'Darkness on the Edge of Town' vs. 'Candy-O'

Curious rock question - WHY does everything happen at night, or in the dark? Is it responsible to put songs about partying at night and driving at night on the same side of the record? Howcum Bruce's ppl are always chasing spirits in the night or driving all night or proving it all night WHEN THEY HAVE TO GET UP TO WORK THE NEXT DAY? What the fuck is so great about being nocturnal anyway, unless you're an Anne Rice victim? Prices of cabs go way up, everything's closed, it's usually cold out, nobody's on the streets except people with nowhere else to go, if you're bored and ring somebody up they'll get angry and accuse you of being drunk. Nocturnal people keep the neighbours up - except when they're moaning about the noise from people who keep normal hours, plus they sleep all goddam day and get up and wander around in their briefs when other people are trying to eat supper. Admit it, most of the time when you're out past a certain hour, wouldn't you rather be indoors watching TV and chuckling over ambulance sirens and gunshots outside? I bet nurses and air-traffic controllers just love hearing these songs about the romance and mystery and adventure of living in shadows. Also - and this is a SERIOUS question - is Ric Ocasek autistic? Every song he's written directed at another person is about being aggravated by any signs of life they exhibit and wanting them to stay still or go away if they're not paying him any attention. Maybe that just means he's a boy!

dark = the sublime = gothic = ruskin is first evah rock critic

(ps this theory works "despite" ruskin also being famous victorian virgin) (he had to write about poems and mountains and cathedrals, becuz chuck berry wz not yet born, but see it still works)

'Candy's Room' is my fave Boss track.

Was it Ruskin that fainted when he first caught sight of his wife's pubic hair? I'm sure that's 'relevant', somehow or other.

yep: she was called effie gray and after seven yrs of no sex she ran away wiv a pre-raphaelite

Did the carpet not match the curtains?

The Springsteen-penned "Light of Day" might poke a hole in your theory.

Rivers Cuomo vs. Michael J Fox!

Effie ran off to marry Millais.

I don't actually know 'Candy-O'. I think I might know 'Candy's Room' - if it's the one before 'Racing In The Street'. If so, it's ace.

Q - don't you think 'Racing In The Street' trashes most other early Boss - it's that good?

PF - agreed re "Racing in the Street". Altho "Badlands" very very very nearly makes it too. Sometimes I find "Racing" too intense and I have to turn it off. If anyone asks "what historical moment would you like to have seen", sometimes I think that being present at the first studio playback of the completed "Racing" would be my real answer. I can't imagine what it must've been like to have finished that song, I picture everyone collapsing afterward. It's a song to put on when the only option in life seems to be staring into space and flicking a lit cigarette into the dustbin for every bad decision you've ever made, half in hope that maybe your house will burn down with you still in it. The delivery of the "Callin' out around the world" line is the finest recorded vocal in the history of music. Or one of them, anyway. ("Badlands" - that's more all-purpose put-on-any-time for me, mainly because I can tune out the words if I want to and train the beady rational-crit half of my brain onto the sonics. IMHO "Badlands" is the most intensely political song ever recorded because it would say the same thing even if I couldn't understand the words or even if there WERE no words. (In distorted symbolic form, what it seems to be saying sonically is "Whatever happened to the Vagrants? Does Leslie West ever step out of his limo to buy a hot dog from them? And why are THEY reduced to selling hotdogs when Lou Reed isn't?" ) The social analysis of the song is built into the structure and playing and arrangement and sound etc., whereas most artists attempt to prove they see beyond their own noses by taking stock forms and then singing lists of famous names and appalling historical tragedies over the result.

Wow. I like it.

"Candy-O= The Cars
"Candy's Room" = The Boss

What an opening couplet:

I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor

It's nice to hear that the Boss does translate to other countries. I wondered about that.

I absolutely adore Racing in the Street, Bruce's best song. However, if you have the Springsteen live box set (which I do) listen to that version of Racing in the Street. The middle of the song is a 5 MINUTE SAX SOLO. That makes it the worst song on the box, even worse than Bruce explaining why he was a draft dodger for 45 fucking minutes.

"what's so great about being nocturnal" => most british thread ever!!

"Candy-O", btw

I'd go with "Candy-O" because the Vargas painting on the album cover entranced my then ten year old mind.

As an album, "Candy-O" is not nearly as good as "Darkness at the Edge of Town".

Is it just me or does the music to "Let's Go" sound like something written by Gary Numan? I was listening to the a bunch of Gary Numan a few months back and it kept occuring to me how much the music sounded like The Cars, the vocals and lyrical content notwithstanding.