Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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

I feel like someone needs to either code an auto-Brucenator, or start a crowdsourced Boss-imitation thread called "Sprilxsteen" or something

Well I thought I saw the Jersey Devil out behind the WaWa last night
Carly calls taylor ham pork roll but I don't mind
So let's ride this jughandle til the wheels fall off this '87 pontiac
I'm heading out to Six Flags and I don't know if I'm comin' back

how's that YMP?

First-rate!

Just make sure you get a Steinbeck character into the chorus and it's done.

"Last night" is the touch that really makes it.

You might need to add a dream sequence and some father issues, though. And a gypsy curse.

<Big Man takes a sax solo>

this is killing me rn

Out from under the shadows of the pulasky skyway
Speeding past the Sbarro sign at the Walt Whitman rest area
We can ride this turnpike all night but the ride ain't free
just tell me what exit and I'll punch your ticket baby

Never knew my daddy, but he was a union man
Gypsy woman told him "do all that you can"
I walked in a dream past the boardwalk sights
Saw John Steinbeck in those neon lights

We're almost there. Just need some chugging Roy Bittan chords through a Leslie speaker.

Not so fast - if you want to beat Dylan at this game, you'll need crime, a character of indeterminate gender, and some sisters.

wait so this song opened with sex in the caaaaarrrr?

Lily Dale, you could be helping here - at least sketch out a verse, sheesh.

I am the Jon Landau of this song. I don't help, I just provide highbrow criticism.

I think sex in the caaaaaaarrrr was a false ending? (To be followed by ONE TWO THREE FOUR! and the verse about the Jersey Devil.)

ok.

A figure in green haunted my dream
Maybe a man, maybe a lady
My sister heard a siren scream
Gypsy said "that was your maybe"

Rhonda was stuck in between
Blood in the mist out by the beach
Vanished behind a smokestack screen
The cops arrived, she was out of reach

[unintelligible moaning]

AND THEN WE HAD SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR! <sax solo>

SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!
SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!
SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!
SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!
SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!
SEX IN THE CAAAAAARRRR!

All right!

Keep it rockin' boys!

How are you all doing these without using the word "sir"?

Sex In The Car, Sir

<Nils does a dance on a trampoline>

Out from under the shadows of the pulasky skyway
Speeding past the Sbarro sign at the Walt Whitman rest area
We can ride this turnpike all night but the ride ain't free
just tell me what exit and I'll punch your ticket baby

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, October 10, 2019 12:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like it should actually be "Burnin' past the Sbarro sign..."

Fair point, it's not really Springsteen unless something's on fire.

or he gave away the g's

I put those g's in Sir Sbarro's sign, honey, and then I torched it

And she said "Honey you should know by now that pizza's no good!"
as she lit a cigarette and flicked the ashes on my hood

Another American job lost to high tech outsourcing

Saw her in the Sbarro's by the dynamo
Just a-twirlin' that pizza dough

The bar band there was hopping
I got lost in Rhonda's world
Redemption was the topping
As the pizza slowly twirled

They closed down the Sbarro's 'cross the railroad track
Ralph went out looking for pizza and never came back

Everybody knows a hungry Ralph

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S04E17/509675.jpg?b64lines=V2VsbCB0aGV5IGJsZXcgdXAgdGhlIApjaGlja2VuIG1hbiBpbiBQaGlsbHkgbGFzdCAKbmlnaHQKCgoKCgoKCi4uLm1tbW1tLi4uY2hpY2tlbi4uLg==

Meet me tonight at Panera Bread

no dude that's mark kozelek

his songs are even easier to parody because he pretty much writes them as parodies of their own style to begin with

I had to listen to "The Promise" earlier - Bruce's most self-referential song? That 2-disc lost album sort of thing they put out with the Darkness box is nice, but the 3 year gap (lawsuit-imposed?) between Born to Run and Darkness probably did him a lot of good in the long run.