EKE BBB's Content - Page 51 - organissimo forums

Yes, immediate reaction is "WTF! A Bruce Springsteen album with covers of 15 soul classics?". Well, Bruce is so close to my heart -he was one of my idols in my teens- that, from my perspective, he is entitled to do whatever he feels like. FWIW, here's an excerpt from an email exchange with a good friend from seven years ago, where we briefly expressed our impressions after revisiting his discography up to that date. My comments: * Extracting positive feelings and enjoying more than ever his first two discs (Greetings from... and The Wild, the Innocent...), which are not too easy to digest and clearly non-commercial, except for a few classics, mainly Rosalita. * His best LP ever is, IMHO, Born to Run, as the more direct and colourful. In my Top-10 Rock Albums list, for sure. And I hereby declare that Thunder Road is his best song ever. * Darkness, The River and Born in the USA are also classics, full of straight-forward hits. High quality paired with commercial success. * Nebraska is a masterwork. Unplugged, but full varied and impacting songs all over the album. * The level began to drop with Tunnel of Love, though I really appreciate and enjoy some of its tracks. * And it definitely shrank with Human Touch and Lucky Town, which are linear, full of mid-tempo bland tracks. * The Ghost of Tom Joad is a brave attempt to get back to the Nebraska times... but the quality of the songs is not the same. Maybe digging hard you can avoid yawnin' after 20 minutes, but... * And finally, The Rising is standard commercial pop-rock for FM radios. His comments: Yes, 'Greetings ...' is very wordy and Dylanesque. When I first got into Springsteen (mid-'70s) he was playing a fair number of these songs live and they featured on all the bootleg cassettes of live concerts going around at the time and which Springsteen himself encouraged - 'Blinded by the Light', 'Growin' Up' .... 'The Wild, the Innocent ...' is one of my favourite albums, a wonderful mixture of styles. Springsteen was clearly coming into his own - 'Sandy', 'Rosalita' ... He had a pianist in the band at the time called Davis Sancious who was clearly jazz orientated. 'Born to Run' is a true classic although I prefer the live versions of most of the songs (the 3 CD 'Live 1975-85' - I think it was originally 4 LPs which I assume are still in the attic of my old house in Belfast) to the Spectorish production of the album. Yes, 'Thunder Road' is possibly my favourite Springsteen track too (a great version opens the Live album). And, of course, 'Backstreets' and 'Jungleland' ... The imagery of the lyrics is great. I was in the US the summer the album came out (as a tennis coach!) and we played it endlessly. 'Darkness ...' is my favourite Springsteen album. The best and most powerful series of songs he ever wrote both musically and lyrically. 'Badlands', 'Promised Land', 'Candy's Room', 'Factory', 'Prove it all Night' ... For me the production of the album is perfect although apparently Springsteen doesn't like it. The lyrics are the best he's written about alienated working-class life in the US. Again I was in the US when it came out. 'The River' is good but nowhere near 'Darkness ...' I love the song 'Drive all Night'. 'Born in the USA' is when it started to go downhill and he became just too big. Some great songs but ... I agree about 'Nebraska' - a wonderfully bleak album. Again the lyrics. It's been described as his Marxist album! 'Tunnel of Love' is enjoyable and I saw him give a great concert in Dublin promoting the album. 'Human Touch' and 'Lucky Town' are pretty forgettable. In fact, I've just looked and I don't even have them. I agree entirely with what you say about 'The Ghost ...' 'The Rising' was his last decent album. Some of it was a reaction to 9/11 and there are some okay songs but nothing special. It was then that he brought in Brendan O'Brien to produce and everything goes bombastic. Since then he's done very little apart from play live, although 'Devils and Dust', another largely acoustic album, is okay. He's brought out some albums of outtakes, etc. - the 3 CD 'Tracks' and the 2 CD 'The Promise' which include some good songs. His double live album 'Hammersmith Odeon '75' is excellent. His studio albums, all with Brendan O'Brien I think, have been unlistenable.