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

Very creepy. It's hard not to think that it was written from a very personal place about the deterioration of his marriage -- and now he and the other woman are singing it as a love song.

 

FINALLY, Bruce covers a Beatles song!! Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream!!

 

I agree...very creepy. I just hedged my wording, figuring that some decidedly more dedicated Bruce fans than I might view the new duet as an artistic intepretation. And I'm not nearly well-versed enough in Bruce to argue interpretations.

 

I'd rank "The Rising" as a great album, in some ways a companion piece to BITUSA. Yes, many or most of the songs are topical to the point you'd think they'll age badly, but 9/11 was probably the transforming moment in American society in 38 years; I think they'll hold up pretty well.

Actually, Bruce has pursued dual recording careers: one as a hugely-popular mainstream rock god, and the other as a willfully anticommercial roots-music populist folkie.

Folkie Bruce was born with his first two albums, took a decade off, returned with "Nebraska," stepped back another decade until "Tom Joad," then returned again with "Devils and Dust" and the Seeger projects.

Rock God Bruce kicked out BTR, Darkness, and The River, capped off the front end of his career with BITUSA, then stepped back into DIY semi-solo work with "Tunnel of Love" and the HT/LT double set. The Reunion Tour set up a late-career path for Rock God Bruce as an oldies jukebox artist with the ESB, until with "The Rising," he felt he still had things to say within the band format.

 

Glad to see someone else remembers the awesome Del Lords. In addition to their great version of "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times?" their greatest hits CD also has a smoking version of "Folson Prison Blues".

Back to Bruce, I've only listened to the Seeger Sessions Cd a couple of times but I don't mind the live Dublin CD, if nothing else for the cool reworking of stuff like "Growin' Up" and the awesome "Open All Night".

 

Always makes me think of Everett Sloane talking about the girl in the white dress on the ferry in "Citizen Kane".

 

Do you think Born In The USA ages badly? (It sounds like you don't but I'm curious)

To me, the songs there are pretty timeless. A lot of songs about working-man disenchantment that work pretty well right now. And everyone until the end of time will misinterpret the title track and Glory Days.

 

To each his or her own, I guess. But One Step Up has gotten me through a lot of breakups and I really really love that song and the video is awesome, too.

 

A little bit, the original version of "Dancing In The Dark" is the one Bruce tune that really sounds trendy, and to my mind, dated (although its reinvention as a near-Ramones-style speed-punk guitar anthem in live performance has pretty much erased that objection). The overall production style seems really dated now, although O'Brien's current style is pretty muddled at times.

"Born In The USA," the song itself, managed to be both a soundtrack for, and a protest against, the peak era of Reaganism, and certainly inspired most of the homeland-rock trend of the mid-to-late 80s (Mellencamp, some influence on R.E.M., and even U2 on "The Joshua Tree").

BITUSA is still a great record, but it very much is of a certain time. Heck, I think "Sgt. Pepper" has aged very badly. Doesn't mean it's not still great.


And yeah, BITUSA, "Nebraska" and "The River," topically, sound very current right about now.

 

Perhaps I'm weird, but I dislike Tunnel of Love (other than One Step Up) and Lucky Town but love Nebraska and Ghost of Tom Joad.

I get the feeling that The Rising is going to age very, very well.

All that said, Nebraska was probably the last great album, in my view, but BITUSA and The Rising are close to it with GOTJ just behind them.

 

So does "Ghost Of Tom Joad," which, sadly, is way more relevant than I wish it was.

 

Love the performance with Tom Morello.