Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

He's very young on the early records and he has a lot of ideas that he's super excited about. Later he starts paring things down. I would try Nebraska - just make sure you have enough time to sit down and listen to the album all the way through. It's one of those albums that you really have to hear as a whole - or at least that's what I've found.

The tendency to cram too many words in never really goes away, though.

he has got and has always had a lot smashing in his guts

(Darkness is just the greatest)

xpost Eh, sure it does, especially compared to the word salad of the two early albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk8iXy-aw30

if you're looking to make sense of the early records without getting lost in the flood of sounds, this take may do the trick. it's my favorite Bruce moment, song, performance, etc. I could spend the rest of my life inside the way he sings "upstairs a band was playing, and the singer was singing something about going home".

I love that boot/show, because "Born to Run" comes *third*, after that particular epic and a cover, showing that the guy, as reported, truly had no real idea what he had on his hands just yet.

awesome, I'll have to check that show. Incident was my fave song of his for ages, and a great way into the first two albums, now that you mention it

In looking up who the drummer was on this date (I was hoping for Ernest "Boom" Carter), I stumbled across the story of how Max joined by answering an ad in the Village Voice.

The ad said, "No junior Ginger Bakers."

Euler, I've been meaning to thank you for recommending that performance - you were talking about it on another thread so I checked it out, and I love it. That moment is just wonderful.

This is reminding me to go back and listen to that whole show. Everything I've heard from it just blows me away.

Also love the way he draws out the "she did not really mind" on the line before it.

Darkness is a good place to start if you want unbusy Boss. Nebraska, def. Even Ghost of Tom Joad is a good one for that.

better yet - and this is just a thought - maybe try watching the Bruce on Broadway netflix special? a good unbusy way into the body of his work since it’s mostly him & a piano, and he’s such an engaging storyteller he might convince you to try the busy stuff again :)

As someone who just recently got way into Bruce, it was Nebraska that flicked the switch and made me a convert. I already liked what I’d heard, but the first verse of “Reason to Believe” made me go, “Wait, who IS this guy?” Nothing I knew of his work or his image had really prepared me for a song about a guy poking a dead dog with a stick by the side of the road.

I’ve also come to love The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle – I’ve been listening to it as I walk around the city, and at first it just seemed like a jumble, but the more time I spend with it the more I get out of it. "Sandy" is such an amazing combination of beautiful and funny – I tried to keep track of all the characters in the song that the narrator seems to be more attracted to than he is to Sandy, and I lost count. But the way he names and praises everything in Asbury Park, the good and the bad, as he’s getting ready to leave it – it’s just gorgeous. And "Incident" is wonderful, and "Rosalita" is just pure stupid joy.

The E. Street Shuffle cracks me up as well. I don’t know which I like more, the blatant homoeroticism or the fact that the E. Street shuffle only seems to have one move (everybody form a line!) OK, Bruce, we’re all lined up – what do we do now?

(None of this is really answering the question about where to start - I'm just happy this thread got revived because nobody in my actual life wants to hear me talk about Bruce.)

It's kind of crazy how he managed a fusion of Dylan and balladeer and funk-soul review on that album.

Here's how it was put in that book of essays I was just reading: "His debts to Phil Spector, the girl groups, Dylan, Elvis, Motown, the Byrds, New Orleans and James Brown are obvious. His synthesis is not."

I feel like there’s a strong sonic overlap between the E Street Band and the Saturday Night Live Band.

A question, for people who like The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle - do you like "Wild Billy's Circus Story?" And if not, why not? I think it's great, but it seems like a lot of people who are into that album don't like it, and I can't figure out why.

I keep trying to get into the Boss, but why is everything so frenzied all the time? It feels like every second (of the early records at least) he's shouting and cramming as many words in as possible while there is also a saxophone solo AND a keyboard solo all simultaneously and the band is playing at 10. Obviously the songwriting is masterful, and he seems like a great dude and a lot of my favorite people love him, but it's a bit like listening to an Albert Ayler record at times while also trying to make out lyrics.

I always recommend the Live 1975-85 album, which made a true believer out of me. Such breadth: storytelling, theatricality, intimate club sets vs stadium rock, "Racing in the Street"!, "The River" (with story)! And Roy Bittan as the unsung hero.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

def. prefer the scruffy wool-cap bruce to the vein-popping super-sized bruce. anyone else ever envision bryan ferry covering "sandy"?

I haven't, but I've wanted to hear Nick Cave cover the entire Darkness.

Haha, great description, TSF.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

Listen to the Dire Straits songs he guests on and it really underscores how much he brings to the table. I'm thinking of all the great stuff he does here, especially at the start and toward the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4_eH_DBSc

Boy, that video is weird! I guess the made two different ones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTw7vb9Jo8

Or you might try listening to The River and seeing if the quieter songs are the sort of thing you'd like to hear more of. It's a very bipolar album, so it's a pretty good representation of all the sides of Bruce, and there's a lot that's a blueprint for stuff he's going to do later on. "Wreck on the Highway" is one of my favorites.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

I'd hardly say any of the E-Street band members could be called "unsung". Really, it's the most celebrated backing band ever, surely the best known in the RHOF (and actually the only one I'm aware of)

But I'd argue Bittan, Weinberg, Van Zandt and Clemons, each in their own way, made integral contributions to the "magic trick". If the only thing we had from Bittan were his performances with Bowie he'd still be a giant.

FWIW I had an ambushed by unexpected emotion moment today with Racing in the Streets

Totally expected, though, because it is a beautiful, heartbreaking song.

There's a whole subset of Springsteen songs about life being so shitty you just have to get into your car and drive away, to escape, or worse. "Thunder Road," "Racing in the Streets," "Stolen Car," "State Trooper," "Hungry Heart" ...

"Cadillac Ranch."

"worse" is when you have to meet some guys and do them a favour and along the way you pick up debts that no honest man can pay.

Careful out there.

Also, when a dream is a lie that don't come true.

sometimes you're just tearing into the guts of *something* in the night

woaaaaaaaa ohhhhh ohhhh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I kid but it's his best moment

Yeah it almost seems to the point of being a joke except that the songs are really good. xp

Oh, and "Born to Run," of course, with suicide machine vs. death trap a pretty horrible choice.

no way man

also that gave us the Sopranos best moment

Rhonda let's drive this chevy out into the switchblade night
let's take all our shattered dreams and toss em out into the creek
that runs behind the pollution factory where the drunks all
sing about the prom queen that they almost married

what's this, you got an advance copy of his poetry book?

There's a whole subset of Springsteen songs about life being so shitty you just have to get into your car and drive away, to escape, or worse. "Thunder Road," "Racing in the Streets," "Stolen Car," "State Trooper," "Hungry Heart" ...

And another subset (related) about finding love and happiness but then being tempted away by the irresistible lure of easy money/the open road/unspecified "things."

I went to Rutgers and spent some time living and working in Jersey after so it's interesting to me how much the Boss and that whole aesthetic and emotional landscape is both a reflection of and an influence on a lot of people I know. There is a lot of *place* in his songs. I think the density of his lyrics is partly a reflection of the density of the place -- it's like a more packed form of country music where the country is industrial wasteland, suburban sprawl, and boardwalk towns.

Today I Learned that man alive is actually an AI Springsteen generator.

I think the density of his lyrics is partly a reflection of the density of the place -- it's like a more packed form of country music where the country is industrial wasteland, suburban sprawl, and boardwalk towns.

I like how - especially in Nebraska - he can take all that realist detail and give it a subtle twist through another dimension. You think this is all a John McPhee-level stacking-up of mundane detail, and then you gradually notice that everything's just a bit off kilter.

I think my favorite instance is "Open All Night," where it seems like he's just cataloguing a night drive - gas stations, pay phones, gospel radio and all - and then it dawns on you that he had two hours to go at the beginning of the song and he has three hours to go at the end, and this is Looking Glass Country and he's never going to get home.

i always wanted a little fact check wrt the guy who never smoked pop supposedly and lines like "Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps/
Interstellar mongrel nymphs"

No real stoner would manage to match the syllable count on those two lines, Springsteen is a cop

A Cop Who Never Smoked Pop.

he's never going to get home

It's almost as if he went out for a ride and he never went back.

Rhonda let's drive this chevy out into the switchblade night
let's take all our shattered dreams and toss em out into the creek
that runs behind the pollution factory where the drunks all
sing about the prom queen that they almost married

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 10 October 2019 15:45 (one hour ago) link

Rhonda I know there's still magic somewhere out in those stars
and I think we can find it if you have sex with me tonight in my caaaaaaaaaaarrrr!!!!

<Big Man takes a sax solo>

lol

Re: Bruce never smoking pot - yeah, and then there's this performance of "Wild Billy" where he a.) seems super stoned and b.) introduces the song by offering to trade a song dedication for weed? (I think - he's mumbling so much it's hard to tell.) Great performance, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAUrofM9DDs

To man alive: good, but it needs more road references or some place names, like

You're not sure if you should put out or wait
The answer is somewhere on the interstate
Baby don't make me read between the lines
All the wisdom I need is beneath these Jersey pines