothing.

One more thing, Macca collaborator Elvis Costello dissed the Boss back in the day by saying "Springsteen writes about the street. I hate the fucking street" which all good EC fans bought into at the time. But the Boss's own piss-taking of his own myth-making in Darkness's "Racing In The Street" cured me of this.

MP, Bono got some irony around the time of Achtung, Baby, but it's not clear how well it stuck.

does he? springsteen has a bit of a sense of humor, but not a particularly ironic one. he takes himself pretty damn seriously.

and this...

"I know this is a bit corny but humor me."

...sounds exactly like bono to me!

Nevertheless, Bruce-as-ironist is an important part of my personal collection of half-baked ideas, and I'm reluctant to abandon it based on mere lack of evidence.

Someone above said that Buck and Mills were having a great time playing Born To Run with Springsteen at the pre-election concerts. I was at the first one, and that was true there, too, but the person who really went out of his gourd was Conor Oberst. He got so hyped up on the energy from the crowd and the band that I thought he was going to bounce off the ceiling. Everyone I was with was commenting on it -- Oberst must have played hundreds, and R.E.M. must have played thousands of gigs over the years, but I doubt they ever experienced anything like the audience response the Big Bruce Anthems evoke. For better or worse, they do admirable (or not) art songs; Bruce does the Nuremburg rally.

V. snotty post above, too, about people missing the poetry in Springsteen's lyrics. One of his strengths is how accessible his lyrics are. People aren't that dumb (OK, maybe Born in the USA got misheard somewhat). Born To Run and Thunder Road are like Like A Rolling Stone -- a huge range of people "got" them, and loved it.

oh wait, i did mean to challenge this half-baked idea! the e street band is a huge part of springsteen's identity, even if he did lay them off for a while (what are friends for anyway if you can't fire 'em?). springsteen/miami steve were every bit as much of a bonded duo as bono/edge, and by all accounts springsteen was completely shattered when steve up and left the band in the mid-'80s. if he turned into a solitary superstar for awhile after that, it may well not have been his choice.

ouch.

Born to Run is the first song I remember liking. My dad played the tape of it in the car on the way to Florida. I liked it because I was born in America too! When we got home I played the tape and jumped on my mom and dad's bed to it.

(Full disclosure... I also jumped on the bed to the song "Bitch" by that Meredith Brooks)

I later bought Bruce Springsteen's greatest hits, but didn't really like listening to full albums and I think my parents just took it from me and kept it for themselves.

what about Phil Lynott?

xpost:
fcuk! I did the classic bonehead move of typing in my wrong info and getting 80 google hits, whereas if I had typed the right info, I would have got 8000. fcc, I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

Ha, I never heard this before, but I just remembered that when I first bought a Springsteen record in new wave 1979(I swear this is true) it's because his music *sounded* to me kind of like Elvis Costello (who I loved at the time), though really, the "oh-oh-oh-ohhhhhhh"s's EC was sticking at the end of songs in *Armed Forces* days were more likely inspired by Bruce (who had been doing them for years) than the other way around.

Further, I think a vastly greater proportion of Elvis's influence-seeking at that point entailed looking back in time rather than in keeping up with what was going on on American top 40 radio (more Hoagy than Bruce).

i've always heard all such oh-oh-oh's as distinct ronnie spector homages, though my brain is currently too fried to pinpoint the exact spector moment or moments they're referencing or to even guarantee that one exists. but i think it does.

RS: I've heard demo tapes you made in the mid-1970s with your band Flip City. Some of them sound a lot like '72 Bruce Springsteen.

EC: That's who we were copying. When Bruce came to London for "the future of rock & roll" gigs in 1975, we were like, "Who are these johnny-come-latelies?" We'd been digging him for years. I loved The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. The songs are so operatic. Then he narrowed it down. I learned something from that. When he wanted to get over, he wrote "Born to Run."

I don't think "whoah-oh-oh-oh's" really belong to anybody. Hell, they're all over the Misfits' catalog too (hmmm....who were also from New Jersey!)

Yes that is correct, silly me. I sure had a lot to drink last night.

i'm dreading some anti-costello and -springsteen comment following on this post's heels.