Favorite and/or Best Springsteen album?

i can't imagine i have anything you don't, joe.

 

Every album up and to including Tunnel would be a fantastic first album. They're all wonderful. But if I was forced to choose my top three, it would be have to be Greetings, The Wild... and Born To Run.

Those are the records that define Bruce for who he is. Without them, he'd "just" be a stellar singer-songwriter.

 

At what point did he start singing like the "Took My Job" guys from South Park and mumble all the words?

 

Shockey - meant your rankings of the studio albums from favorite to least favorite.

 

Nothing about Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., is signature Bruce Springsteen. It's a lot like Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a debut that illuminates an entire different side of the artist from his more familiar, later work.

 

I don't know. I'd argue that it helped define Springsteen as a blue-collar, New Jersey musician. I'll concede that I might be absolutely reading into it but when I listen to it, I hear the shore on a muggy August night, when there's a barely a moon in the sky.

Certainly, you hear the some of the same themes (like in "Spirit of the Night" and "Growing up" that he'd explore in the next two albums, such as struggling against where you grew up in, often failing to break out and being completely owned by it. And (again, I'll agree that I might be totally wrong) but musicially, the songs on it sound a lot more like those on The Wild... than they would later on Darkness.

 

Thematically, sure. But it's more or less a folk album. The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle was more jazz-oriented than any other album he put out, too. And neither featured the current ensemble.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is the most Springsteen of Springsteen albums.

 

My two favorite songs from "The River": the title song and "Point Blank." Both songs are stark and haunting and as good as anything Springsteen has ever done, IMO. I never get tired of hearing them, and especially in the car in the dark of night.

"Ramrod" also is a cool little song. Not his best album, but still my favorite.

 

I was there as well. Great show but my friend who drove was so tired on the way home that he almost drove us off the road a few times. Those Hartford to NYC late night drives are rough.

I love Racing -- just a great, sad and wistful song.

 

For that one, I stayed over night.
But 5 years later I did the late night Bridgeport to Trenton drive after his show there.
I still need to see Bruce in Boston though. Closest I came was in '96 on the Joad tour when I saw him in Lowell, Mass and stayed over. Earlier that tour, a bunch of Bruce fans I know online from Jersey and I rented a bus to drive us to and from the Wallingford, Conn. show.

 

Bridgeport was Devils and Dust, right? Went with a buddy who is a Colonel in the Army reserves and he was on the duty in NYC the day of the show. We got a super late start and he was in full uniform. We got there about 5 minutes before Bruce went on stage and the police let us park in the band parking lot.

Only done Boston once and stayed over, but I drive back from Philly, Hartford and Albany shows.

 

scroll down just a bit to check out springsteen's appearance on letterman's last NBC show 20 years ago today:

http://backstreets.com/news.html