Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

yeah that's a pretty haunting moment

i don't agree w/ the thesis but the 33 1/3 on BITUSA makes a pretty strong case that it's his best album because of the balance of comedy and tragedy where albums like Darkness and Nebraska lack levity

The only song I might discard is "No Surrender."

I'm in the BITUSA = best album camp although TOL is close.

i'd happily lose Glory Days. Downbound is one of the top 3 or 4 tracks on the album eeeeeasily.

nooooooooo not Glory Days ;_;

clarence being reduced to hitting a cow bell in the terrible cheesefilled
video is the moment where the E Street band of old dies for me.

its not even a cowbell though, its a triangle, or something equally
non saxy.

There's a huge swath of Bruce sans much Clarence. Like almost all of "Darkness," for example.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2582vpx.jpg

Man, I'd rather see him like that than sitting in a big chair with an oxygen tank next to him, which is how he was half the time in recent years. Poor Clarence. :(

even so, I literally kinda freeze up at the thought of seeing Bruce now sans Clarence. I don't know if I could handle it. And if they have a section to honor him, like they did in one youtube clip I saw recently, oh my god I will be a sea of tears

funny to see the "downbound train" discussion cuz i almost revived this thread this morning just to capslocklyric

NOW I WORK
DOWN AT THE CAR WASH
WHERE ALL IT EVER
DOES IS RAIN

also yeah have always loved "i'm goin down". cheerfully apocalyptic.

NOW I WORK DOWN AT THE CAR WASH
WHERE ALL IT EVER DOES IS RAIN

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, April 3, 2011 12:36 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't the protagonist of that song have like three different jobs in the course of the song?

how much were the wrigley tickets? are they gone?

yeah he has an unspecified but apparently pleasant job at the beginning, and then the downbound train takes him through the car wash to the railroad gang. sobering!

xp heh. well.

amateurist, this post of yours about "we are the world" is so otm, whenever i catch the moment of bruce singing in the video, i cringe.

WATW isn't so bad, really. brooce is really embarrassing on it, though. kind of makes you wonder about him.

― amateurist, Monday, August 3, 2009 5:01 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"kind of makes you wonder about him" lol

What is it about conservatives and Springsteen. David Brooks just went to Europe to see Bruce do a bunch of shows there. Here's part of his column(much of which is just filled with him marveling over Spaniards singing along to "Born in the USA"):

It makes you appreciate the tremendous power of particularity. If your identity is formed by hard boundaries, if you come from a specific place, if you embody a distinct musical tradition, if your concerns are expressed through a specific paracosm, you are going to have more depth and definition than you are if you grew up in the far-flung networks of pluralism and eclecticism, surfing from one spot to the next, sampling one style then the next, your identity formed by soft boundaries, or none at all.

(Maybe this is why younger rock bands can’t fill stadiums year after year, while the more geographically defined older bands like U2, Springsteen and the Beach Boys can.)

The whole experience makes me want to pull aside politicians and business leaders and maybe everyone else and offer some pious advice: Don’t try to be everyman. Don’t pretend you’re a member of every community you visit. Don’t try to be citizens of some artificial globalized community. Go deeper into your own tradition. Call more upon the geography of your own past. Be distinct and credible. People will come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/brooks-the-power-of-the-particular.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120626

Pluralist and eclectic kids get off of my lawn

Any pictures of Brooks trying on jeans like George Will did?

I'm waiting for a group photo of Will, Brooks and governor Christie all wearing jeans, Springsteen t-shirts and black leather jackets

They say you’ve never really seen a Bruce Springsteen concert until you’ve seen one in Europe, so some friends and I threw financial sanity to the winds and went to follow him around Spain and France. In Madrid, for example, we were rewarded with a show that lasted 3 hours and 48 minutes, possibly the longest Springsteen concert on record and one of the best. But what really fascinated me were the crowds.

Oy veh

Is it really true that huge crowds of Spanish youth dig Springsteen? If so, then I at least have to hand it to D-Brooks that he told me something about the world I didn't know.

Not sure about spain, but it's basically my impression that every rock group that ever released a record on a major label can headline arenas in japan and brazil

Springsteen is pretty popular everywhere, but definitely in Western Europe.

It's weird. It's almost as if he's one of the most famously convincing performers of all time. Hmm, I wonder how Prince fares in Spain or Italy? I have a hunch he does ... well.

Prince was huge in Europe; in the late eighties his records were selling better there than in America.

lol josh otm

The issue though is whether Brooks is right about the age of Springsteen followers in Spain and why they are younger (if he is correct):

Springsteen crowds in the U.S. are hitting their AARP years, or deep into them. In Europe, the fans are much younger. The passion among the American devotees is frenzied, bordering on cultish. The intensity of the European audiences is two standard deviations higher. The Europeans produce an outpouring of noise and movement that sometimes overshadows what’s happening onstage.

It's weird. It's almost as if he's one of the most famously convincing performers of all time. Hmm, I wonder how Prince fares in Spain or Italy? I have a hunch he does ... well.

Well, yeah, but the point is that my impression agrees with Brooks that here in the US of A you would be hard pressed to find somebody 40 or under who was psyched to go to a Bruce Springsteen concert. So if it's different in Western Europe, that's interesting.

last.fm (which I take to be used by a disproportionately young crowd, and which I think also has fairly large European buy-in) has 46m plays of Springsteeen as against 22m of Prince, which I find very surprising. (Gaga gets 168m.)

ehhh I dunno. Hell, if you're under thirty and love music, chances are you're going to a Springsteen show. It's the 25 year olds who love BTR and Darkness who are least inclined to love, say, BITUSA

Do that many younger ones really like Prince though? Like, beyond recognition of the name etc? Or beyond 10-12 hits? His demographic still seems to be around his own age and then 10-15 years younger ie. the younger end being usually the ones who at least remember the hits coming out

Springsteen's surely in that AC/DC, Led Zep, Beatles category now, I'd say he's more fans at either end of the scale, including those older than himself

Do that many younger ones really like Prince though? Like, beyond recognition of the name etc? Or beyond 10-12 hits?

that's a lot of hits for anyone to know!

if you're under thirty and love music, chances are you're going to a Springsteen show

Nah, I don't think so.

No, it's not strictly accurate. I take exception to the idea that if you're under 40 you don't listen to him.

I'm 40 and to me Springsteen is the same as the Rolling Stones, a classic rock act -- I respect what he's done, I'll happily sing along on the radio, I'm sort of vaguely aware that he's continued to release albums over the last 25 years, but I would never even think of paying $100 or whatever it costs to go see him play an arena. Who knows, maybe I'm missing out!

^^this ( plus a decade)

Bruce has a lot more young fans than pretty much anyone else who was releasing albums in '75, that's for sure.

Wait, does he really have more young fans these days than Zeppelin and Floyd?

Zep and Floyd have more fervent young fans, that's for sure.

Enthusiasm for Floyd has, like never waned.

Is this the thread were I can talk about the dentist I had once who, whilst I was being held prisoner in the chair, alternated bragging about his restaurant investments with bragging about the super long rock concerts he had attended. It went from Billy Joel at 2h 45m to Eric Clapton at 3h 15m to.... wait for it... c'mon... we know who gives you the longest show...the best show... the most for your money ... c'mon do I have to even say his name...

well i thought we were just talking about people still touring. sure a lot of 60s/early 70s acts still have a cachet with the youth comparable to Bruce, i guess. i just think it's dumb to talk about how old his audience is because it could be quite a bit older, given how long he's been around.

I'm 40 and to me Springsteen is the same as the Rolling Stones, a classic rock act -- I respect what he's done, I'll happily sing along on the radio, I'm sort of vaguely aware that he's continued to release albums over the last 25 years, but I would never even think of paying $100 or whatever it costs to go see him play an arena. Who knows, maybe I'm missing out!

You are totally missing out. Bruce live in 2012 is just about as good as he's ever been; Stones have sucked live for decades. Not to mention the fact that the Stones charge four times what Bruce charges. Pay the $45 for cheap seats then come back with a full report.

Only $45? That's not too bad. But do we have to stay the full three and a half hours? I'll probably develop a crick in my neck and a stitch in my side, not to mention shaky legs that might give in

Don’t try to be everyman. Don’t pretend you’re a member of every community you visit. Don’t try to be citizens of some artificial globalized community.

This sounds more like a lecture to Bruce than a lecture of things you learned from Bruce. Trying to be everyman is totally his thing. Ditto the rest.

So basically all it means is, David Brooks went to Bruce Springsteen concerts and misunderstood them like he misunderstands everything, to suit some convenient bogus narrative.

does Bruce pretend to be a member of the community when he's in Spain and speak in Spanish between songs, or does he talk about growing up in Freehold?

I really wanted to go to the show at Fenway but the only tickets I could find are $100 plus and that's more than I've ever paid for a show.

The former, some dude, only he learned his Spanish from John Sayles, therefore he doesn't use "tu" and addresses everyone as "usted."

It's more like the community he pretends to is Rock N' Roll, and everyone's invited. Which is its own bogus narrative, but a much more appealing one than anything David Brooks has in mind.