Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

sometimes the car is a metaphor for the metaphorical

He drives an El Camino, so is it Sex In A Car, Sex In A Truck, or Sex In A Way Of Life?

Sex in a Lonely Waystation on the Dusty Road to Enlightenment. But only if we expand the definition of "sex" to include "your wife laying her weathered hand gently over yours as you hold the steering wheel."

As long as the road leads to redemption, or to transcendence, or to forgiveness. Otherwise it's just driving somewhere.

when is driving somewhere *ever* just driving somewhere?

As long as the road leads to redemption, or to transcendence, or to forgiveness. Otherwise it's just driving somewhere.

Pretty sure Bruce actually says this somewhere in the movie. I think the actual wording was something like, "But are we moving forward? Or are we just -" [long, meaningful pause] "MOVING?"

“The highway is alive tonight / But it ain’t kidding nobody about where it goes”

Washington Post movie critic talked to Bruce about Western Stars movie and about Bruce's interest in movies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/10/17/forget-rock-star-was-bruce-springsteen-born-be-filmmaker/?arc404=true

“When I wrote ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Darkness,’ I saw them as B-pictures,” Springsteen says. “If they worked really well, they were good ones, and the songs I was unhappy with were bad ones.”

He wanted both records “to have the breadth of cinema,” he says, “while at the same time remaining very, very personal for me. Those were the parameters of what I was imagining at that particular moment. I was sort of using the contours and the shape of films and movies, while at the same time trying to find myself in my work. But the film-ness of my songs was never far from my mind.”...“It was just how you processed everything,” he continues. “As a teenager, you were looking for a dramatic life. Where is my dramatic life? As if things weren’t dramatic enough. And you were writing your own script in your head as you walked down the street. It was all just part of living at that time.”

Eventually, Springsteen formed his own canon of go-to movies, each of which has had an imprint on his records — Ford’s ambivalent Western epic “The Searchers,” noir classics “The Night of the Hunter” and “Out of the Past,” Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.”

also from that Washington Post article:

In the 1992 single “Better Days,” Springsteen sang about being “a rich man in a poor man’s shirt.” Today, in addition to the sprawling horse farm in New Jersey, he owns homes in Florida and Los Angeles, but still convincingly radiates man-of-the-people modesty, a contradiction he deflects by being the first person to call it an act. (“I made everything up!” he says at one point. “It’s a fascinating magic trick.”) Springsteen admits that he continues to find the notion of authenticity elusive, “knowing what a self-creation I was, and to some degree still am. But the strange thing of it all is that if you do it long enough, you start to become the thing that you pretended to be.”

I had no idea the movie was a movie-movie, theatrical. It just seems like such a misbegotten idea, a ruminative glimpse of his private life coming immediately on the the heels of his Broadway show (also a ruminative glimpse of his private life), which came right on the heals of his autobiography (another ruminative glimpse of his private life) tied to a modest but hardly superlative singer-songwriter record he's not supporting on the road. Having not seen said movie, it really seems like the sort of glorified EPK that should have come packaged with the deluxe edition of the album itself, sort of like those ... similarly ruminative docs including in the Born to Run, Darkness and River boxed sets.

such a misbegotten idea

the opening weekend box office agrees with you. i really liked the performances, even if bruce's voice seems a bit weathered for most of 'em. i walked out liking more songs from the album than i did walking in (and i quite like the album). the vignettes were like the broadway show without the humor. a lot of brucesplaining songs that already pretty much brucesplain themselves. i liked that patti got a lot of the spotlight. she and he sound really good together, which they did not on broadway.

record he's not supporting on the road

that's one of his stated reasons for making the movie, for what it's worth.

I did know that, but I guess it never really sank in that this is actually the first time he has not toured a record. Had he not just released the Broadway show on Netflix and flooded the up-close-with-Bruce market, I suppose something like this movie would have been a smart Netflix release instead.

so did anyone see that movie Blinded By the Light? Released too close to that Yesterday movie?

What are we going to see in Bruce's inevitable biopic?

Cars.

...and material re: sex in

a lot of brucesplaining songs that already pretty much brucesplain themselves.

Yeah, this was really my main complaint. Bruce's songs so often have a central message or argument or moral that can be summed up in words, and I've always felt that was a bit of a weakness on its own. And this entire album already seemed to me to have a really obvious moral, so that while I liked some of the songs just fine, I also felt like I was being repeatedly bludgeoned by a Victorian cautionary tale about how not to live your life. So the last thing I needed was Bruce carefully explaining the moral of each song in between performances.

The vagueness of it bothered me too. I liked the vignette that introduced Sundown, where he told a story about going out to California for the first time because he'd just been dumped, but the rest was really - not anchored by anything specific. I assume that's because the subtext of this album is his marriage, and he doesn't want to give any details about that, but all this vaguebooking just kind of misses what made the Broadway show and the book so good.

i walked out liking more songs from the album than i did walking in

So did I, actually - "Chasing Wild Horses" in particular. Yours was a much more measured and thoughtful response to the movie than mine.

“Straight Time” on Tom Joad is pretty slept-on. Pitch black. Thought if it with the time change and “darkness before dinner comes / Sometimes I can feel the itch.”

That's a good one. I think I like all of Bruce's songs about being tempted away from a happy marriage by the call of Something Else.

The Tom Joad song that really gets to me, though, is Highway 29. It makes me feel all cold inside.

A review at the time mentioned it, but the Tom Joad characters often end up dying or falling asleep or just in some floating state between the two by the song’s end.

Just listened to "Straight Time" again; I agree it's very good. Hadn't thought about the ending much, but there's something so haunting about that last line, that false sense of escape. Reminds me, in a way, of the end of Child Bride, which might be my favorite Dark Bruce song. "I imagine I put on my jacket/go down to a little roadside bar/pick a stranger and spin around the dance floor/ to a Mexican guitar."

oh and speaking of straight time, there's an article in the Nation about Springsteen as queer icon:
https://www.thenation.com/article/bruce-springsteen-queerness-essay/

highway 29 is a masterpiece

It's brilliant but I find I can't listen to it more than once every three months or so. It chills me in a way that even the darkest songs on Nebraska don't. Makes me feel like I can't move or breathe.

Didn't realize until today that Spotify has a soundtrack to the movie that's all of Western Stars live plus a cover of "Rhinestone Cowboy."

Huh.

Meanwhile, not very specific announcement of a full E Street Band Australian tour at the end of the year. (I think he said he is recording a band album this fall.) That more or less guarantees a US band tour in 2021.

oh hell yeah. I will gas up the CAAAAAAARRRRRRR

I'm sure Steely Dan will be touring, too.

Ha!

someone made a correction post, just "car" in another thread. Coming here was all I could do to keep from screaming it out of context. I know you all will understand.

In quiet moments as I go about my day I keep finding myself trying to figure out how many Bruce songs actually involve sex in a CAAAAAARRRRRR (as opposed to sex in a dark room with the door locked and a sense of existential malaise lurking just outside)

well, y'know, is there any difference?

The door's open but the ride ain't free, y'all.

you might have to wipe your fingers on a texaco road map, if you know what i mean and i think you do.

Oh Wanda...

I think you guys are conflating Springsteen lyrics with, like, AC/DC lyrics.

if only anything came cheap in this world

(except hearts)

Finally listened to Ghost of Tom Joad all the way through. I’d been avoiding it because I was afraid it wouldn’t be all that good, and that the depressing content + fall-off in quality would bum me out. And I looked at the lyric sheet and it just looked like every Social Problem young adult novel I read as a child in the nineties, jammed into one record.

HOWEVER! I just listened to it properly and I’m surprised to find that I actually like it! I was expecting things like ravine/methamphetamine to make me cringe, but he carries it off by sheer force of conviction: he’s got that sad hollow empathy in his voice that he had on “Nebraska,” (though a bit more distant and chilling) and I absolutely believe that all this is real to him. “Straight Time” and “Highway 29,” which I already knew, are probably still my favorites, but “Dry Lightning,” “Across the Border,” “Galveston Bay” – these are some solid songs. And there’s some beautiful singing on this, once I turned the volume up high enough to hear it. The way he sings, “I slept the sleep of the dead/ I didn’t dream” on Highway 29 gives me chills.

Plus he could release it today unchanged and it would probably resonate even more, give or take a Forrest Gump reference.

Meanwhile, they just released official Winterland '78 sets!

Highway 29 is chilling
one of his greatest songs

"Told myself it was all something in her/but as we drove/I knew it was something in me"

"Straight Time" has the lines

Got a job at the rendering plant
it ain't gonna make me rich
darkness before dinner comes
sometimes I can feel the itch

and I had assumed a rendering plant was something with metal or steel, but it turns out

Rendering is a process that converts waste animal tissue into stable, usable materials. Rendering can refer to any processing of animal products into more useful materials, or, more narrowly, to the rendering of whole animal fatty tissue into purified fats like lard or tallow. Rendering can be carried out on an industrial, farm, or kitchen scale.

I rendered some bear fat once. It makes pretty good pie crust if you don't mind your pie tasting like bear.

Is that what "come home in the evening/ can't get the smell from my hands" is about, then? I assumed it had something to do with whatever crime he was committing, but I hadn't thought about him working at the rendering plant. I guess the crime might still be in the future?

I grew up near a rendering plant, when the wind was right the whole town smelled of it, just a vile, sickly smell. I can almost smell it just thinking about it.

My brother in law's dad had a painting business so they had to go paint the walls one summer, he said they'd have to shower twice or take a bath mixed with vinegar. Threw out all the clothes they wore after the job was done. Can't imagine working there.

Plant ended up getting sued for a lot for illegally dumping stuff in the river. People used to say the town had a high cancer rate because of it but it's hard to say if that's just speculating.

Throw in some rhymes, tighten the meter, those could be lyrics.

Threw away our clothes...had SEEEEEEXXXX IN A CAAAAAAARRRRR

Then threw away the car, down by the reservoir

Huh, so maybe that line isn’t about crime after all? I mean, what are the odds of both his day job and his life of crime making him smell bad?

Unless…

Oh god, what if he just disposed of a dead body at the rendering plant?

His daughter just won one of the competitions at the equestrian event here, congratulations! :-)

https://www.longinestiming.com/equestrian/2019/jumping-mechelen-mechelen/resultlist_04.html

News on the (lack of tour) front. Bruce had been hinting at a band album and tour in 2020, most likely beginning toward the end of the year. But apparently Van Zandt carefully let slip that he suddenly has more free time than he expected this year, minimally clarifying that there has been no definitive yes/no on a tour. Still, apparently Max has booked some new 2020 commitments, too, so he no doubt got the same "maybe no tour" memo. Bruce nuts have hypothesized a few likely explanations. First and foremost, maybe the album is not close enough to being done to tour behind; his producer has been posting pictures from the studio. Two, there are rumors his mom has taken a turn and that's what's keeping him close to home (that was by some accounts one impetus for the Broadway show, staying local). Either way, the more psycho of his fans are apparently irked, because they plan for Springsteen tours like others plan for huge trips, saving up vacation time, squirreling away money ...

Deciding on the best rental car to have sex in