Where does Springsteen's Magic Rank?

Couldn't disagree more.
Wild/Innocent sounds tinny and awful, and Vinny Lopez makes Meg White sound like Gene Krupa.
I love what O'Brien's done with the band's sound in the studio.

 

I don't like O'Brien's production all that much either -- the songs seem muted, muffled. The songs from "Magic" have dramatically more energy when performed live. I was lukewarm on the album until seeing the two shows this weekend -- now I'm sold.

But whatever else you can say about O'Brien, he has reined in Bruce's fussbudget tendencies which resulted in albums taking months and years to record and release. For both "The Rising" and "Magic," it was pretty much bang-bang, the albums were done in a couple of months.

At this point in Springsteen's career, he doesn't want to wait 3 years to do an album.

 

Hey, I don't agree with the O'Brien approach either but I read in Billboard that was as much due to the guys' schedules as anything else.

But for me, the sound on those first two albums is terrible, much like the early KISS albums. That even carried over to "Born To Run" but the rest of that album was much cleaner.

 

Don't forget at that time the standard was LP - sound was fine then .

Now it has not transfered well to digital sound. Springteen early stuff sounds awful on CD compared to some other late 70's early 80's artists.

 

I don't know about that, Boom. For the time period those records are brutal.

 

I think we are somewhat in agreement. In era of digital sound they are even more brutal.

 

First of all, there is not a single studio version of a Springsteen song which approaches the live version of the same. Not one. The closest is probably "Born to Run". That's what makes Bruce so great. Most artists (and Billy Joel comes to my mind) basically strive to replicate the sound of their studio recordings in concert.

I like the simpler production of his songs -- I think that the O'Brien era has been too busy -- some hurdy gurdy here, some strings there. But there is no disputing that Greetings was a mess of a production -- IIRC, he only had a short period of time to make the album and it showed.

At the end of the day, get a boot off of each tour and you will never listed to a studio version of a song again.

 

thanks bill. i know this is an "album" thread, but i'm ever ready for a sidebar.

 

By the way, been listening again lately to the 76-86 (or whatever the years were) 3-cd set. Awesome.