» Listings for 2024

1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 334 - Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band “Live / 1975-85”

   Posted on 8:14am Thursday 9th May 2024

   A 5 LP box set that does exactly what it says on the box. It compiles performances from small clubs to huge stadiums from New Jersey to California.

   Although the E Street Band (in one form or another) have been playing behind Bruce Springsteen from the beginning of his recording career this was the first album release to credit the band. But it makes sense to credit them here because on stage is where the E Street Band prove themselves to be, as The Boss often describes them at the end of shows “The heart-stopping, pants-dropping, earth-shocking, hard rocking, booty-shaking, earth-quaking, love-making, Viaaaagra-taking, history-making, legendary E! Street! Band!”.

   All the “hits” are here, everything you’d expect of a Springsteen show in those first ten years. The only thing that is conspicuously absent is “Jungleland”, who knows why. There are also a handful of (to me) previously unheard songs and cover versions. “Paradise By The C” is an instrumental introduced on the “Darkness On the Edge Of Town” tour to kick off the second half of the show and features the Big Man; “Seeds” is a song that has been around since “Born In the USA” but this is it’s only official release. The covers are Eddie Floyd’s “Raise Your Hand”, Edwin Starr’s “War” (which I saw him play live with Edwin at V*ll* Park on the “Tunnel Of Love Express” tour), a beautiful version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” and finally Tom Waits “Jersey Girl” (recorded at the Meadowlands in New Jersey) to which Bruce added a final verse that fits so perfectly it’s almost like he wrote the whole song himself. 

   Some high-spots for me are “4th July Asbury Park (Sandy)” recorded at the Roxy in LA in 1978, a superb performance highlighting Danny Federici’s accordion playing, and from the same show a great version of “Growin Up”. Springsteen goes off on one his extended stories mid-song about the time he had to go to court after he was involved in a motorcycle accident. After it’s all over his Dad is telling him he should become a lawyer and “get a little something for yourself”. But his Mom is telling him he should become an author “it’s a nice life and you can get a little something for yourself”. They’re both in the audience and from the stage he tells them he wants it all and “tonight yous’ll just have to settle for rock ’n’ roll”…and right on cue the E Street Band kicks back in and it’s just about one of the most thrilling things you could hear. There’s a performance of “Born In The USA” so full of righteous fury that, as on the tour this was recorded on it was the 1st song in the set every night, it makes you wonder what he was doing before going onstage to conjure that up. Side 5’s juxtaposition of a raging “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” followed by my great favourite “Racing In The Street” has been close to bringing me to tears more than once.

   “Live/1975-85” is as close as you’ll get to a Springsteen gig in a box.

   This Land Is Your Land - https://youtu.be/oxSPEgqsaec?si=6aCdc2WCEu6JaFWF

2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 333 - Bruce Springsteen “Born In The USA”

   Posted on 9:00am Wednesday 8th May 2024

   This albums title track could very well be one of the most misunderstood songs in America’s history and consequently Springsteen doesn’t play it very often in the USA. Republican President’s Ronald  Reagan and Donald Trump have both either referred to “Born In The USA” or played it at political rallies. The stars and bars are a very powerful symbol in America so to put it on the cover of your album attracts much attention. Springsteen is a proud American but understands its realities. Those Republicans obviously only heard the chorus and saw the flag because if they’d listened to the verses they would have heard Springsteen asking why, for millions of Americans who, like him, were “Born In The USA”, why aren’t things better for them

   “Born down in a dead man's town

   The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

   End up like a dog that's been beat too much

   'Til you spend half your life just covering up”

   Bruce Springsteen was a huge success by 1984 but Columbia wanted hits both in terms of singles and multi million selling albums. Well they got both from “Born In The USA”, it produced 7 (US) top 10 singles and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. It put Springsteen up in the “pop” firmament alongside the likes of Prince and Madonna. Although that first hit single proved somewhat contentious.

   Recording had begun in January 1982 and by the start of 1984 Springsteen considered the album finished, but Jon Landau still thought the record lacked a lead single. Springsteen’s response to that was “I’ve written 70 songs for this album, if you want another one write it yourself”. However, two days later in a New York hotel room Springsteen played Landau “Dancing In The Dark”, a hit single about not wanting to or knowing how to write a hit single, that he wrote in 40 minutes. It was recorded the next night and went on to be the worldwide hit that launched “Born In The USA”.

   These songs are great, the likes of “No Surrender”, “Bobby Jean”, “Darlington County” and “Glory Days” as well as the title song and “Dancing In The Dark” are likely to turn up whenever you go to a Springsteen gig. But this one isn’t a record I play very often. Because of its very 80’s production I much prefer to hear most of these songs played live where they take on the sound of the band and are much less sterile. Most of them I have available on various live album releases or as part of gigs I’ve downloaded from live.brucespringsteen.net. In fact I have live versions of all but 2 songs (“I’m Goin’ Down” and “Downbound Train”) and when we saw the Wrecking Ball Tour in Ireland in 2013 the album was performed in its entirety.

   “Born In The USA” made Bruce Springsteen a global superstar, a celebrity, something that never sat well with him. He played the game, did the year long world tour and made millions of dollars for the record company. The “Born In The USA” tour was where he moved from arenas to stadiums, demand for tickets in Europe was so high he had to and he still maintains he and the band are bigger in Europe than in the US where they still play arenas in the main. Many people’s lasting impression of Springsteen was formed at this time. If Columbia Records were expecting a quick follow up in the same vein they were to be disappointed, they’d have to wait 3 years for another studio album and chest thumping stadium rock it wasn’t.

   Born In The USA - https://youtu.be/EPhWR4d3FJQ?si=-DPi-6_VDKdFkD0_

3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 332 - Bruce Springsteen “Nebraska”

   Posted on 9:40am Tuesday 7th May 2024

   Well Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in Cardiff on Sunday was everything we wanted and needed it to be. A couple of surprises on the setlist and all the classics you could want. If you get the chance to see him on this tour you should. There was nothing played from this album so let’s get to it…

   "If I had to pick one album out and say, “This is going to represent you 50 years from now” I'd pick “Nebraska” ” - Bruce Springsteen April 2023

   After releasing a double album, after having hit singles, after performing an 11 month long, globe spanning Arena tour and being hailed as one of the biggest emerging stars in the world, whaddya do ? Well if you’re Bruce Springsteen you release your 4 track cassette demos recorded in the bedroom of your rented house in a small town in central New Jersey and featuring just you and minimal instrumentation as your next album. “Nebraska” is still regarded as an absolute triumph and one of Springsteen’s very best records.

   Think back to 1982 and the albums that major artists were releasing (and make no mistake, after the success of “The River”, Springsteen was now a major artist), the biggest sellers; Michael Jackson “Thriller”, Prince “1999”, Toto IV, Fleetwood Mac “Mirage”, Dire Straits “Love Over Gold”, Phil Collins “Hello, I Must Be Going”, multi-million selling, records with multi-million dollar budgets and huge productions…nobody was making, or even considering making anything that sounded like “Nebraska”. To be honest neither was Springsteen. As he started writing he thought he was simply preparing demo’s for his next album. Songs were coming to him fast and he decided he needed some way to get them recorded as he wrote. 

   One of his crew, guitar tech Mike Batlan, set him up with the newly available Tascam Series 144 4 track cassette Portastudio, a couple of microphones and and an old echo unit so his boss could get his new songs down on tape ready to present to the  E Street Band. Springsteen proceeded to write some of his most personal and hard hitting songs. Influenced by his past, his family, ordinary Americans and classic American Gothic literature and films, he wrote a set of songs unlike anything he’d previously bought into being.

   Tucked away in Colts Neck, NJ Springsteen initially wrote and demoed 15 songs that he shared with Jon Landau, sometimes he recorded more than one take of a song (3 takes of “Atlantic City” and 2 of “Reason To Believe” for instance) with different arrangements or lyrics. All the songs that made it onto “Nebraska” were recorded (“My Fathers House” was recorded at Colts Neck but wasn’t one of the initial 15 sent to Landau). The remaining six songs demoed were “Bye Bye Johnny”, “Losin’ Kind”, “The Child Bride”, “Born In The USA”, “Down Bound Train” and “Pink Cadillac”. Three of those were never pursued further, two made it to his next album and the last one ended up with Natalie Cole.

   There was just one copy of the tape and Springsteen had this delivered by “a guy from Jersey” to his manager, Jon Landau, with a covering note so he could hear what his charge had been doing. He listened made some notes and sent the tape back to Springsteen (whether or not via the same “guy from Jersey” we don’t know), it was the only copy and he needed it. Some weeks later the E Street Band convened in a New York studio to work on these new songs. Springsteen bought the cassette with him, in his pocket, not even in a case, and this is what will become the master for his next album !

   As he and the band tried to flesh out arrangements for the songs it started to become clear that the best arrangements were those he’d already recorded and that his next album should be what was on that cassette. The tale of getting those recordings from the cassette to professional tape is a whole other thing. Portastudios were never designed to do that so whole new processes had to be invented by studio engineers. The songs couldn’t really be mixed due to the way Springsteen had recorded them (echo effects had been recorded directly to the cassette for example) so what you hear on the record is pretty much what was on that cassette.

   “Nebraska” feels like hearing black and white depression era America. Songs like “Johnny 99” and the title song are every bit as cinematic in scope as “Jungleland” but this time it’s simply one man and his guitar. In “Johnny 99” Ralph’s job has gone (the Ford company really did “close down the autoplant in Mawah” in summer 1980 putting 4,000 people out of work), couldn’t find another, couldn’t pay his bills and ended up cracking and murdering a shop worker after getting drunk. The record is incredibly personal throughout. “Used Cars” is a childhood memory of Dad always buying 2nd hand cars with a problem and an aspiration that “…the day my number comes in I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again” (it’s kinda ironic that he now has a collection of classic, or used, cars).

   Springsteen has said in interviews that some of these songs were so personal that he didn’t think he could ever have played them to or with the E Street Band. “My Fathers House” is a quite remarkable song. It revolves a round a dream, trying to escape the woods and whatever is chasing the narrator. The thing that saves him is arriving at his fathers house and falling into his arms. The dream continues as our storyteller drives over to his fathers house to find that someone else is there and that “no one by that name lives here anymore”, a stark reminder that, no matter the difficulties, your parents won’t be with you forever and those difficulties can be overcome. Given Springsteen’s relationship with his father this one must have been tough to write, maybe the reason that it (plus “Mansion On The Hill” and “Used Cars”) are written from the viewpoint of a child ?

   “Nebraska” is one man and his guitar delivering incredibly raw and personal moments into song. It still stands as an incredibly brave move by an artist who was on the brink of mega stardom to rein everything back and release this record. But release it he did and it really is one of Springsteen’s very best.

   Johnny 99 - https://youtu.be/OQUcqK1Op6Y?si=3d92jiXPUrWqI7MF