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

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Magic In The Night, Nov 17, 2008.

  1. AD

    AD Active Member

    yeah, only his early stuff was any good. just like that keats guy, who really didn't do much after he was 25.

    seriously? i wonder how much of this is bruce and how much -- okay, not us -- me.

    i was your classic bruce fan once -- strident, self-important and so, so serious. loved the first five albums, took a bucket of paint the night before leaving my horrible hometown and wrote, "it's a town full of losers and i'm pulling out of here to win," on the sidewalk outside the school. felt most at home, most alive, in my rust-eaten car, cranking "darkness", pounding my fists on the dance floors in a sweat. my best friend didn't like him much, said bruce wasn't "fun". i argued about "sherry darlin'", "jole blon" -- sorry gary u.s.; it's bruce's gig -- but my heart wasn't in it, and felt i won something when he came to me and said, "yeah, okay, i drank all night with some guys and we were singing "badlands" and it was unreal."

    i'm not making much sense. bear with me. after i left home, i got relatively happy. found writing, found i was good at it, made myself a community across the country, found that some girls even liked me. suddenly i didn't like the new albums coming out as much. didn't buy "tunnel, lucky town, the rest. respected "nebraska" and "tom joad" and "the rising" but he didn't have it for me anymore. all of them were missing, i don't know...propulsion. but i also had kids, a wife; i didn't have much time for driving alone for hours and blaring the music; music was in the background, it just wasn't TITANIC. i know bruce had grown up, had his women troubles, and i didn't even spend time thinking much about how maybe he was living on past glories. i was listening to other stuff: rem, the jam, both elvises, steve earle, lucinda williams, sinatra, public enemy. i didn't miss it.

    so here's what happened: i was in louisiana earlier this year for a week, alone, driving all the highways in a rentcar. the radio was terrible. bought "magic" in a starbucks, and that's all i listened to, every day, all day. i thought i loved most of it, but it's complicated. yes, "radio nowhere" has that tommy tutone kickoff, but, frankly, "867-5309" was a great screaming drinking song and i liked how the guy looked like mcenroe. anyway, i'm driving all over the state, and i'm cranking the CD, and i find myself reaching over to study the lyric sheet over lake pontchartrain -- that's been about 20 years -- and thinking about "the dusty road from monroe to angeline" and my windows are down and i'm screaming 'girls in their summer clothes' and i'm a 40-plus guy girls don't look at anymore and i'm welling up but feeling pretty good. it's been, seriously, decades since i had such an emotional reaction to an album -- and i don't even think it's because it's a particularly good one.

    what i think is that i got thrown into a timewarp, and for one week i wasn't just listening to springsteen. i actually had linked up with the way i FELT, my emotional state, when he first tunneled into me at 14. it wasn't sad, like going to a high school reunion: it felt like a gift. i had no wife, no kids, no distractions at all. i had "bruce" and i was alone and driving fast and no one could touch me.

    and i can't decide, so you tell me -- and this isn't a rhetorical question -- but was it the CD or was it that his best music, like the novels of thomas wolfe, are something that are best taken young, when you can be stupidly strident and melodramatic and have all the time in the world to listen and think that something as small as music can actually change your life? was it the music, or was it accessing the way the music made me feel, 30 years gone?
     
  2. Magic In The Night

    Magic In The Night Active Member

    AD, what an amazing post! And I know what you're saying about Bruce and youth. I, too, made him a central part of mine and he saved me many times. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, One Step Up got me through a lot of heartbreak. I, too, went through a period of time where Bruce was not as important to me as he had been but came back to it with the Reunion Tour and the subsequent tours and he has provided a source of strength to me again. His words are a backbone if you let them be. So I think the answer to your question is, no, it's not just youth. His lyrics and music can be a soundtrack to your life. You just have to let them in.
     
  3. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Last great album was Born in the U.S.A.
     
  4. Much too much filler.
    Darlington County?
    Workin' On A Highway?
    Glory Days?

    The highlights are silver-studded, for sure, but it's got some fat to it, although not as much as The River does.
     
  5. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    AD - Great post.
    But I view music as another companion through life. Outside of family, friends and work we all have other interests that we're passionate about - be it sports, music, reading, or something else.

    For me Springsteen has always been one of those outside interests I've been passionate about and that passion has never waned. At one level or another, in one way or another, the music has always connected with me, and resonated with me. Over the last eight years I've discovered a ton of independent or lesser known artists whose music I love, afew whose music I'm passionate about it - but in ways that differ from Springsteen.
     
  6. AD

    AD Active Member

    thanks, e-street. i'm curious about the emotional impact, because almost nothing gets to us humans like music, and -- love him or not -- there's no denying bruce's oddly near-messianic power over millions. a few years ago, in a book called something like "kill your idols", a writer took apart "born to run", calling the lyrics inane, etc. of course they are, logically anyway ("kids flash guitars just like switchblades", if you think about it for more than five seconds, is insane. i mean, they pull a fender bass out of their pocket?) but i still wanted to shake the guy and say, "but music -- especially rock music -- isn't about logic, or perfectly scanning English." no: it's about how the music and the words and beat and the production somehow meld together and hit you literally where you live -- beneath pretense or the masks we all can wear. how many people say about bruce, "he gets me"? what they mean is, IT gets me, the music gets to me, in a way that no TV show, movie, book or relationship gets to me. because it's feeling, more than anything, that great music feeds into like a direct shot of adrenaline, and we love it because heightened feeling, more than anything, is what makes us feel most alive.
     
  7. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    Great stuff there, AD. Of course rock lyrics are inane but who cares?

    I had been an absoluite Bruce junkie for years but lost interest in his career after Human Touch/Lucky Town. I thought you might be able to get one good album out of them - kind of like the Use Your Illusions - and I hadn't seen him live since a Tunnel Of Love tour stop in Detroit. A friend had burned a copy of The Rising for me and I wasn't thrilled with it. I hadn't heard Devils & Dust or The Ghost of Tom Joad.

    Then "Radio Nowhere" came out and I really liked it and when I got a call from a friend asking if we should get tickets for his show in Toronto and I jumped at it. The show was great and I was digging bootlegs of the tour's shows and ones from old tours. I'm not the fanatic I used to be but it's good to be back.
     
  8. VH1 classic has been running a good show from Barcelona this week.
     
  9. shockey

    shockey Active Member

    that's a dvd available to all. great show.
     
  10. EStreetJoe

    EStreetJoe Well-Known Member

    Just a note to my Springsteen geekdom: in the early concert versions of Jungleland, the line "kids flash guitars just like switchblades" wasn't in there. The original line was something like "kids flash guitars just like bayonets and rip holes in their jeans"

    In addition to the emotional connection with the music there's the escapism aspect. When listening to his music, all the bullshit and other problems of life and the world disappear for a brief time and there's just you and the music making you feel good about life, about yourself, and about the world.
     
  11. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    What piece since then has a better overall grade?
     
  12. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    The Rising. Easily.

    Could just be the 9/11 theme resonating, but The Rising is one of the discs people should dig out from the rubble of society in 300 years.
     
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