Bruce Springsteen

[Queen of Everything]

But, at the risk of sounding weird, I have to say even though I like Bruce and his music, I cant relate to him, but I wish I could.? He just seems to be an all American apple pie guy with no flaws or faults...I wish I could be like that too.

I could understand that for the Born In the USA album, but not Born To Run or anyother for that matter. There are some pretty dark songs on there if you follow the lyrics.
It could be more because of how the media portrays him actually.
His last 3 studio albums over the last 11 years or so have all featured songs that focus more on him playing a character or singing about a character. 99 percent of these characters have some major flaws that they are either just learning to deal with, or have become resigned to having the rest of their lives.

Yeah - take for example:  The River.

[Mr. Dick Purple]

Last week I was buying the Best of the boss, but someone stole it when I took it to the beach 
I dont know too much about the music, but I've heard good songs like strees of phillys, born in the USA, dancer inthe dark? <-- right? 
Anyway I hope i can get again a new CD but I hate to spent money again 

[Eduardo]

Last week I was buying the Best of the boss, but someone stole it when I took it to the beach 
I dont know too much about the music, but I've heard good songs like strees of phillys, born in the USA, dancer inthe dark? <-- right? 
Anyway I hope i can get again a new CD but I hate to spent money again 

Those are good songs... But you should get Born To Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The river... The real deal is here

Then you can get his first 2 albuns and Born in the Usa

[Mr. Dick Purple]

Thanks for the tip I'll check those 

[Queen of Everything]

Like someone said - It's all About Greetings from Asbury Park. Get that album first!  Or the Essential.

[Eduardo]

Like someone said - It's all About Greetings from Asbury Park. Get that album first!  Or the Essential.

I think its easier for first listeners to like Born to Run, Darkness and The river

Once you?re fan, dig up Greetins from Asbury Park and The wild, the innocent and the E Street Shuffle

The Essential sucks big time, if you want a compilation get the Live 75-85 album

[Doc Emmett Brown]

It could be more because of how the media portrays him actually.

right, I meant in the sense of his persona rather than his lyrics.

Even the title track 'Born in the USA' is a dark song  - 'they're still here, he's all gone' gives me the chills when I hear it.  Was it Reagan who mistook that for a happy patriotic tune?

About the character thing, are any of his songs about himself?  About his own weaknesses and struggles?  I admire him for being perceptive enough to realize that the American Dream doesnt work out for everyone. But again it goes back to what I was saying about him being an all around good guy.  He's one of the few icons I know whose credibility isnt attacked. The only time I've seen people attack his persona is when he did the Vote For Change tour.

[Eduardo]

Yeah Born In The USA has one of the best lyrics EVER

Just so simple and direct, yet strong

I love the "they?re still there, he?s all gone" line too

Other Springsteen line I almost cry to is the Rising?s:

"There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light "

Obviously about the 9/11 attack

Fuckin great! 

[Queen of Everything]

Wow!  I can say that this thread died without me...   Where are you Kujo!?

Who has heard Axl and Bruce with "Come Together"

[Doc Emmett Brown]

Who has heard Axl and Bruce with "Come Together"

I have... but I still would like to know if any of his dark songs are autobiographical.  It's one thing  to do a character study, it's another thing to talk about your own inner demons.


anyway, here is an interesting article from the LA Times about Bruce's new album:

Bruce, just plain folk
Veering ever further from his rock roots, Springsteen and company offer a heartfelt homage to Pete Seeger.
By Richard Cromelin
Times Staff Writer

April 21, 2006

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen. These two monumental, quintessentially American artists have much in common, but with their vastly different musical roles and styles they aren't the most obvious bedfellows.

Now they're permanently entwined thanks to Springsteen's new album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." Due in stores Tuesday, this joyful, moving and somewhat frustrating collection is made up of 13 songs associated with Seeger, the folk-music patriarch.

It's joyful and moving because they're unassailable cornerstones of American music, songs that sprouted from the soil of the nation's experience and tell us how people worked, danced, loved, dealt with disaster, found a voice, inspired themselves and ultimately survived.

And it's frustrating because in choosing these 13 songs from the vast Seeger canon, Springsteen neglects what is perhaps the strongest bond between the two: a vision of music as an engine of social and political change.

Seeger, now 86 and relatively inactive, paid the price for that stance, finding himself blacklisted and marginalized in the 1950s and '60s for his leftist politics. That didn't stop him from becoming an immeasurably influential musical and cultural force.

Starting in the 1940s, Seeger began to gather and promulgate a treasure trove of traditional and topical songs that had no home in the mass media. He recorded and performed them with modest musical gifts and an abundance of earnestness and enthusiasm, lighting the fuse for the folk music boom of the 1960s.

While Seeger wrote few songs and relied on a simple banjo strum and the joined voices of his audience, Springsteen came along in the 1970s as the rock 'n' roll poet, addressing the promise and the pitfalls of American life in his torrents of words, carried at first on the liberating rock power of his E Street Band, later in more tempered and varied frameworks.

But they find common ground in this album, which illuminates the Seeger legacy for a wider audience while further distancing Springsteen from his rock-icon identity of the 1970s and '80s.

Clearly, he's not feeling compelled to keep straight-ahead rock with the E Street Band in the regular rotation. His last album, 2005's "Devils & Dust," was a muted, literary work, a variation on the tradition of his stark solo projects "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad." His last album with the E Street Band was the reflective post-9/11 work, "The Rising," in 2002. He's pretty much consigned the rock 'n' roll to periodic live albums.

"The Seeger Sessions" is Springsteen's first album without his own songs, and for the occasion he's concocted an irresistible hybrid of American music forms. Guitars, banjo, fiddles, horns, organ, accordion, piano, drums, washboard and more pack these arrangements, but the music always breathes easily, with wood, wind and skin gathering into rich, organic shapes.

A Southern feel asserts itself in the Dixieland brass, and intentional or not, a subliminal New Orleans presence pervades the album in the textures and syncopations (Springsteen will give the music its live debut at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30, with a Greek Theatre date in Los Angeles on June 5).

The playing is casually virtuosic, a sort of acoustic counterpart to the loose-limbed precision the E Street Band brings to his rock. You could call it back-porch music, though you'd need a big porch to hold all these players. (The DVD portion of this Dual Disc release offers documentation of the sessions, with the musicians jostling for space in the living room of Springsteen's farmhouse.)

The spontaneity is infectious. This is one-take recording, and you can hear Springsteen cueing the horn section here, calling out a key change there, fumbling the lyric in "John Henry" and plowing right ahead.

These might be folk songs, but there's no holding back on the upbeat tunes, and he matches the raucous playing with vocals full of all-out raspy intensity. And the musicians easily switch to a tone of evocative elegance on the slower songs.

If the music has the feel of something that came together completely naturally, the selection of material is more problematic.

There's a universe of Seeger-linked songs, and an infinity of statements to be made from them, and Springsteen has played it pretty basic with his repertoire here, choosing some bedrock material, from grade-school songbook staples such as "Shenandoah" and "Erie Canal" to the civil rights anthems "We Shall Overcome" and "Eyes on the Prize." There are minstrel songs ("Old Dan Tucker"), spirituals ("Jacob's Ladder") and mythic tales ("Jesse James," "John Henry").

There's no way that such a collection can be regarded as slight, but Springsteen doesn't put out albums with no thought to what they say about the times, and by creating a broadly inspirational panorama he's declined the opportunity to add his voice to the rising chorus of pop music that's commenting directly on current events. There are plenty of confrontational songs in the Seeger songbook that would do the job, from the union-organizing challenge "Which Side Are You On?" to the Vietnam allegory "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."

Maybe he's biding his time after the demanding commentary of his last two albums, taking a breather to enjoy the bandstand. Here's hoping the bandwagon doesn't leave without him.

anyone planning on picking this up?

[Eduardo]

Wow!  I can say that this thread died without me...   Where are you Kujo!?

Who has heard Axl and Bruce with "Come Together"

Axl sucks balls in this one, his singing is awful

But I read somewhere that they didnt even rehearse it. Someone asked Bruce to play Come Together and he said no. Then Axl came over to talk to him and he accepted to do it

[Doc Emmett Brown]

well, this was at the end of the UYI tour right? so we can cut him some slack 

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El0MZeTgHpw&search=axl%20bruce%20springsteen

[journey]

Thanks for the link.

It's cool. I hadn't seen it before.

I like his voice on that one.

[Kujo]

Wow!? I can say that this thread died without me... ? Where are you Kujo!?

I'm in Cali watching Buckethead.

I will definitely be heading to Best Buy tomorrow to pick up the new CD. I saw a video, dont remember the name, and was really impressed with the new band. I'm just waiting on some more tour dates to be announced.

[Queen of Everything]

Yeah, Im getting the CD aswell...

I must admit, I was less than happy with Axl's voice... but meh.  Its a good track, I wish it was studio quality a bit.


Thanks for that article!!

[Kujo]

All this Springsteen talk, than a new CD comes out and nothing but silence

Well I got the Pete Seeger Sessions yesterday and listened to it on the drive to work. While at first it was a bit odd hearing Springsteen sing some of these songs at first, after only a few songs you realize this music is the foundation for everything he has ever done. More specifically this CD reflects exactly where the inspiration for CD's like Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Devils And Dust came from.

Those that prefer the more rock n roll oriented Bruce might be turned off by this, but I suspect the die-hards will love it. Listening to this for the first time was similar to the first time listening to the "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. Not as much the gospel styled tracks but definitely the folk style. I could easily see Bruce and this band playing these songs in some little bar in New Orleans and not seem out of place at all.

[Queen of Everything]

All this Springsteen talk, than a new CD comes out and nothing but silence

Well I got the Pete Seeger Sessions yesterday and listene to it on the drive to work. While at first it was a bit odd hearing Springsteen sing some of this songs at first, after only a few songs you realize this music is the foundation for everything he has ever done. More specifically this CD reflects exactly where the inspiration for CD's like Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Devils And Dust came from.

Those that prefer the more rock n roll oriented Bruce might be turned off by this, but I suspect the die-hards will love it. Listening to this for the first time was similar to the first time listening to the "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. Not as much the gospel styled tracks but definitely the folk style. I could easily see Bruce and this band playing these songs in some little bar in New Orleans and not seem out of place at all.

Ohhh god I cant wait until I get it/steal it/borrow it/get it off you!!

haha!

[Kujo]

Ohhh god I cant wait until I get it/steal it/borrow it/get it off you!!

haha!

Its a Dual Disc, cant burn it. I'll probably buy it and download it off of MSN Music

[AdZ]

I received it the other day.  And so far I'm really enjoying it, it's a good listen.


But then again, i'm a folk junkie

[Doc Emmett Brown]

I'm just waiting on some more tour dates to be announced.

I saw a full page ad in this week's LA Weekly for Bruce and his (17?)-member Seeger band at the Greek Theatre on June 5th.  Maybe you'll visit Cali again?