Calling all SJ.com Springsteen mafia: A new album!

I liked the Seeger Sessions stuff myself.

 

Some of it's pretty good, but I tried listening to it the other day after hearing E Street, and the contrast made it sound somewhat...meh, I guess.

 

I love the Seeger Sessions stuff, but he didn't write a vast majority of the songs.

However, "How Can a Poor Man" is one of the his better songs in years and is true to the Woody Guthrie spirit.

 

NBC butchered the song by not only adding the NFL players/coaches shouts/grunts and crowd noise, but they didn't play the song straight through, they strung together a couple of snippets.

Find a version on YouTube of the way it was played at the Obama rally in Cleveland right before the election and then picture that with the instrumentation on the NBC version. It will be great.

Last great Springsteen album? Lucky Town. A burst of creative energy with all great songs. The only borderline miss on that album is 'Big Muddy'.
I know lots of die-hard fans who put the Tunnel of Love album in their top 5 Bruce albums.

I'm hoping that fatherhood won't keep me from getting to at least 5 shows so I can hit the century mark in shows attended (that includes half a dozen times catching him a bar playing with someone else)

Rising was a good album, but not great. Magic was good, but has grown on me a little (still don't care for Radio Nowhere and not enough songs are standouts for me); Seeger Sessions were fun - but not great; D&D was a very good album (although I do prefer Southside's version of "All the Way Home" to Bruce's).

 

I thought it was a little bit more after Lucky Town... more around the time of Streets of Philadelphia.

In doing some searching on the internet, I found something:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989581,00.html?iid=chix-sphere

 

Bruce wrote a couple of new verses, but "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times?" was written in the late 1920s by Blind Alfred Reed in reaction to the Great Depression.

On one of my first dates with a new girlfriend, we went to see the great, lost band of the '80s, the Del Lords. They opened with "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times?" - adding a couple of their own verses, as Bruce later did.

My date looked at me in surprise and went, "Oh, my God! They're playing Blind Alfred Reed!"

I knew right then and there that some day my date would be Mrs. Lono.

 

Cool. Lots of the mafia weighing in. As for Tunnel of Love being a great album: With Brilliant Disguise, Tougher Than The Rest, All that Heaven Will Allow and the absolutely amazing One Step Up, how could it not be? Also, the theme of relationships and the agony of their breakup is something that almost everyone can relate to and some of the lines from some of these songs just get right to the heart of that. If you don't remember, take a little trip through YouTube and watch and listen again. Amazing.

 

I must be going senile. I really thought it was recorded after HT/LT.

 

How can you name all those great songs off Tunnel and not mention Walk Like a Man (which is superior to One Step Up)?

 

I think it was the "relationship album" that was recorded right after the HT/LT tour with that band. Several songs from those sessions were re-recorded with the E Street Band for Greatest Hits but never made the cut.

 

I think that there are only 2 songs on the whole album which aren't top notch -- Ain't Got You and When You're Alone.

Walk Like a Man was the real sign that Bruce had matured -- such great writing.

 

For a video that has one camera shot/angle in it, "Brilliant Disguise" is among the most voyeuristic things I've ever seen.

And now he's singing it with Patti? That's just weird...and a bit creepy.