Bruce Springsteen

[liebzz]

This is Dark Side of the Moon worthy compared with Working on a Dream. THAT was awful.

[Lament]

even if the long-coveted "original" studio version of the title track ended up paling next to the solo piano version on 18 Tracks, which all told is probably one of my top 10 Springsteen songs.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. The Tracks version of The Promise is stunning.

[Kevin Davis]

I was pretty harsh on "The Promise" when it came out, because I wasn't prepared for it to be anything less than "Darkness II," but over the last few years I've gradually learned to distance it from the original record and appreciate it on its own merits. Apart from a few obvious touchstones (the alternate "Racing," for instance), I think it really has to be heard as an album that has nothing to do with "Darkness," not as a collection of "outtakes" but essentially as an entirely different album that he chose not to release in favor of something which was not only superior but which gave the characters in "Rosalita" and "Thunder Road" a more brutal, realistic ending than some of the songs on the much lighter weight "Promise" would have. I really like about 60% of it, though, and I'm not versed enough in Bruce bootlegs to understand how the mix, etc. stacks up to versions which have previously circulated, or to know which parts were "improved" by 2010 Bruce and which parts have been there since 1977--except for "Save My Love," of course, which oddly enough I think is one of the best songs on the record (and, as far as I understand, the last song that Clarence Clemons recorded with Bruce in the studio).

I definitely agree about the "Tracks" version of the title track, though--vastly superior to the '77 version. The extra mileage on Bruce's voice and the sparse piano arrangement are definitely just what the doctor ordered for that tune. A real career highlight for Bruce.

[Blaine Ryan]

I was pretty harsh on "The Promise" when it came out, because I wasn't prepared for it to be anything less than "Darkness II," but over the last few years I've gradually learned to distance it from the original record and appreciate it on its own merits. Apart from a few obvious touchstones (the alternate "Racing," for instance), I think it really has to be heard as an album that has nothing to do with "Darkness," not as a collection of "outtakes" but essentially as an entirely different album that he chose not to release in favor of something which was not only superior but which gave the characters in "Rosalita" and "Thunder Road" a more brutal, realistic ending than some of the songs on the much lighter weight "Promise" would have. I really like about 60% of it, though, and I'm not versed enough in Bruce bootlegs to understand how the mix, etc. stacks up to versions which have previously circulated, or to know which parts were "improved" by 2010 Bruce and which parts have been there since 1977--except for "Save My Love," of course, which oddly enough I think is one of the best songs on the record (and, as far as I understand, the last song that Clarence Clemons recorded with Bruce in the studio).

I definitely agree about the "Tracks" version of the title track, though--vastly superior to the '77 version. The extra mileage on Bruce's voice and the sparse piano arrangement are definitely just what the doctor ordered for that tune. A real career highlight for Bruce.

I never really considered the "alternate ending" idea. That's interesting.

[Kevin Davis]

Self-promotion alert--here's a blog entry I wrote on that exact topic after "The Promise" came out:
http://kevinpauldavis.blogspot.com/2010 ... bruce.html

[liebzz]

Unrelated, my brother said something to me during a family gathering recently that cracked me up. The tv had on Jungleland and the caption said "Bruce Springsteen (1975)". My brother said they got the date wrong, and that Springsteen was a product of the 1980s. That lead me into a diatribe for about 10 minutes on the early history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. But I laughed pretty hard at him for it.

[Gods' Die]

Unrelated, my brother said something to me during a family gathering recently that cracked me up. The tv had on Jungleland and the caption said "Bruce Springsteen (1975)". My brother said they got the date wrong, and that Springsteen was a product of the 1980s. That lead me into a diatribe for about 10 minutes on the early history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. But I laughed pretty hard at him for it.

'70s Springsteen is the best Springsteen.

[oasisfan35]

I was pretty harsh on "The Promise" when it came out, because I wasn't prepared for it to be anything less than "Darkness II," but over the last few years I've gradually learned to distance it from the original record and appreciate it on its own merits. Apart from a few obvious touchstones (the alternate "Racing," for instance), I think it really has to be heard as an album that has nothing to do with "Darkness," not as a collection of "outtakes" but essentially as an entirely different album that he chose not to release in favor of something which was not only superior but which gave the characters in "Rosalita" and "Thunder Road" a more brutal, realistic ending than some of the songs on the much lighter weight "Promise" would have. I really like about 60% of it, though, and I'm not versed enough in Bruce bootlegs to understand how the mix, etc. stacks up to versions which have previously circulated, or to know which parts were "improved" by 2010 Bruce and which parts have been there since 1977--except for "Save My Love," of course, which oddly enough I think is one of the best songs on the record (and, as far as I understand, the last song that Clarence Clemons recorded with Bruce in the studio).

I definitely agree about the "Tracks" version of the title track, though--vastly superior to the '77 version. The extra mileage on Bruce's voice and the sparse piano arrangement are definitely just what the doctor ordered for that tune. A real career highlight for Bruce.

I very much agree in considering The Promise as a different entity than Darkness. I tossed it on last night and still found it an enjoyable listen though what it really did was make me want to revisit some bootlegs to pay a bit more mind to the evolution of songs in his catalog; with some down time this weekend I think I'll run through a few Lost Masters collections.

As to the latter, completely agree.

[Blaine Ryan]

Self-promotion alert--here's a blog entry I wrote on that exact topic after "The Promise" came out:
http://kevinpauldavis.blogspot.com/2010 ... bruce.html

I really enjoyed that--great observations.

[liebzz]

Unrelated, my brother said something to me during a family gathering recently that cracked me up. The tv had on Jungleland and the caption said "Bruce Springsteen (1975)". My brother said they got the date wrong, and that Springsteen was a product of the 1980s. That lead me into a diatribe for about 10 minutes on the early history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. But I laughed pretty hard at him for it.

'70s Springsteen is the best Springsteen.

Can't argue with this since I would say 85-90% of my Sprinsteen listening comes in the form of the Greetings through Darkness albums, and live shows from 75-78. Although, as I've always been real organic about his music and let it come naturally to me, I have enjoyed but not obsessed over the 80s output - I have admittedly mostly ignored the 90s, and then have listened quite a bit to The Rising, Magic, Wrecking Ball, and the Seeger Sessions albums from the last decade or so.

[LetMeSleep]

Self-promotion alert--here's a blog entry I wrote on that exact topic after "The Promise" came out:
http://kevinpauldavis.blogspot.com/2010 ... bruce.html

I really enjoyed that--great observations.

I concur. That was a great read KD.

[Lament]

'70s Springsteen is the best Springsteen.

His best album was 1982.

[LetMeSleep]

Seeing him again in Feb. Guess we'll get some High Hopes stuff in there. Kind of hoping we don't get an album show though.

[Lament]

That's pretty awesome. I haven't seen him since March of 2012. Fortunately I've been able to avoid album shows up to this point.

[LetMeSleep]

I went to 2 shows this year and would have loved to go to all 3 in Sydney but it clashed with my wife's bday. That 3rd show he played The River, E St Shuffle and Backstreets. Plus Prove w/ 78 intro.

[Blaine Ryan]

I was pretty ecstatic to see Born to Run played in full--with The Big Man on sax, no less. That's my favorite Springsteen album, and among my all-time favorites, so it was kind of a dream come true. The only flaw was that Bruce kept telling us how great it was to be in Ohio. The show was in Michigan.

[McParadigm]

'70s Springsteen is the best Springsteen.

His best album was 1982.

The longer I go on into this life, the more I appreciate his earliest stuff relative to the later material. That Van Morrison influence on the initial records that waned too soon, the absence of an almost oppressive desire to be seen as music's answer to Flannery O'Connor and John Steinbeck...even the relative lack of control over the sound of the recording. There's a youthfulness in his early material (duh, I know) that conveys wonder and optimism like a dancing puppy. By The River, which is probably my favorite of his records, the playfulness is very much adult playfulness, and the romance is an adult, realistic romance.

On that note, one thing that always catches me about the Born to Run album is, at its best, it paints each scene in terms of what the character is experiencing right now ("The screen door slams. Mary's dress sways. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays."). By Darkness, he's got this ambitiousness about fleshing out whole histories for the characters, and a lot of that material is powerful...but I value the ability to convey a lot while expressing very little. That's poetry. And I really appreciate the comparative reductionism of knowing the character solely by knowing that one little moment of their life. That's a beautiful and subtle form of humanism, to me. All too soon, Bruce got it in his head that he was making aural literature or something, and I really believe that cost him that purest expression of simplicity that music can thrive on so well, for huge stretches of recorded material.

[LetMeSleep]

He may be aware of it. Songs like Girls In Their Summer Clothes and You're Missing have that quality.

and nice writing, McP. I appreciate the first 2 albums more with each passing year.

[Lament]

On that note, one thing that always catches me about the Born to Run album is, at its best, it paints each scene in terms of what the character is experiencing right now

I think some of the strongest points of Nebraska (State Trooper, Open All Night, Used Cars, Reason to Believe), do the same thing, just from a place of nothingness/despair/desolation/nihilism.

[McParadigm]

I definitely don't mean to imply that he managed to shed the tendency entirely.