Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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

Either explanation makes sense, but I can't help finding this a bit worrying, given his whole thing about touring being essential for his mental health.

On the plus side, it seems he's been popping up for guest appearances more often than usual lately, and he sounds pretty good.

is there any word on a Born in the USA box? I mean, I have made my own from all the outtakes etc but the sound on an official one would have to be an upgrade.

http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/bruce-springteen-releases-live-concert-film-online-watch-london-calling-live-in-hyde-park-and-practice-self-distancing.html

Bruuuuuuuuuce

He did a guest DJ thing today on E. Street Radio, which is free right now - basically playing his quarantine playlist, talking about how things are going, asking how we're doing. I liked it.

One thing he brought up that I thought was interesting was PTSD - that we're all going to be left with some PTSD from this and it's going to be hard for us to get back to trusting each other and feeling safe in public.

People have been going nuts for the show. You can get a transcript, plus links to songs, here, I think:

https://www.njarts.net/radio/springsteen-makes-sixth-siriusxm-radio-show-a-rock-n-roll-requiem/

This most recent one he played everything from Paul Robeson to Fugazi.

Yeah, I've been listening to them and they've all been good. The first one and the last two are very serious and specifically tailored to what's going on in the country; Episodes 2, 3 and 4 are looser and goofier. I think Episodes 3 and 5 are particularly strong.

Listening to Bruce read out a handful of obituaries is just heartbreaking.

Pardon my ignorance but how does someone listen to these shows?

They're on E. Street Radio on Sirius.xm. When he first started doing them, Sirius was making all its radio free because of the pandemic, but that ended May 31st I think. If you click Listen Online and it takes you to a sign-in page, you may have to do their free trial in order to listen.

I was able to stream it for free here:

https://player.siriusxm.com/collection-carousel/page-name%3Dcollection_details&contextGuid%3Dbf7579c0-d8e3-4b81-b43a-388b4fddd24a

As I understand it you can just clear your cookies and try the free trial multiple times.

(Should say I didn't have to fill out any forms or anything, just pressed play.)

Wish I'd known that two weeks ago! I ended up getting a subscription where they don't charge you for the first four months, and set a reminder to cancel it on October.

in October

it's hard out there for a satellite

beaming through space all day, working your antenna to your hyperbolic reflector

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/bruce-springsteens-playlist/613378/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

He just posted his fifth installment, but Max has been doing a Q&A video series!

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

(The quality gets better in future installments)

Bruce keeps the band on pretty tight radio silence lockdown, but Nils just more or less confirmed the E Street Band was gearing up to tour again at the end of the year, but - but! - I think Nils said Bruce had actually changed his mind and decided he needed a break, and that had the tour been announced it likely would have been postponed even pre-covid. FWIW, Nils also said the new E Street album is as good as anything Bruce has ever done, which ... I mean, I wish!

I think he said it's as good as any record he's heard Bruce make, which is a less extravagant claim but still somewhat promising.

Funny, Nils didn’t mention anything about this when he said Happy Birthday on Ringo’s video the other day.

Springsteen's work since the '90s has been really hit-or-miss for me, so I can see it going either way. Except for a few keepers, "Western Stars," "High Hopes," "Working on a Dream," "We Shall Overcome," "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "Human Touch" were generally failed experiments or thoroughly mediocre, but "Springsteen on Broadway," "Wrecking Ball," "Magic," "Devils & Dust," half of "The Rising" and "Lucky Town" were surprisingly good, even excellent albums. We'll see.

I disagree on "We Shall Overcome," which I love in its entirety. "Ghost of Tom Joad," its gifts have revealed themselves slowly over time. I agree on those others, though. Well, maybe not "Devils & Dust" as much, it's often pretty dull. That and "Joad" would have really benefitted from a looser approach. I always thought Bob Dylan/Jack Frost would have been a really sympathetic producer.

And then if you exclude solo records and records made with other bands, and narrow it down to albums Nils has personally heard recorded, you end up with what? Maayyybe Tunnel of Love, though it's sort of half a solo album, so who knows if Nils was thinking of it or not. But otherwise The Rising, Magic, High Hopes, Working on a Dream and Wrecking Ball, and I'm not a big fan of any of those, so I'm keeping my expectations low.

Side note: I do like Ghost of Tom Joad a lot, but the more I listen to it the more I think that aside from a couple of really strong songs (Highway 29 in particular) it's one of those albums where the songwriting is iffy and it's saved by really great singing.

To be fair, the tour for "We Shall Overcome" was lots of fun, and that comes through on the DVD where they filled those Dublin performance. But it never did it for me when I put on the album - maybe it's more about the experience? Regardless, totally understand if you love it.

"Ghost of Tom Joad" has good lyrics, and lyrically it's possibly stronger than anything's he written since, but the music's too monochromatic and dull to me. (I say this as a "Nebraska" fan - that's my favorite Springsteen album, and in a way it's a lesson that if you're going to stick to spare arrangements, you need something like atmosphere to make it work across an entire album.) The opening title track is great, but after that, things grow increasingly stale. It kind of works in small doses - if I go back to just one song, any song, it's impressive for the narrative or character it sketches out, but the whole thing never holds together as an album for me.

Anyway, funny that we disagree on which one's the dull one, but it reminds me of Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis's discussion on "Devils & Dust" - DeRogatis has never been a fan, but that's the first time I've ever heard him approve of a Springsteen album. Not completely, but he didn't dislike it because he thought the best stuff like "Long Time Comin'" reminded him of a Fairport Convention album - I don't quite agree with that comparison, but the tracks he referred to did have gorgeous arrangements. (Kot on the other hand thought the album was a little overproduced.)

That would be interesting if Dylan produced those songs, or maybe Joe Boyd, or even Jon Langford (which would never happen, but he'd certainly go for a rawer roots sound).

*filmed not filled

I think Tom Joad would be a much better album if he'd included "Brothers Under the Bridge" and ditched either "Balboa Park" or "The Line" or "Sinaloa Cowboys," or maybe all three. Those are the ones where I feel like he saw an issue, thought it was important, but couldn't really get at it from the inside or come up with a way to make it interesting musically.

Yeah, Nebraska is my favorite too, but spare as the arrangements are, there's a lot more variation to them than you get on Tom Joad. One of my favorite things about Nebraska is the sequencing; somehow songs that I wouldn't listen to on their own, like Used Cars, seem perfect and right in their place in the album. There's a whole arc to Nebraska, and Tom Joad doesn't really have an arc, just a mood.

That's a good point about "Nebraska" too - it feels apiece, like you're floating through the same movie, and the characters don't necessarily have to be the same from one song to the next (although they could be for some), they all feel like a solid part of the same narrative.

"Brothers Under the Bridge" is a good outtake. That last, fourth disc of TRACKS gets knocked for being the least essential one by a good margin - that's generally true, but there are some keepers and the best of that fourth disc is probably that song, the only recording drawn from the TOM JOAD sessions.

"Tom Joad" is sort of the songwriter equivalent of the singer who suddenly starts taking singing lessons. It's like he exited a writer's workshop and went straight for his guitar.