Bruce Springsteen

[Powderfinger]

I was listening to his "best of" cd. I think he's a very good artist.
My favourites are:

Secret Garden
Atlantic City
Streets of Phildelphia
Thunder road


What do you think of Bruce Springsteen?

[mosespa]

I became a Springsteen fan after the first time I heard the song Born In The USA.

I got the message of the song...the irony of it and was impressed that someone could get away with that on the pop chart.

I bought the album. I had previously thought that Dancing In The Dark (the first single) was pretty okay...I didn't care much for Cover Me (the second single.) But Born In The USA made me go buy the album.

It's a classic. It led me to go all the way back to his first album Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and work my way through his catalogue. By the time Tunnel Of Love was released, it was the only album of his that I didn't have.

It was also the last one I bought.

I've since heard songs from his "Lucky Town/Human Touch" release and liked some of the singles...but I had moved on to other things.

Born To Run is, IMHYOO, one of the greatest concept albums...hell, one of the greatest albums period...EVER recorded. One great song after another all the way to the ten minute epic Jungleland.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town has some really great moments considering it was kind of Springsteen's "The Final Cut" in the sense that he was going through a great deal of legal difficulty at the time and the stress and strain it was having on him come through on the album. But there's still some great stuff...Candy's Room...the title track...Factory.

Nebraska is a chilling album. It was also the album before Born In The USA and a couple of songs from those demo sessions* became full blown tracks on Born In The USA.

I think Springsteen is one of those rare artists who can put personal experiences into universal terms. His songs are very human...very real.

Just my opinion, though.



*Nebraska is actually made up of Springsteen's home made four track cassette recordings. He had tried to make full band recordings, but found the results unsatisfying. He finally decided to release the home made demos because they had the atmosphere that he was looking for. It's a very stark, bleak album (would another TFC comparison be pushing it?)...but it's also a very moving album.

[ObscuredEchoes]

I like The River.... I think Bruce is a brilliant songwriter- I like a lot of stuuf he's written that others have performed.

[drafsack]

Not a great lover of his IMO a bit over rated. The only thing he has in his favour is that he is not abverse to playing long shows

[David Smith]

Born To Run is, IMHYOO, one of the greatest concept albums...

I've only heard this album like once and never picked up on that, does it strictly follow a concept or is it quite a loose application of one?

[zag]

is it rock?
really???
peace
zag

[mosespa]

I've only heard this album like once and never picked up on that, does it strictly follow a concept or is it quite a loose application of one?

It's a concept album in the same sense that Sgt. Pepper is a concept album.

I've suspended this definition for ease of conversation on this board, but I've always held that albums like The Wall and Tommy are "Rock Operas" (as Townshend himself referred to Tommy) and NOT "Concept Albums."

The difference is not as subtle as one would believe.

A "Rock Opera" attempts to sustain a narrative throughout. So, in this regard, albums such as "The Wall," "Operation Mindcrime," "Quadrophenia," "Tommy," and "I, Robot," would be Rock Opera.

Albums such as "DSOTM," "Born To Run," "Tales Of Mystery And Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe" and "Amused To Death" are Concept Albums.

A Concept Album doesn't so much attempt a sustained narrative as it does put forth some general themes that carry from song to song.

In the case of Born To Run, each song on the album deals with youth who have nothing in life and nothing to really look forward to.

The album begins with "Thunder Road" in which a young man with nothing to offer but the freedom of his car and his girlfriend seek to break out of the humdrum town they live in where there is no real prospect of a future for them.

Next (if I recall correctly) comes "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" in which the potentially hopeless youth of the song finds his salvation with a guitar and a band.

"Night" shows us the guy stuck in the "day job" who has given up his dreams in order to face the brutal reality of the "real world," who finds his redemption in racing other similarly disaffected youths.

"Backstreets" shows the poignancy of a (seemingly platonic) relationship between a young man and woman who seem to have given in to the dead end their lives are destined to become and so just made the most of what they could while they could...until she met "him" and went away, leaving him behind to try to make sense of it all.

"Born To Run" gives us another take on the notion of racing as a means of redemption for the hopeless youth of the city Springsteen has created on this album. It's almost a re-telling of "Thunder Road," but with a little more detail of the feelings between the young man and woman.

"She's The One" suggests that one of these guys might be engaging in the racing of cars and things in order to avoid having to deal with the inevitability of relationship with a specific female. It shows the tangle of emotions that run the gamut of wanting to hold her tightly against you to wishing she would just leave you alone.

"Meeting Across The River" is very specific in it's telling of the story of two guys preparing to join in a heist as a last chance of grabbing on to some kind of life above the level of "street."

"Jungleland" is where Springsteen pulls the camera back for a panorama view of the city...all of the little pockets of hopeless kids trying to keep their dignity and hope afloat in the midst of dead end existences. Framing this widescreen picture is the story of the Magic Rat and the Barefoot Girl who begin the song meeting up and disappearing down Flamingo Lane pursued by the Maximum Lawmen. (For those more familiar with the Springsteen catalogue, it has been suggested that Magic Rat is actually Spanish Johnny from Incident on 54th Street (I think that's the right street...it's been awhile) from the album The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle.) The song ends with the Barefoot Girl and the Magic Rat consummating their relastionship just before Magic Rat is "gunned down" by his "own dream," and the girl shuts out the light either unaware or uncaring.

Springsteen's narrator finishes the album by informing the listener that every character he's mentioned is doomed to "reach for their moment and try to make and honest stand/but they wind up wounded, not even dead."

Having written all of this, it occurs to me that it's been a few years since I've listened to Born To Run in it's entirety...and that I must do so again soon.