Full Version: Favorite Springsteen Track
Man, I don't know if it's my favorite, but THUNDERROAD is the fucking bomb.
Johnny 99
then
Thunder Road
DB Train
then
Thunder Road
DB Train
lately it's Incident on 57th St. but Thunder Road is probably in the running as the overall choice.
Stay tuned for our big Bruce box.
Here's an essay written by Nick Hornby, british writer who's credits include High Fidelity (see my avatar and location), about the song Thunder Road:
I can remember listening to this song and loving it in 1975; I can remember listening to this song and loving it almost as much quite recently, a few months ago. (And, yes, I was in a car, although I probably wasn't driving, and I certainly wasn't driving down any turnpike or highway or freeway, and the wind wasn't blowing through my hair, because I possess neither a convertible nor hair. It's not that version of Springsteen.) So I've loved this song for a quarter of a century now, and I've heard it more than anything else, with the possible exception of . . . Who am I kidding? There are no other contenders. See, what I was going to do there was soften the blow, slip in something black and/or cool (possibly 'Let's Get It On', which I think is the best pop record ever made, and which would easily make it into my top 20 most-played songs list, but not at number 2. Number 2 -- and I'm trying to be honest here -- would probably be something like '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash, but it would be way, way behind. Let's say I've played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times (just over once a week for twenty-five years, which sounds about right, if one takes into account the repeat plays in the first couple of years); '(White Man) . . .' would have clocked up something like 500 plays. In other words, there's no real competition.
It's weird to me how 'Thunder Road' has survived when so many other, arguably better songs -- 'Maggie May', 'Hey Jude', 'God Save The Queen', 'Stir It Up', 'So Tired of Being Alone', 'You're A Big Girl Now' -- have become less compelling as I've got older. It's not as if I can't see the flaws: 'Thunder Road' is overwrought, both lyrically (as Prefab Sprout pointed out, there's more to life than cars and girls, and surely the word 'redemption' is to be avoided like the plague when you're writing songs about redemption) and musically -- after all, this four and three-quarter minutes provided Jim Steinman and Meatloaf with a whole career. It's also po-faced, in a way that Springsteen himself isn't, and if the doomed romanticism wasn't corny in 1975, then it certainly is now.
But sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don't do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that. When I was first beginning to write seriously, I read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and suddenly knew what I was, and what I wanted to be, for better or for worse. It's a process something like falling in love. You don't necessarily choose the best person, or the wisest, or the most beautiful; there's something else going on. There was a part of me that would rather have fallen for Updike, or Kerouac, or DeLillo -- for someone masculine, at least, maybe somebody a little more opaque, and certainly someone who uses more swear-words -- and, though I have admired those writers, at various stages in my life, admiration is a very different thing from the kind of transference I'm talking about. I'm talking about understanding -- or at least feeling like I understand -- every artistic decision, every impulse, the soul of both the work and its creator. 'This is me,' I wanted to say when I read Tyler's rich, sad, lovely novel. 'I'm not a character, I'm nothing like the author, I haven't had the experiences she writes about. But even so, this is what I feel like, inside. This is what I would sound like, if ever I were to find a voice.' And I did find a voice, eventually, and it was mine, not hers; but nevertheless, so powerful was the process of identification that I still don't feel as though I've expressed myself as well, as completely, as Tyler did on my behalf then.
So, even though I'm not American, no longer young, hate cars, and can recognize why so many people find Springsteen bombastic and histrionic (but not why they find him macho or jingoistic or dumb -- that kind of ignorant judgement has plagued Springsteen for a huge part of his career, and is made by smart people who are actually a lot dumber than he has ever been), 'Thunder Road' somehow manages to speak for me. This is partly -- and perhaps shamingly -- because a lot of Springsteen's songs from this period are about becoming famous, or at least achieving some kind of public validation through his art: what else are we supposed to think when the last line of the song is 'I'm pulling out of here to win', other than that he has won, simply by virtue of playing the song, night after night after night, to an ever-increasing crowd of people? (And what else are we supposed to think when in 'Rosalita' he sings, with a touching, funny and innocent glee, 'Cos the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance', other than that the record company has just given him a big advance?) It's never objectionable or obnoxious, this dream of fame, because it derives from a restless and uncontrollable artistic urge -- he knows he has talent to burn, and the proper reward for this, he seems to suggest, would be the financial wherewithal to fulfil it -- rather than an interest in celebrity for its own sake. Hosting a TV quiz show, or assassinating a president, wouldn't scratch the itch at all.
And, of course -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- if you have dreams of becoming a writer, then there are murky, mucky visions of fame attached to these dreams too; 'Thunder Road' was my answer to every rejection letter I received, and every doubt expressed by friends or relatives. They lived in towns for losers, I told myself, and I, like Bruce, was pulling out of there to win. (These towns, incidentally, were Cambridge -- full of loser doctors and lawyers and academics -- and London -- full of loser successes of every description -- but never mind. This was the material I had to work with, and work with it I did.)
It helped a great deal that, as time went by, and there was no sign of me pulling out of anywhere to do anything very much, and certainly not with the speed implied in the song, 'Thunder Road' made reference to age, thus accommodating this lack of forward momentum. 'So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young any more', Bruce sang, and that line worked for me even when I had begun to doubt whether there was any magic in the night: I continued thinking I wasn't that young any more for a long, long time -- decades, in fact -- and even today I choose to interpret it as a wistful observation of middle age, rather than the sharp fear that comes on in late youth.
It also helped that, some time in the early to mid-eighties, I came across another version of the song, a bootleg studio recording of Springsteen alone with an acoustic guitar (it's on War And Roses, the Born To Run out-takes bootleg); he reimagines 'Thunder Road' as a haunting, exhausted hymn to the past, to lost love and missed opportunities and self-delusion and bad luck and failure, and that worked pretty well for me, too. In fact, when I try to hear that last line of the song in my head, it's the acoustic version that comes first. It's slow, and mournful, and utterly convincing: an artist who can persuade you of the truth of what he is singing with either version is an artist who is capable of an awful lot.
There are other bootleg versions that I play and love. One of the great things about the song as it appears on Born To Run is that those first few bars, on wheezy harmonica and achingly pretty piano, actually sound like they refer to something that has already happened before the beginning of the record, something momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope; as 'Thunder Road' is the first track on side one of Born To Run, the album begins, in effect, with its own closing credits. In performance at the end of the seventies, during the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, Springsteen maximized this effect by seguing into 'Thunder Road' out of one of his bleakest, most desperate songs, 'Racing In The Street', and the harmonica that marks the transformation of one song into the other feels like a sudden and glorious hint of spring after a long, withering winter. On the bootlegs of those seventies shows, 'Thunder Road' can finally provide the salvation that its position on Born To Run denied it.
Maybe the reason 'Thunder Road' has sustained for me is that, despite its energy and volume and fast cars and hair, it somehow manages to sound elegiac, and the older I get the more I can hear that. When it comes down to it, I suppose that I too believe that life is momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope, and maybe that makes me a self-dramatizing depressive, or maybe it makes me a happy idiot, but either way 'Thunder Road' knows how I feel and who I am, and that, in the end, is one of the consolations of art.
Postscript
A few years ago, I started to sell a lot of books, at first only in the UK, and then later in other countries too, and to my intense bewilderment found that I had somehow become part of the literary and cultural mainstream. It wasn't something I had expected, or was prepared for. Although I could see no reason why anyone would feel excluded from my work -- it wasn't like it was difficult, or experimental -- my books still seemed to me to be quirky and small-scale. But suddenly all sorts of people, people I didn't know or like or respect, had opinions about me and my work, which overnight seemed to go from being fresh and original to clichéd and ubiquitous, without a word of it having changed. And I was shown this horrible reflection of myself and what I did, a funfair hall-of-mirrors reflection, all squidged-up and distorted -- me, but not me. It wasn't like I was given a particularly hard time, and certainly other people, some of whom I know, have experienced much worse. But even so, it becomes in those circumstances very hard to hang on to the idea of what you want to do.
And yet Springsteen somehow managed to find a way through. His name is still taken in vain frequently (a year or so ago I read a newspaper piece attacking Tony Blair for his love of Bruce, an indication, apparently, of the Prime Minister's incorrigible philistinism), and for some, the hall-of-mirrors reflection is the only Springsteen they can see. He went from being rock 'n' roll future to a lumpy, flag-waving, stadium-rocking meathead in the space of a few months, again with nothing much having changed, beyond the level of his popularity. Anyway, his strength of purpose, and the way he has survived the assault on his sense of self, seem to me exemplary; sometimes it's hard to remember that a lot of people liking what you do doesn't necessarily mean that what you do is of no value whatsoever. Indeed, sometimes it might even suggest the opposite.
Copyright © 2003 by Nick Hornby
Stay tuned for our big Bruce box.
Here's an essay written by Nick Hornby, british writer who's credits include High Fidelity (see my avatar and location), about the song Thunder Road:
I can remember listening to this song and loving it in 1975; I can remember listening to this song and loving it almost as much quite recently, a few months ago. (And, yes, I was in a car, although I probably wasn't driving, and I certainly wasn't driving down any turnpike or highway or freeway, and the wind wasn't blowing through my hair, because I possess neither a convertible nor hair. It's not that version of Springsteen.) So I've loved this song for a quarter of a century now, and I've heard it more than anything else, with the possible exception of . . . Who am I kidding? There are no other contenders. See, what I was going to do there was soften the blow, slip in something black and/or cool (possibly 'Let's Get It On', which I think is the best pop record ever made, and which would easily make it into my top 20 most-played songs list, but not at number 2. Number 2 -- and I'm trying to be honest here -- would probably be something like '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash, but it would be way, way behind. Let's say I've played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times (just over once a week for twenty-five years, which sounds about right, if one takes into account the repeat plays in the first couple of years); '(White Man) . . .' would have clocked up something like 500 plays. In other words, there's no real competition.
It's weird to me how 'Thunder Road' has survived when so many other, arguably better songs -- 'Maggie May', 'Hey Jude', 'God Save The Queen', 'Stir It Up', 'So Tired of Being Alone', 'You're A Big Girl Now' -- have become less compelling as I've got older. It's not as if I can't see the flaws: 'Thunder Road' is overwrought, both lyrically (as Prefab Sprout pointed out, there's more to life than cars and girls, and surely the word 'redemption' is to be avoided like the plague when you're writing songs about redemption) and musically -- after all, this four and three-quarter minutes provided Jim Steinman and Meatloaf with a whole career. It's also po-faced, in a way that Springsteen himself isn't, and if the doomed romanticism wasn't corny in 1975, then it certainly is now.
But sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don't do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that. When I was first beginning to write seriously, I read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and suddenly knew what I was, and what I wanted to be, for better or for worse. It's a process something like falling in love. You don't necessarily choose the best person, or the wisest, or the most beautiful; there's something else going on. There was a part of me that would rather have fallen for Updike, or Kerouac, or DeLillo -- for someone masculine, at least, maybe somebody a little more opaque, and certainly someone who uses more swear-words -- and, though I have admired those writers, at various stages in my life, admiration is a very different thing from the kind of transference I'm talking about. I'm talking about understanding -- or at least feeling like I understand -- every artistic decision, every impulse, the soul of both the work and its creator. 'This is me,' I wanted to say when I read Tyler's rich, sad, lovely novel. 'I'm not a character, I'm nothing like the author, I haven't had the experiences she writes about. But even so, this is what I feel like, inside. This is what I would sound like, if ever I were to find a voice.' And I did find a voice, eventually, and it was mine, not hers; but nevertheless, so powerful was the process of identification that I still don't feel as though I've expressed myself as well, as completely, as Tyler did on my behalf then.
So, even though I'm not American, no longer young, hate cars, and can recognize why so many people find Springsteen bombastic and histrionic (but not why they find him macho or jingoistic or dumb -- that kind of ignorant judgement has plagued Springsteen for a huge part of his career, and is made by smart people who are actually a lot dumber than he has ever been), 'Thunder Road' somehow manages to speak for me. This is partly -- and perhaps shamingly -- because a lot of Springsteen's songs from this period are about becoming famous, or at least achieving some kind of public validation through his art: what else are we supposed to think when the last line of the song is 'I'm pulling out of here to win', other than that he has won, simply by virtue of playing the song, night after night after night, to an ever-increasing crowd of people? (And what else are we supposed to think when in 'Rosalita' he sings, with a touching, funny and innocent glee, 'Cos the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance', other than that the record company has just given him a big advance?) It's never objectionable or obnoxious, this dream of fame, because it derives from a restless and uncontrollable artistic urge -- he knows he has talent to burn, and the proper reward for this, he seems to suggest, would be the financial wherewithal to fulfil it -- rather than an interest in celebrity for its own sake. Hosting a TV quiz show, or assassinating a president, wouldn't scratch the itch at all.
And, of course -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- if you have dreams of becoming a writer, then there are murky, mucky visions of fame attached to these dreams too; 'Thunder Road' was my answer to every rejection letter I received, and every doubt expressed by friends or relatives. They lived in towns for losers, I told myself, and I, like Bruce, was pulling out of there to win. (These towns, incidentally, were Cambridge -- full of loser doctors and lawyers and academics -- and London -- full of loser successes of every description -- but never mind. This was the material I had to work with, and work with it I did.)
It helped a great deal that, as time went by, and there was no sign of me pulling out of anywhere to do anything very much, and certainly not with the speed implied in the song, 'Thunder Road' made reference to age, thus accommodating this lack of forward momentum. 'So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young any more', Bruce sang, and that line worked for me even when I had begun to doubt whether there was any magic in the night: I continued thinking I wasn't that young any more for a long, long time -- decades, in fact -- and even today I choose to interpret it as a wistful observation of middle age, rather than the sharp fear that comes on in late youth.
It also helped that, some time in the early to mid-eighties, I came across another version of the song, a bootleg studio recording of Springsteen alone with an acoustic guitar (it's on War And Roses, the Born To Run out-takes bootleg); he reimagines 'Thunder Road' as a haunting, exhausted hymn to the past, to lost love and missed opportunities and self-delusion and bad luck and failure, and that worked pretty well for me, too. In fact, when I try to hear that last line of the song in my head, it's the acoustic version that comes first. It's slow, and mournful, and utterly convincing: an artist who can persuade you of the truth of what he is singing with either version is an artist who is capable of an awful lot.
There are other bootleg versions that I play and love. One of the great things about the song as it appears on Born To Run is that those first few bars, on wheezy harmonica and achingly pretty piano, actually sound like they refer to something that has already happened before the beginning of the record, something momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope; as 'Thunder Road' is the first track on side one of Born To Run, the album begins, in effect, with its own closing credits. In performance at the end of the seventies, during the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, Springsteen maximized this effect by seguing into 'Thunder Road' out of one of his bleakest, most desperate songs, 'Racing In The Street', and the harmonica that marks the transformation of one song into the other feels like a sudden and glorious hint of spring after a long, withering winter. On the bootlegs of those seventies shows, 'Thunder Road' can finally provide the salvation that its position on Born To Run denied it.
Maybe the reason 'Thunder Road' has sustained for me is that, despite its energy and volume and fast cars and hair, it somehow manages to sound elegiac, and the older I get the more I can hear that. When it comes down to it, I suppose that I too believe that life is momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope, and maybe that makes me a self-dramatizing depressive, or maybe it makes me a happy idiot, but either way 'Thunder Road' knows how I feel and who I am, and that, in the end, is one of the consolations of art.
Postscript
A few years ago, I started to sell a lot of books, at first only in the UK, and then later in other countries too, and to my intense bewilderment found that I had somehow become part of the literary and cultural mainstream. It wasn't something I had expected, or was prepared for. Although I could see no reason why anyone would feel excluded from my work -- it wasn't like it was difficult, or experimental -- my books still seemed to me to be quirky and small-scale. But suddenly all sorts of people, people I didn't know or like or respect, had opinions about me and my work, which overnight seemed to go from being fresh and original to clichéd and ubiquitous, without a word of it having changed. And I was shown this horrible reflection of myself and what I did, a funfair hall-of-mirrors reflection, all squidged-up and distorted -- me, but not me. It wasn't like I was given a particularly hard time, and certainly other people, some of whom I know, have experienced much worse. But even so, it becomes in those circumstances very hard to hang on to the idea of what you want to do.
And yet Springsteen somehow managed to find a way through. His name is still taken in vain frequently (a year or so ago I read a newspaper piece attacking Tony Blair for his love of Bruce, an indication, apparently, of the Prime Minister's incorrigible philistinism), and for some, the hall-of-mirrors reflection is the only Springsteen they can see. He went from being rock 'n' roll future to a lumpy, flag-waving, stadium-rocking meathead in the space of a few months, again with nothing much having changed, beyond the level of his popularity. Anyway, his strength of purpose, and the way he has survived the assault on his sense of self, seem to me exemplary; sometimes it's hard to remember that a lot of people liking what you do doesn't necessarily mean that what you do is of no value whatsoever. Indeed, sometimes it might even suggest the opposite.
Copyright © 2003 by Nick Hornby
I'm On Fire.
I know it's obvious, but that song is wonderful.
I know it's obvious, but that song is wonderful.
Born To Run.
Antichrist Television Blues
QUOTE(Chrono @ Jul 15 2007, 12:10 PM) [snapback]414185[/snapback]
Antichrist Television Blues
that's a genuinely well-written song in its own right.
Thunder Road
The archetypal loping pace and glory that is "Racing In The Streets"
"Dancing in the Dark" by a mile.
"Secret Garden," the mix with the dialogue from "Jerry Maguire." Gets me every time.
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 15 2007, 02:01 PM) [snapback]414226[/snapback]
"Secret Garden," the mix with the dialogue from "Jerry Maguire." Gets me every time.
Thank heavens you're not contributing to the Springsteen box.'
k
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 15 2007, 01:05 PM) [snapback]414227[/snapback]
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 15 2007, 02:01 PM) [snapback]414226[/snapback]
"Secret Garden," the mix with the dialogue from "Jerry Maguire." Gets me every time.
Thank heavens you're not contributing to the Springsteen box.
Well, it was either that or "Born in the USA." Tough call, frankly.
Born To Run
so many fist pumps happen when i listen to this. its like a nuremberg rally.
so many fist pumps happen when i listen to this. its like a nuremberg rally.
QUOTE(yancy @ Jul 15 2007, 01:49 PM) [snapback]414222[/snapback]
"Dancing in the Dark" by a mile.
Odd...that you picked the single most commercial and dated song I can think of.. that is a song entirely linked to the time frame in which it was released.
It only sounds 20 years old, unlike most of his material which sounds about 30 or 40 years old.
QUOTE(yancy @ Jul 15 2007, 03:01 PM) [snapback]414244[/snapback]
It only sounds 20 years old, unlike most of his material which sounds about 30 or 40 years old.
Ah perhaps but your seleciton has the highest cheese factor.
It's also his biggest hit ever. Go figure.
I just heard Elvis Costello's version of Brilliant Disguise last night, and I realized I really like that song. I always knew it, but it hit me again last night. I like both versions too, maybe a little more partial to Elvis since I just like him more.
QUOTE(izzy @ Jul 15 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]414220[/snapback]
The archetypal loping pace and glory that is "Racing In The Streets"
Toss up for me between that, "Lost in the Flood" and "Highway Patrolman"
This Hard Land (greatest hits version) is just fucking amazing.
but lately, i'm loving I'm Going Down all over again.
but lately, i'm loving I'm Going Down all over again.
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 15 2007, 09:24 PM) [snapback]414308[/snapback]
QUOTE(izzy @ Jul 15 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]414220[/snapback]
The archetypal loping pace and glory that is "Racing In The Streets"
Toss up for me between that, "Lost in the Flood" and "Highway Patrolman"
Right behind it for me at the moment would be "Atlantic City". There's no other lyric like that in a similar song.. ever.
"Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night..."
QUOTE(Music Saves @ Jul 15 2007, 03:52 PM) [snapback]414257[/snapback]
I just heard Elvis Costello's version of Brilliant Disguise last night, and I realized I really like that song. I always knew it, but it hit me again last night. I like both versions too, maybe a little more partial to Elvis since I just like him more.
At first I thought you must be thinking of different songs ... didn't realise Costello had covered it, and don't think I've heard it, but there is NO WAY it outdoes the original.'
k
QUOTE(LOL Alzado @ Jul 15 2007, 09:42 PM) [snapback]414310[/snapback]
This Hard Land (greatest hits version) is just fucking amazing.
That's funny, the prevailing view seems to be that the original version, which appears on Tracks, is better, but I'm with you, the '95 remake is superior.'
k
badlands. definitely badlands, preferably a live version.
but Secret Garden, thats my karaoke song man. i can bring the house down.
but Secret Garden, thats my karaoke song man. i can bring the house down.
Candy's Room of couse.
I love CANDY'S ROOM, but it's gotta be JUNGLELAND.
"Born To Run" for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being after nearly 32 years the song still gives me goosebumps everytime.
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I have to go with "Thunder Road" or "Born to Run". But "Racing in the Streets", "Backstreets",
"Jungleland", "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and about 45 others are close.
I have that Hornby book and I always liked what he had to say about Springsteen (and reactions to him).
Costello's version of "Brilliant Disguise" is excellent, but I don't think it "outdoes" the original.
I'll defend "Secret Garden", seriously. Maybe I'm just that biased for Bruce. Maybe it's because I was a young, romantic 18 year-old when I heard it and it evokes fuzzy, naive, young-dumb memories.
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 10:20 AM) [snapback]414474[/snapback]
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
my version would be better described as an interpretation as opposed to a performanceQUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
Speaking of the Blood Brothers EP, the a capella first verse of "Blood Brothers' is one of my favorite Bruce moments of all time. That might be the song I sing in my head more than any other.
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 16 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]414481[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
It helps set the tone and mood for DOTEOT excellently. But yeah - as a standalone song, I've never thought it was that great either.
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 10:20 AM) [snapback]414474[/snapback]
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
Who's to say I wasn't joking in response? Oh, that's right, you.'
k
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 16 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]414481[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
For a guy with good taste, you can be pretty messed up at times.
The song has a lot of the same emotions that run through Nebraska -- rage, desperation, anger, hopelessness. Only instead of being sung over somber, acoustic instrumentation, this thing is an absolute scorcher. Piss and vinegar, m'lad. Piss and vinegar.
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 16 2007, 09:36 AM) [snapback]414495[/snapback]
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 10:20 AM) [snapback]414474[/snapback]
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
Who's to say I wasn't joking in response? Oh, that's right, you.Because you've consistently failed to demonstrate you have a sense of humor?
"It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City" from Greetings.
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 15 2007, 11:17 PM) [snapback]414326[/snapback]
QUOTE(LOL Alzado @ Jul 15 2007, 09:42 PM) [snapback]414310[/snapback]
This Hard Land (greatest hits version) is just fucking amazing.
That's funny, the prevailing view seems to be that the original version, which appears on Tracks, is better, but I'm with you, the '95 remake is superior.seems like it would be the natural reaction for internet know-it-alls to prefer a 'rarities' version over one that appears on *gasp* a greatest hits collection. but anybody who prefers the Tracks version is either posturing or dumb or both.
a number of my favorites have already been mentioned. my "absolute best of Springsteen" mixes of the past have always started off:
Thunder Road
Sherry Darling
I'm Going Down
Candy's Room
Thunder Road
Sherry Darling
I'm Going Down
Candy's Room
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 11:07 AM) [snapback]414530[/snapback]
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 16 2007, 09:36 AM) [snapback]414495[/snapback]
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 10:20 AM) [snapback]414474[/snapback]
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
Who's to say I wasn't joking in response? Oh, that's right, you.Because you've consistently failed to demonstrate you have a sense of humor?
'
k
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 16 2007, 08:48 PM) [snapback]415150[/snapback]
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 11:07 AM) [snapback]414530[/snapback]
QUOTE(kessler @ Jul 16 2007, 09:36 AM) [snapback]414495[/snapback]
QUOTE(BobtheSquid @ Jul 16 2007, 10:20 AM) [snapback]414474[/snapback]
I was, of course, joking when I said "Secret Garden" yesterday, not that the K-man noticed. But hey.
Who's to say I wasn't joking in response? Oh, that's right, you.Because you've consistently failed to demonstrate you have a sense of humor?
OK, that was funny. Jokes about people's moms always kill.
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:44 AM) [snapback]414501[/snapback]
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 16 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]414481[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
For a guy with good taste, you can be pretty messed up at times.
The song has a lot of the same emotions that run through Nebraska -- rage, desperation, anger, hopelessness. Only instead of being sung over somber, acoustic instrumentation, this thing is an absolute scorcher. Piss and vinegar, m'lad. Piss and vinegar.
A Scorcher yes.. one of his best songs though.. No. Why? too monochromatic in dimension and sound, also the ever so tired biblical imagery. Don't hate it... but NO on a box inclusion.
QUOTE(izzy @ Jul 17 2007, 10:01 AM) [snapback]415332[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:44 AM) [snapback]414501[/snapback]
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 16 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]414481[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
For a guy with good taste, you can be pretty messed up at times.
The song has a lot of the same emotions that run through Nebraska -- rage, desperation, anger, hopelessness. Only instead of being sung over somber, acoustic instrumentation, this thing is an absolute scorcher. Piss and vinegar, m'lad. Piss and vinegar.
A Scorcher yes.. one of his best songs though.. No. Why? too monochromatic in dimension and sound, also the ever so tired biblical imagery. Don't hate it... but NO on a box inclusion.
Too monochromatic in dimension and sound? I suppose Link Wray is monochromatic too? How about Duane Eddy? Jesus, put down the arts magazine, man, we're talking about rock & roll.
Another "Born To Run" schmuck here...just for the band breakdown near the end, through the big coda.
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 17 2007, 12:12 PM) [snapback]415529[/snapback]
QUOTE(izzy @ Jul 17 2007, 10:01 AM) [snapback]415332[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:44 AM) [snapback]414501[/snapback]
QUOTE(tweed @ Jul 16 2007, 10:27 AM) [snapback]414481[/snapback]
QUOTE(norton @ Jul 16 2007, 10:00 AM) [snapback]414463[/snapback]
Close contenders: "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cain."
I'm always shocked by love for "Adam Raised a Cain." To me, it's one of the worst things he ever recorded. Maybe I'm missing it.
For a guy with good taste, you can be pretty messed up at times.
The song has a lot of the same emotions that run through Nebraska -- rage, desperation, anger, hopelessness. Only instead of being sung over somber, acoustic instrumentation, this thing is an absolute scorcher. Piss and vinegar, m'lad. Piss and vinegar.
A Scorcher yes.. one of his best songs though.. No. Why? too monochromatic in dimension and sound, also the ever so tired biblical imagery. Don't hate it... but NO on a box inclusion.
Too monochromatic in dimension and sound? I suppose Link Wray is monochromatic too? How about Duane Eddy? Jesus, put down the arts magazine, man, we're talking about rock & roll.
Pffftt... the best Springsteen Material indeed does has dimension to it.. for instance.. "Candy's Room". Another song that sounds the same way to me as does "Adam Raised A Cain" is "Glory Days". Rock And Roll indeed. We're not talkin about the Big Bopper here Norty, we're talking about the Boss.
I'd be hard pressed to pick between "Candy's Room" & "Thunder Road"
Can't believe three pages in and no love for "Rosalita" or "Promised Land." Then again, I might go "Badlands" or "Thunder Road," if your talking about the version off the Live 1975-1985 boxset.
i mentioned "Born To Run" because i knew very few others would...but also because it was on the radio the other day and i hadn't heard it in a long time and i couldn't believe how fantastic it sounded. it's on another level completely.
my other favorites are:
"Thunder Road"
"Jungleland"
"Candy's Room"
"Rosalita"
"I'm On Fire"
"Meeting Across The River"
"Highway Patrolman"
my other favorites are:
"Thunder Road"
"Jungleland"
"Candy's Room"
"Rosalita"
"I'm On Fire"
"Meeting Across The River"
"Highway Patrolman"
QUOTE(izzy @ Jul 15 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]414220[/snapback]
The archetypal loping pace and glory that is "Racing In The Streets"
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"Incident on 57th Street"
And Johnny cried "Puerto Rican Jane, word is down the cops have found the vein!"
"Nebraska"
Well sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world
"She's the One"
That Thunder in your heart
At night when you're kneeling in the dark
It says you're never gonna leave her
But there's this angel in her eyes
That tells such desperate lies
And all you want to do is believe her
"Growin' Up"
I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
And you know it's really hard to hold your breath
"I'm Goin' Down"
We get dressed up and we go out, baby, for the night
We come home early burning, burning in some fire fight
And Johnny cried "Puerto Rican Jane, word is down the cops have found the vein!"
"Nebraska"
Well sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world
"She's the One"
That Thunder in your heart
At night when you're kneeling in the dark
It says you're never gonna leave her
But there's this angel in her eyes
That tells such desperate lies
And all you want to do is believe her
"Growin' Up"
I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
And you know it's really hard to hold your breath
"I'm Goin' Down"
We get dressed up and we go out, baby, for the night
We come home early burning, burning in some fire fight
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