Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

I suppose it is telling that a lot of the stuff that sounds like Bruce does in fact recall *Bruce* and not the stuff Bruce himself was referencing. For example, the beginning of Mellencamp's "I Need A Lover." It doesn't sound like girl groups or Dylan or Duane Eddy or whatever, it sounds like .... "Jungleland."

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

Or "Tunnel of Love" by Dire Straits. Yeah, that's Bittan on the piano, and it's all it really takes to recall Bruce:

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

And then there's this, possibly the most Bruce of all non-Bruce songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgIsyoxZ7Uw

Again, it comes down to the "She's the One" piano a lot, but this one also has sax and slap-backy vocals and guitar that make me think of Bruce specifically, and not just "'50s rock and roll" or whatever.

Don't really know why I'm talking about Don Henley or the Eagles, sorry! Waiting for my coffee to kick in.

DON: Springsteen's arrival in LA back in '75 was a real Sea Change. We caught him at the Whiskey--checking out the competition as it where. He was impressive, perhaps the final push we needed to go full epic 'Hollywood' in our own songwriting: making movies in our songs the studios were too scared to touch.

GLENN: We were down with that 'New Kid In Town' as long as he got us up close and personal with Mary, Wendy, Candy, and Rosalita!

DON: Well, yeah.

"i know a pretty little place in southern california down san diego way / there's a little cafe where they play guitars all night and all day / you can check out any time you like..."

Dire Straits' 'Tunnel of Love' is Bruce-like as well as sharing a name with a later even greater Bruce song? I hadn't really thought that.

For example, "Mary's Place" from "The Rising" was hailed/received as a return to form

You CANNOT BE SERIOUS. That's practically his worst track of the 21st century. I can even remember it being actively badly received at the time!

That album has a few contenders.

xpost I specifically said was hailed/received as a return to form ****not in the "he's finally good again" sense but in the sense that it consciously recalled some of his early rave-ups."**** That is, the song is six minutes long and features lots of different parts. Live it would often top 10 minutes. I never liked it myself.

I do know one critic who singled out "Mary's Place" as one of only two highlights from that album...Jim DeRogatis.

In a brand new interview Bruce revealed he is working with Brandon from the Killers on a track, and sings on a few songs on Mellencamp's upcoming album. Also that they have been working on numerous things from the vault, or at least more the one project.

The Killers track is OK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BZ8hnLyRc

I am curious about the upcoming 2022 Bruce tour. I last time I saw him with the band a couple of times, on The River Redux tour, was the first time I noticed his voice struggling at all. And that was, incredibly, five years ago. I saw him on Broadway after that, but that was more mumbly speak-sing most of the time, no barnstormers. Now, he sounds pretty good on "Letter to You," but I wonder if he can handle a three hour show, or how he might fare doing some of his tougher (but impossible to skip) songs every night. Of course, I know better than to doubt the Boss, but everyone gets old, and he more than most of his peers seems to recognize he's in a different stage in his life.

BTW, went on a road trip with my daughter the other day, and she let me blast the whole "Born to Run" album for that stretch. Even better, she seemed to enjoy it.

He should skip some "impossible to skip" songs if necessary. He has enough other ones to play.

I hear the Broadway show was largely the same, with some obvious updates about the last year, including jokes about his arrest. Supposedly there were anti-vax morons picketing out front, since you needed proof of vaccination to get in.

“I like beer…do you like beer?”

Dire Straits' 'Tunnel of Love' is Bruce-like as well as sharing a name with a later even greater Bruce song? I hadn't really thought that.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, June 9, 2021 8:28 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

more impressive, they ripped off bruce seven years in the future!

I hear the Broadway show was largely the same, with some obvious updates about the last year, including jokes about his arrest

same but with rewrites/revisions sprinkled throughout and a handful of different songs. his riff on his arrest was v v amusing (and allowed for an equally amusing callback later in the show).

new songs:

fire (w/patti, instead of brilliant disguise)

american skin (41 shots) (!!!) (instead of long walk home/ghost of tom joad)

i'll see you in my dreams (instead of born to run, and though i remembered nothing about either that song or that album, dreams was a much better finale than btr!)

Cool, you got to see it?

i did! feel very fortunate.

nice!

Goddammit, I want a Blu-ray of that show. Did the Netflix deal preclude that?

I assume the Netflix show is still pretty close to the current show, though a review or two suggested he seemed a little looser this time around. Butut that could just be projection.

xp Glad you got to see it, that's awesome!

How did his voice sound?

his voice sounded the same to me as it has for the past few years. some of the fullness and depth gone from both his speaking and singing voices. a little more strained. a little more nasal maybe? the standard weathering of age. and that all said, i thought his singing still sounded great at the end of a nearly two and a half hour show.

Liked your write up today FCC

thanks forks!

From Washington Post theatre critic's review--

this new one showcases a funnier, more relaxed Springsteen

Now, though, he seems more invested in the storytelling, on being in the moment with his memories, intent on revealing to us a singer-songwriter wrestling with an older man’s adversaries: time, loss, regret.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/springsteen-reopens-broadway/2021/06/27/ade5b48a-d745-11eb-bb9e-70fda8c37057_story.html

good interview w Jon Landau about last Saturday’s show

https://variety.com/2021/music/news/bruce-springsteen-jon-landau-broadway-born-to-run

oops https://variety.com/2021/music/news/bruce-springsteen-jon-landau-broadway-born-to-run-1235007957/

‘The screen door slams, Mary’s dress...’ waves? Sways? An investigation into The Boss’ mystery verb

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-07-15/bruce-springsteen-thunder-road-waves-sways

Was on an 80s dive on Youtube a few days back and heard the Boss's down under cover of "Don't Change" - got to say it was pretty damn good and a pretty classy move.

yeah, super great!

I'd kill to hear the Boss do "She Sells Sanctuary".

Dude should go against the grain and do a covers record of stuff like that The Cure, The Smiths and The Damned.

the cover of Stayin Alive they did at the Brisbane(?) show was good as hell too

Every Day Is Like Sunday, Mister

I've always heard "waves" and in this context both mean the same thing, right?

I don't really care what the dress does, but I assumed it was "sways" because it rhymes with "plays" in the next line.

“sways” feels like better word choice I guess(?) I suppose a dress can “wave” (like a flag), but the verb/noun pairing trips me up… I picture the dress waving hi 👋

i always heard “waves” like trees waving
it feels more active somehow & fabric-y

my secret Springsteen tribute band name idea: "hello, we are the Screen Door Slams and this one is called..."

Listened to Darkness yesterday and want to bring back my crowdfund campaign to have Nick Cave cover the entire album.

Grinderman version of Candy's Room would be something

i always heard “waves” like trees waving
it feels more active somehow & fabric-y

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, July 16, 2021 2:14 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I can't hear it as "waves" -- it conjures up an image of an anthropomorphic dress. "Hey, Bruce is here! Hi Bruce!" "Goddammit you stupid dress, stop waving at him! You're embarrassing me!"

This is all strange and fascinating.

I doesn't strike me as strange that Bruce would switch between the words, depending on what shade of meaning he's going for with that night's arrangement, or shifting over the years. Strange that people think there's a canonical text to recover.

xpost lol at Screen Door Slams for the name of a Boss cover band.

Something very odd about those first two lines imo; I remember them giving me a very misleading expectation of what the song was going to be like the first time I heard it. Two lines of third-person scene-setting before the singer starts talking to Mary and the whole voice and POV shifts. And that image of Mary as manic pixie dream girl dancing across the porch - dancing, really? There's a sense of twee unreality there, but it vanishes with the next line, as soon as he tells you it's Roy Orbison on the radio. From "like a vision she dances across the porch" to "Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey that's me!" It's an amazing shift; all of a sudden we're grounded in reality, we're with this lonely guy in his car listening to a specific song on the radio, and even the language changes. It's the same trick he uses at the end of the song, now that I think about it.

Good point

The last time I listened to this album, really listened to it, I was struck by its poetry. Which, I mean, duh, it's so self consciously poetic. But I'd gotten so used to the myth and pageantry behind everything that it'd been too long since I just listened and let it wash over me. I was reminded of, of all things, the Tears for Fears Songs from the Big Chair doc, where they marvel at how well these words written by kids stand up today. Richard Thompson says as much in his book, about iirc Meet Me on the Ledge, observing how strange it is to hear and still sing words written by yourself so long ago yet have no real idea of their inspiration or meeting. Bruce was college-age when he wrote much of the Born to Run album. How many of us wrote or made anything back then so full of meaning we'd still be proud of several decades later?

I’m still proud of the negative review of Mighty Aphrodite I wrote in the college paper.