TRACKS DISC 1Springsteen released a 4-disc box set of 66 songs in 1998. They run in roughly chronological order and I'll split the 4 discs at the most appropriate points across the whole post.
Asbury Park Outtakes
These four tracks all date back to Bruce's Columbia audition on 2nd May 1972 and the opening track includes some geezer describing it as such. He refers to it as a 'pop audition', possibly the first and last time Bruce was described as a pop artist. I'm guessing there hasn't been much fiddling around with the original production (and Mary, Queen of Arkansas at least is the first take), so it's very sparse, just Springsteen and his acoustic guitar. His voice is a a touch whiny, but not to Neil Young levels. The themes are typical early Bruce, youthful hubris and trying to make a start in life with your guitar and your girl.Live Recordings
Bishop Danced is a live performance recorded in Kansas. It shows how Bruce has always has some folky leanings. He gives it a slightly staccato delivery and it's a bit like 'Pick a Bale of Cotton'. Danny Federici gives a fairly minimalist accordion solo in the middle. At the end there is a smattering of applause and Bruce announces that he's "gonna bring out the bayand". 'Rendezvous' is the second live track on this album (I'm not sticking to running order here, but grouping in a way that makes sense to me), recorded in New York in 1980. It's pretty standard live fare to be brutally honest. Time to go for a wee and that much needed five quid pint of liquid nitrogen cooled lager in a plastic glass.
Wild, Innocent and E Street Shuffle Outtakes
'Santa Ana' starts out a bit like Jungleland but then settles into being very similar in tone and theme to 'Rosalita', which is probably why it never made the final cut (or it was a precursor). Methinks Bruce had a bit of a hispanic woman fixation as a lad.'Seaside Bar Song' is a conventional rock n' roll song with an organ melody. About cars of course and plenty of input from Clarence. 'Zero And Blind Terry' is one of his gang-war, lost youth story songs, packed with exotically named characters. 'Thundercrack' gets a reasonable number of live airings, it's long and a bit rambling, but worth it for the Big Man's "Baby's back!". The guitar solo has a touch of the Isley Brothers about it.
Born To Run Outtakes
There are only two Born To Run outtakes in this set. Not sure that means he just produced fewer tracks for the album or that the gulf in quality between the wheat and the chaff was so great that the selections were virtually a no-brainer. 'Linda..' is good, but you can see it belongs more on Darkness On The Edge of Town' than on BTR. 'So Young And In Love' on the other hand, harks back to his previous two albums. Clemons sax is deployed to the full.
Darkness On The Edge Of Town Outtakes
The Darkness outtakes are limited four, but then we got much more on The Promise. 'Give The Girl A Kiss' Starts like Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop' but settles immediately into one of Bruce's slurrier vocal styles (Darkness is generally afflicted by this). "Boss Time!" he announces before the guitar break. It's a bit rough around the edges, but Clarence booms out the bass refrain and it's quite satisfying. 'Iceman' is contemplative. He used ideas from this in other tracks that made it onto the album, notably the line "I wanna go out and find out what I've got" from 'Badlands' and musically there's some resemblance to 'Something In The Night'.with maybe a touch of 'Meeting Across the River' from Born to Run. 'Hearts Of Stone' is sung too slow, like he's been slipped a mogadon. It's weird, Darkness is my favourite album, but it's due to the quality of the songs, he actually gives a below par vocal performance on a lot of the material (both Accepts and Rejects). 'Don't Look Back' has a bit of oomph, clearly a sibling of 'Adam Raised a Cain', which is apt, because this was the one that got murdered.
River Outtake
Not the final track of the first Disc, but the only entry from The River on it. There's plenty more on Disc 2. It does the job, a bit repetitive.
A word on the cover art. I've never liked it, he looks a bit unwashed .
LIVE AT THE HAMMERSMITH ODEON 1975Here comes Bruce, slender of bicep and woolly of hat. In fact the love of chapeaux extends across the band, although the others go for wide brimmed fedoras and 10-gallons and come across like a gang of Harlem pimps (I quite fancy Clarence's white cuban heels though). Clemons and Miami Steve are even sporting buttonholes. Gary Tallent opts out, letting his lustrous long locks flow free. The Bruce titfer proves a bit of a pain cos it's so big, being as it is somewhere between a Bob Marley and Dr Seuss's Cat. It keeps falling over his eyes in '10th Avenue Freeze Out'. He starts with Thunder Road, just him and Roy Bittan on piano, all bathed in blue light. Once the band come on they get right into it and sound terrific. It strikes you that in 10th Avenue Freeze Out, the line "and the Big Man joined the band" raises nary a cry from the audience. Some of the stagecraft is a bit odd. On 'Spirit In the Night' he crawls on his belly off the stage into a little gap (this is during the making love with Crazy Janey bit), then his curly, hobbity head re-emerges. He forgets he left his hat on the mic stand and he starts to fret about where it is, for a moment you worry that he's so distracted he's going to start a fruitless search down the side of the stage. 'Lost In The Flood' is a great performance and is followed by 'She's The One'. The audience try to clap along to the opening harmonica solo, only to find out the rhythm is a lot more complex than they thought. 'Born To Run' crops up in the middle of the set, instead of the encore standby it is today. Bruce gives it some verbal at the start of The E Street Shuffle, checks that everyone in the audience is feeling OK and admits he's never been to England before. 'It's Hard To Be A Saint' is a guitar-wrangling, piano-hammering joy. They enter into the realms of freeform jazz in the 16 minute 'Kitty's Back' which features extended solos from Federici on the organ, Bittan on the piano and Clemons on sax. The camerawork is particularly uninspiring, just a steady shot of whichever one of them is doing their thing at the time. In fact the camera position on Clemons is such that it often looks like he's blowing straight into the microphone.They really tear it up for the closer of the main set, 'Rosalita', which was the standard finisher then. There's plenty of energy and Bruce introduces the band. It's one of the great appeals to me of the E-Street Band that they really do appear to be A Band, in that they are a collection of individual talents that contribute to the whole.The Professor, Mighty Max, Miami Steve, Big Man and the Boss do sound like a Marvel mash-up though. The encore includes a full on Detroit Medley and Bruce on his own at the joanna with 'For You'. They finish with a spirited 'Quarter To Three' and on the (almost) final note the hat drops over the eyes again, he peeks out, launches into it again and loses the headgear in the process. Incidentally, Bruce is also baggy of pants and sparse of beard. He's never been able to grow a decent one and there have been some minimalist tufty atrocities down the years.
This was issued as part of the 30th Anniversary edition of Born to Run. In the sleeve notes Springsteen admits not looking at the footage for 30 years and remembers it as being a bit of a mess. It's not and he acknowledges his error, putting it down to mixed emotions around the attendant publicity around the concert at the time.
This is made up of Darkness On The Edge Of Town outtakes and is a double too, so there's lots here. To do it justice and not make the post too long, I'll do each disc separately. It starts with an alternate take on Racing In The Street. Now I'd like to be all up myself and claim that it's better than the version that made it onto the album, but it's not. Good news is that fuelie heads and hurst on the floor are fitted as standard, but it doesn't capture the sense of quiet desperation that infuses the original. There is a folkier sound to it as well, due to a prominent violin solo. 'Gotta Get That Feeling' attempts a Spector-ish wall of sound which adds some much-needed interest to an average song. In 'Outside Looking In' he goes for a Buddy Holly riff. Maybe it's the modern production on Someday (We'll Be Together) but it sounds like it is straight off a much more recent album like Magic.Then he goes a bit Tom Waits on 'One Way Street' and frankly sounds a bit constipated.Next up is 'Because The Night' and I have to say it's a bit of a dog of a version. Co-writer Patti Smith's hit version and the live version on 75-85 are better. Also, it's always confused me a bit because he tends to sing different versions of the lyrics at different times. "What I've got I have earned, What I'm not, I have learned" is a good line but I only ever hear it in live versions. This one is lyrically the same as the Patti Smith I think, but I could be wrong. Anyway, he labours over it when he should be belting it out.'Wrong Side Of The Street' is, dare I say it, bog-standard and 'The Brokenhearted' is a bit too close to an Orbison pastiche for comfort. Next we get our old friend 'Rendezvous', last seen as a live version parachuted into Tracks Disc 1. Finally we have 'Candy's Boy', which is starts lyrically identical to 'Candy's Room' off Darkness, before veering off at a tangent about Mongolian gangs. Like 'Racing...' Bruce's instincts served him well, 'Room' is a better song than 'Boy' but the inclusion of both earlier versions here is interesting as a step in the evolution of a song. So as a whole this is a bit of a mish-mash, as you might reasonably expect. In fairness to Bruce, he admits in the sleeve notes that he was trying to emulate heroes like Spector, Orbison and Holly.
THE PROMISE DISC 2I'd say this is the better of the two discs and starts strongly with 'Save My Love'. Not, you may be surprised to learn, a cover of Tamworth's own Rene and Renata's number one smash, but a very pleasant, flowing rock love song. Then he gives us some goofy rock and roll inn 'Ain't Good Enough For You'. 'Fire' is familiar to most through the Pointer Sisters cover. We'll be coming to an excellent live version of this on the 75-85 set, but this is good. It has a nice clicky bass. The opening lines of 'Spanish Eyes' are almost identical to those of 'I'm On Fire' and so make you feel a little queasy "Hey little girl is your daddy home etc etc". If he rejected it in 1978 (or whenever) it certainly wasn't on the basis of the lyrical content. OK, both songs are open to interpretation and I'm not suggesting that Bruce means anything other than 'small woman' when he says 'little girl', but surely he could see the potential for confusion too? He resurrects the riff from 'Backstreets' on 'It's A Shame'. I'm guessing he thought it was a bit too close to the latter to justify it's release, because it's a good song. 'Come On (Let's Go Tonight)' is a prototype to 'Factory' which finally made it onto Darkness. The melody is virtually identical, but the lyrics completely different. He moved from something resembling ''Atlantic City' where the protagonists are going out to find some relief from their troubles, to the daily grind that they were trying to escape from in the final version. 'Talk To Me' and 'The Little Things' (My Baby Does)' are standard filler, and since Darkness is, in my view, just about perfect, there was clearly no room for such material. 'Breakaway' is a kind of slow march, which again touches on the themes of 'Factory', as does the title track, which seems to combine a lot of Bruce's ideas around blue-collar workers and breaking free from the need to scratch out a living. He references Darlington County and Thunder Road. Maybe he intended it as a sequel to the Born To Run opener, reflecting disillusionment with the hope and freedom that that song promised. A bit of a silly voice on 'City Of Night. Sort of a Doctor John drawl. And finally....a hidden track, 'The Way'. Not sure why he bothers to hide it, is it a test to see if you stop the CD and take it out before the end? If so, who benefits? Maybe it's just because he thinks it's a bit below par, which it is.
This is mainly outtakes from The River, which was a double album anyway, so 'prolific' doesn't really do it justice. There's a few tracks from the Born In The USA/Nebraska period as well. Assume they're from The River unless I indicate otherwise. For my money 'the opening 'Restless Nights' is the best track on the whole 4 disc-shebang, bordering on a Bruce classic with plenty of smooth key changes and some shouty-crackers screaming in the guitar/organ breaks. We also get a good dose of Van Zandt's weedy backing vocals, which may fall under the much-abused expression.'guilty pleasure'. 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Pittsburgh)' - Bruce loves a bracketed subtitle - comes from the Born In The USA sessions but sounds pretty close to it's contemporary, Nebraska, very similar musically to 'Highway Patrolman'. Mighty Max gets is moment on the oft-performed-live 'Roulette' with a testosterone fuelled drum intro. I'm ambivalent about this one. The vocal is a bit too frantic for my liking. Music box intro for 'Dollhouse' degenerates into a by-the-numbers rocker. 'Where The Bands Are' feels like his attempt to tap into the punk phenomenon, you could see the Buzzcocks doing a version and he sounds a bit like Elvis Costello. 'Loose Ends' is a bit dull, notable only for some tortuous lengthening of the word Looooooooooose (see also 'Spanish Eyes' from The Promise for more overextended wordage). More punky stuff for 'Living On The Edge Of The World', there's touches of the Clash's 'I Fought The Law' and Costello's 'Radio Radio'. Things get mellower for 'Wages Of Sin' from Born In The USA. It's interesting that many of the BITUSA (hey! like that!) outtakes are more downbeat than the stuff that made it to the album. That's one reason why it and Nebraska are so different, being recorded almost concurrently. There was obviously intent to break Springsteen to a wider audience with BITUSA. Nothing spesh about 'Take 'Em As They Come'. Wiki-pinch-of-salt tells me that 'Be True' was the B-side of the 'Fade Away' single. Sounds like a B-side to be honest.We then get a run of some fairly humdrum stuff 'Ricky Wants A Man Of Her Own' is a joyful rock and roll number in the 'Bobby Jean' mould; 'I Wanna Be With You' is a bit overblown and gets a double count in; and 'Mary Lou' is, well, a Bruce song, which I guess is kind of damning it with high praise. 'Stolen Car' is an alternate version of the one on the album, which I don't know well, so it's hard for me to comment other than to say I like it. The 'Born In The USA' outtake from Nebraska is about as different as it could be. He did this version on the Tom Joad tour and J didn't recognise it (I think Bruce had lost her by then anyway, it wasn't the most uplifting set he ever put together). It has a haunting echoey vocal and is entirely acoustic. 'Johnny Bye-Bye' (B-side to 'I'm On Fire') is short and has a Duane Eddy riff. And finally we get 'Shut Out The Light', which was the B-side to the BITUSA single. Very Nebraska.
Urk!. Confusing! This consists of a straight reissue of The River double album, plus the original single album that he never released, plus some outtakes, many of which have been released before on Tracks Disc 2 and some of which haven't. There's also plenty of DVD material which I won't be covering, since the old fella has already acquired a good chunk of my cash for his Wembley date in June.So we must assume that the Single Album version of the River is in pure form, no hindsight allowing him to excise things which didn't quite work. Indeed that's supposed to be the whole reason why it was canned, that it didn't quite hang together. If you want my opinion, the double is a little stretched in places and a condensed version is a good idea. Many tracks are common to both: The title track, 'Hungry Heart', 'Stolen Car', 'The River', 'The Price You Pay' and 'I Wanna Marry You', but run times between the double and single versions vary enough to make you think there are differences. If there are, then I am an insufficient Bruce-bore to spot them. The exception is 'You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)' which is completely different musically and takes the Eddie Cochran/Rockabilly route. It's equally good as the double version. In addition we get 'Cindy', 'Be True' and 'Loose End'. Only Cindy didn't feature on the Tracks collection and has a Tunnel Of Love feel about it. When I did The River initially I speculated that Bruce put out a double album in order to beef up his song choices for live shows. I also think he tries a bit too hard with the singing on some songs on that album, and the single version actually seems more controlled. However I cannot believe that he stuck with the quite poor 'I Wanna Marry You' when he went back to it.
The first half of this is the only part which is really of interest since the second half is effectively Tracks Disc 2 - which means bleedin' 'Roulette' and 'Dollhouse' and 'Where The Bands Are'. 'Meet Me In The City' comes across something like Elvis Costello's 'Radio Radio'. I made the same comparison about 'Livin' On The Edge Of The World' when discussing Tracks, so that whole thing of singing from the back of the throat must have been common to both artists. 'Little White Lies' is not a cover of the 1930's standard (and my research tells me that 1D have also used the title). 'Night Fire' is another oversung, histrionic effort, he sounds like he's singing it on the end of a noose and runs out of inspiration for the lyrics toward the end so copes by repeating lines. What's that Bruce? "Chyurned Lightning"? Oh! 'CHAIN Lightning'. It has the 'Pink Cadillac' guitar riff. 'Paradise By The "C"' turned up on the Live 75-85 collection and they certainly have a good time doing it. For me the most interesting songs are 'Stray Bullet' and 'Mr Outside'. 'Stray Bullet' certainly does not match the mood of the River album. It's regretful and has a lovely clarinet part (possibly Clarence reining it on the sax I suppose). 'Mr. Outside' is distinctly odd. Possibly recorded in Bruce's garden shed, the production is rustic, but it's a jolly little ditty.
This little lot spans Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love and as a whole the disc is quite satisfying. The quality is pretty high throughout. There are 13 additional tracks from the BITUSA sessions including a few B-sides and these all come in succession at the start, with the exception of 'Janey Don't You Lose Heart' which is embedded amongst the Tunnel Of Love stuff. The BITUSA DNA is evident throughout the songs. 'Cynthia' has a 'Glory Days' feel to it and is followed by 'My Love Will Not Let You Down' which bowls along but couldn't be described as Bruce's lyrical pinnacle. You might describe 'This Hard Land' as Woody Guthrie-lite - if such a thing could be conceived. He certainly gives the old harmonica a good blow. 'Frankie' is a standout of the disc, it has good hook but is spoiled a bit by a kind of tacked-on ending that owes little to the rest of the song. Next Bruce gets back to his Rock n' Roll roots with the rockabilly 'TV Movie' - he's not keen on his life being portrayed via that particular artistic medium, and 'Stand On It' which was the B-side of 'Glory Days' but in a different version. 'Stand On It' is about as straight a piece of 6-beat rock n' roll as you'll ever hear. 'Lion's Den' is good fun, probably good live if you were lucky enough to catch him doing it. 'Car Wash' is short and sweet, in the vein of 'Working On The Highway' or 'Darlington County' perhaps. 'Rockaway The Days' is OK, but needs to go somewhere. There's two songs on the collection with (almost) the same title. 'Brothers Under The Bridges' harks back to the sound of Darkness. It has the feel of 'No Surrender' to it. You could imagine that the 'We busted out school, had to get away from those fools, we learned more from a 3 minute record than we ever learned in school' lyric might have fitted in here too. He also goes on about being out at the trestles. What ARE the trestles? Whevs, they clearly played a big part in the young Springsteen's early days. 'Man At The Top' is quite soulful and likeable. Natalie Cole made 'Pink Cadillac' famous after it was originally the B-side to 'Dancing In The Dark'. It has a full-on Peter Gunn theme riff and Bruce pronounces it "Pahnk Cadillac" and it's definitely better than a "Sooobarooo". 'Janey Don't You Lose Heart' was the B-side to I'm Goin' Down' and really really nags at me because the "no, no, no, no" bits are very similar to something else that I can't pin down. The Tunnel Of Love tracks are all pretty much recognisable as belonging to that album. You could easily see 'Two For The Road', 'When You Need Me' and 'The Wish' on the album in place of, say 'Cautious Man', 'Walk Like A Man' and 'One Step Up' without affecting the tone of the album one bit. I guess the nostalgia of 'The Wish' doesn't sit well with the overall theme of broken relationships on Tunnel of Love, which might be why it was rejected. He probably felt he could only justify one wedding song as well, so 'The Honeymooners' got the boot in favour of 'Walk Like A Man'. Finally we have 'Lucky Man', the B-side to 'Brilliant Disguise'. It's quite menacing, with a low bassline and Bruce getting in touch with his inner John-Lee Hooker.
LIVE 75-85 PART 1"Ladies and Gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band...." and on he comes and does an impassioned version of 'Thunder Road'. This was issued as 5 vinyl albums, 3 cassettes (which I've got, but nowhere to play them) and 3 CDs. My Local Springsteen Archivist got the albums on the day of release but only had the option of our Smiths-fan flatmate's rather odd upright record player to play them on. I'm amazed he didn't sterilise the needle before applying it to the sacred Bruce vinyl. I've elected to go for the three-way split here, since that's what Spotify has. 'Thunder Road' is great obviously and is part of a set of three songs recorded at the Roxy Theatre, although several years apart. 'Adam Raised A Cain' is pretty gutsy and they had 'Spirit Of The Night' off pat by 1978. I've always been a bit ambivalent about '4th July Asbury Park (Sandy)'. It's just a bit too melodramatic. In advance of 'Paradise by the 'C'' he want to know if there is 'anybody out there?' He asks this a lot in live shows, but to be honest he usually draws a crowd. "This is for all the girls" he says with a lunkish guffaw before 'Fire' It's a better version than on The Promise and by the Pointer Sisters. He pauses before the "Rom-e-OH and Juliet!" line to give a grunt. There's a fair bit of chit-chat around the songs as well, and the first significant one is in 'Growin' Up'. His folks are in the audience (the crowd get distracted when told as they try to locate them) and he suggests his chosen career is a disappointment to them as they wanted him to be a lawyer or a writer. Motorcycle accidents, fallings out with his Dad and Pop's hatred of his guitar are all chronicled (Bruce moans that he never hears him refer to "the Gibson guitar" or "the Fender guitar", just "the Goddamn Guitar". Well I have some sympathy for Springsteen Snr. If Bruce can't remember the make then it's a bit unreasonable to expect the old fella to be making the distinction). He finishes with "well, one of you wanted a writer and the other wanted a lawyer, well tonight your both gonna have to settle for Rock and Roll". Audience screams, Clarence blows and we're off again. 'It's Hard To Be A Saint' is a great version with an extended closing section. 'Backsteets' is suitably overblown. I've never been happy with the line "Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in". It's "In which we WERE born" Springsteen! And never end a sentence with a preposition boy! He does the intros during 'Rosalita'. "Do I have to say his name? Do I have to SPEAK.HIS.NAME? Do I have to say his name?....King of the World, Master Of The Universe, Weighing in at 260 lbs. The Big Man, Clarence Clemons!". "Miami Steve if you please" says Bruce at the start of 'Raise Your Hand'. "Sounds like Mustang Sally" sniffed J. and she's right I suppose. He berates the audience for not participating physically and accuses them of expecting a free ride. This must have been part of a radio broadcast because he urges the folks at home to turn the <expletive deleted> up as loud as she'll go. Oh dear. Next we have 'Hungry Heart'. It sounds clapped out even in this 1980 version, with the audience doing the duties on the first verse as expected. I'm sure I covered the appalling string of double negatives when I did The River last year so we won't dwell on that. The last track on this first set is 'Two Hearts', which is fine. The audience enjoy it. The picture is of the first of the three cassettes (on our unwiped chopping board), which you may note stops at 'Raise Your Hand'.
LIVE 75-85 PART 2I remember when this was released, Bruce did an interview on Whistle Test (no longer old and grey) with either David Hepworth or Mark Ellen where he prominently held the box on his lap and he chuntered on about it. Bruce has never been a great interviewee, he seems to find pretty much everything so amusing that he can't stop chuckling. This carries on with a splendiferous version of 'Cadillac Ranch', one of my favourites on the whole collection and so much so that until fairly recently it was my live holy grail. I also finally got round to checking out who Junior Johnson is - probably not news to anyone in the US, especially my Georgia friends, but he was a NASCAR driver in the 50's and 60s. The James Dean line refers to Rebel Without a Cause and the Burt Reynolds is Smokey and The Bandit. This is a really full-on section of the boxset actually because it's followed by 'You Can Look (But You'd Better Not Touch)'. Miami Steve squawks and groans in the background and there's some fun back and forth between him and Bruce in the middle. Things slow down for 'Independence Day' and then take off again for 'Badlands'. I listened through my headphones while running recently and in the intro virtually the only thing coming through the left speaker was Clarence on the triangle.This is a staple of the live set today but on this version there is less of the prolonged oooh-oooh-oooh-oooh-ooohs that the audience do these days. I talked about my disappointment with 'Because The Night' when discussing The Promise, but the version on here is a fine one. All strangly guitars and muscular vocals culminating in a crashing denouement.Plenty of Brooooc-ing at the end of 'Candy's Room'. J. always accuses Springsteen audiences of sounding like a herd of cows. There's a majestic version of 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town' and I've listened to the Promise version of 'Racing In The Street' so much recently that the original song performed here sounds fresh in itself. I remember him doing it in 2005 when he very considerately played a short bus ride from our house at Crystal Palace Stadium on The Rising tour and it felt like a rare treat at the time. Big News!. Bruce has read a book! 'Woody Guthrie A Life' which features in the intro to 'This Land Is Your Land'. He describes it as an answer to Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America'. It's a terrific fit of a song for Springsteen, having that ambivalence between pride in America and the fading of the American Dream. I'd also recommend Billy Bragg's British take on the same song. Time for a rest, so lets have some stuff from Nebraska. The trilogy of 'Nebraska', 'Johnny 99' and 'Reason to Believe' show that this kind of stuff can work in a stadium setting. 'Johnny 99', another fave, is performed with breathtaking intensity and almost a capella. I may have mentioned last year, the way that for 'Reason To Believe' he has recently set live performances against a 'Spirit In The Sky' harmonica riff. This version is straight off the album but still great. My second cassette stopped here, but the Disc versions on Spotify carry on with 'Born In the USA' and 'Seeds'. Unless the splits have just been put in randomly by Spotify it seems odd, because the Nebraska stuff provides a good break point. The vinyl also stops after 'Reason To Believe'. Not much can be said about BITUSA, it's a straight-on, screamy version. We all know it. 'Seeds' is also a favourite. It has a good down-and-dirty guitar sound and I love the bit where the band come in after the line "and I don't know just where I'm gonna sleep tonight"
LIVE 75-85 PART 3Due to the odd splits I'm having to cope with, this starts with The River, coming in at over 11 minutes, almost half of which is intro. I mentioned it last year when doing the album. Over a strummed guitar refrain, Bruce tells of more fights with his dad and the time he failed his army medical and so didn't go to Vietnam. The bits the crowd like in the story are:
- Bruce asking them how they are doing
- Bruce used to have long hair past his shoulders (when he was 17 or 18 - everything happened to Bruce when he was 17 or 18)
- Bruce spent a lot of time in a phone booth to get out of the wind phoning his girl (we must assume he got through a few in his teenage years)
- Bruce shows his vulnerable side by admitting he was scared about his medical
- Bruce failed his medical (he modestly admits its "nothing to applaud about")
- When Bruce tells his Dad that they didn't take him, Ol' Pop Springsteen says "That's good"
TRACKS DISC 4Human Touch is one of Springsteen's weaker albums and was issued concurrently with the much better Lucky Town. It's revealing I guess that everything on this last disc is an outtake from Human Touch with the exception of one from Lucky Town ('Happy') and one from The Ghost of Tom Joad (Brothers Under The Bridge). Does Bruce now feel that his song selection was a poor one in retrospect? Of course the other question is - Mr Wiki-I-heard-once - given both albums were released together, do we really know which are Human Touch outtakes and which are Lucky Town? You would think his decision was based on having so much material that he was happy with, but that was tonally conflicting so he needed to sort them into two albums. Whatever, 'Leavin Train' and 'Seven Angels' sound like they belong on Lucky Town to me, they have a freer style. I like 'Gave It A Name', it's slow and thoughtful and it's followed by the gentle 'Sad Eyes' which was a single I think and, let's not beat about the bush, has Bruce yodelling. He's not in the Frank Ifield league though. 'My Lover Man' is a bit of a throwback to the Tunnel Of Love sound - and is rather good as a result. Maybe he felt he'd moved on from the more overtly country sound of that album. 'Over The Rise may have been left out just because of the duplication of the title lyric in the title track of Lucky town. It too is low-key but good.The sparse, bass-driven approach is taken on a number of songs and 'When The Lights Go Out' is an example. In the end the track that made it onto Human Touch that is most like this (and a few others on here) was one of my least favourites - '57 Channels And Nothing On'. 'Loose Change' and 'Trouble In Paradise' are a bit too close to each other really, but the latter is distinguished by Bruce donning the marigolds and getting on with the washing up and other domestic chores. 'Happy' - the alleged LT outtake, sounds a lot like Human Touch in places. 'Part Man, Part Monkey' is odd in so many ways, from the title to the reggae/ska musical style. I'll tell you what it reminds me of; 'Come Together' by the Beatles. As far as I can work out, it's a glorious bit of fence-sitting on the evolution vs creation debate. 'Goin' Cali' really is out of the same mold as '57 Channels' and yes, I'm sorry, but it is better. 'Back In Your Arms' is a touching love song. Bruce REALLY likes the idea of 'Brothers Under The Bridge' as a song title, so the second attempt is the Tom Joad outtake, which is very similar to 'Secret Garden'. I think it's fair to say that there is a better album hidden in here than what finally made it onto Human Touch. What was he thinking?
THE ESSENTIAL BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN BONUS DISCI never bought this album. An inability to make visual contact with 'the point' prevented me. Not even Bruce's nakedly transparent ploy of throwing in a disc of unreleased material could sway me. Plus, my Local Springsteen Archivist is a thunderingly good chap and burned me a copy (but remember kids, home taping is killing music) along with some short self-penned sleeve notes. Many of the forthcoming 'facts' are gleaned from these so you'll understand that I haven't bothered showing any rigour by checking them. This is a mixed bag, one might almost say a pot-pourri. There's some outtakes, live tracks and movie songs. 'From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)' is a standard rock and roll track from The River era. Later recorded and released by Dave Edmunds, so you can probably get an idea of the style of it. 'The Big Payback' is from the Nebraska period, and sounds like it; Lo-fi. 'Held Up With A Gun' is a live performance and is the twin of 'You Can Look (But You'd Better Not Touch' . Steve Van Zandt snarls and whimpers like a mangy dog on the backing vocals. It's short and brutal. My LSA takes issue with the official sleeve notes for the live performance of 'Trapped' which it claims was recorded on the River tour but which he thinks is much more likely to come from the BITUSA tour where it was regularly performed. For the record, Wiki-copy toes the official line. 'None But The Brave' is a BITUSA outtake. LSA and I agree it sounds like it fits with that record. Next we get a couple of tracks that were used in movies, 'Missing' from Sean Penn's 'The Crossing Guard' and 'Lift Me Up' from 'Limbo'. He does an eerie high pitched vocal on the latter. There's a good version of 'Viva Las Vegas', recorded for charity. 'County Fair' is country-Bruce. LSA thinks he might have performed it on the Tom Joad tour. Anything's possible. It's a bit dull for me. 'Code Of Silence' is a live performance of a song co-written with one of his mates, Joe Grushecky. It's good, reminds me a little of his more recent collaborations with Tom Morello. 'Dead Man Walking' is the title track from the film of the same name. It's, well, let's say he employs a light touch musically. Finally a scratchy, country blues version of 'Countin' On A Miracle', sounding like he recorded it in a shack somewhere up in the Ozark Hills while sipping Grandpappy's best moonshine. Not as good as the other version and actually, really quite odd.
AMERICAN BEAUTY, BLOOD BROTHERS AND A FEW MOREI wasn't really aware of the American Beauty EP before I started on this post, mistakenly believing it to be linked to the film of the same name. It was released for 'Record Store Day' in 2014 and are outtakes from High Hopes. It consists of 'American Beauty', 'Mary Mary', 'Hurry Up Sundown' and 'Hey Blue Eyes'. The title track is upbeat, bit like 'Counting On A Miracle' I guess and 'Mary Mary' is quieter. 'Hurry Up Sundown' has a Tom Petty/West Coast rock feel to it. Bright and breezy, I really like it. The last track on the EP is a gentle, acoustic guitar led song which seems to have themes that are a little more steely than the delivery suggests. The Blood Brothers EP was released in 1996 following several years where the E Street Band had been mothballed as a going concern. At the start of Blood Brothers he sounds a bit like Rafiki from the Lion King but it soon settles into a jangly mess of guitars and drums. Rather good. 'High Hopes' is on the EP and is followed by 'Murder Incorporated', which is a live favourite (of Bruce's at least). Commentary on the ubiquitousness of guns and the almost commercialization of fatal violence. 'Secret Garden' is familiar from the Jerry Maguire soundtrack. At the time it was out, we used to listen to Capital radio a lot and they played a version interspersed with dialogue from the movie which worked rather well ("You had me at Hello"). The song here is dubbed 'string version' and there are some nice violin twiddles going on. 'Without you' could be Bruce's attempt to emulate Craig David's '7 days' as we work through the week. Although I guess it's the opposite, because unlike love-god Craig, Bruce is spending none of his week with his girl. It's pretty jaunty. I'm also throwing in 'Streets Of Philadelphia' and 'American Skin (41 Shots)' here. 'Streets Of Philadelphia' was big news as it was the first time Bruce had attempted movie music. He got an Oscar for it, and rightly so. I think this is one of his best lyrics. Although it shouldn't have, it felt like a risk at the time for him, associating with such a prominent 'issue' movie. I haven't watched it for a long time, but I'm betting the song has survived better than the film. 'American Skin (41 shots)' is a live performance taken from the 'Essential....' collection. Bruce stops the crowd clapping along by saying "We need some quiet". It's about the shooting of Amadou Diallo by New York police in 1999. Bruce's political songs started out as reflections on the plight of the white, northeastern US blue collar worker, but as time has gone on he has sought to engage with other groups through his music. For me this is about the most powerful and heartfelt of his songs. The dichotomy of Springsteen is his celebration of America and it's people but also his commentaries on the things that don't work in his country.
WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SEEGER SESSIONSI didn't include this in the original odyssey, although you could argue that it qualifies. It's mainly studio recorded material but the version on Spotify does also have some live performances (the American Land edition). They are all traditional songs popularised by Pete Seeger. I viewed it more as a side project than a full Bruce album last year, which is why I left it out. It's all pretty joyous stuff, although the actual themes can be a bit grim. 'Old Dan Tucker' is a good piece of folk doggerel and is followed by Bruce pickin' his way through 'Jesse James' as he denigrates James' killer Robert Ford. 'Mrs McGrath' features a nice bit of too-rye-aying and feels quite epic. 'O Mary Don't You Weep' is what I am hoping it is still OK to call a negro spiritual (Reg Holdsworth would know), the kind of song that helped hold slaves together before the American Civil War. 'John Henry' is about a steel driver - he made holes for the explosives, and Bruce bawls it out. 'Erie Canal' is also known as 'Low Bridge'. Bruce does his singing-without-moving-his-lips thing. 'I'm pretty certain we used to sing 'Jacob's Ladder' in Sunday School, maybe it involved hand movements (?) but I know we didn't have Bruce and a whole brass section banging away in the vestry at St Andrew's Methodist Church. I'm guessing 'My Oklahoma Home' dates back to the dustbowl as all the protagonist's possessions have been blown away, with the exception, of course, of his mortgage. 'Keep Your Eyes On The Prize' was, according to Wiki-sometimes-reliable, an adaptation of an older song that was updated for the Civil Rights movement in the 50's and 60's. He does infuse it with a good dollop of southern gospel style. 'Shenandoah' featured in Richard Thompson's 1000 Years Of Popular Music, which we saw performed at the South Bank centre in London a few years ago when he was curating the Meltdown festival. Thompson finished the set with Britney's 'Oops I Did It Again', converting it into an agonised self criticism. Springsteen adds in his own lyrics for some of 'Pay Me My Money Down'. "I wish I was Mr. Gates". Well I expect the feeling is reciprocated Bruce, you're not short of a bob or two either. He goes a bit Dylan on 'We Shall Overcome' before finishing off with 'Froggie Went a Courtin'. For the extra tracks on the American Land edition, we start with what is presumably his tribute to Malcolm McLaren - 'Buffalo Gals'. Then again, maybe not. 'How Can I Keep From Singing' features a gospel choir and has a really charming ramshackle quality which is probably a lot harder to produce than it sounds.In contrast, the production is a bit too lush on 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live'. 'Bring Em Home' is an actual Pete Seeger composition, and its relevance today is as strong as when he wrote it. The whole thing closes with 'American Land', which I have to say became a bit of an irritation in live shows as Bruce insisted on finishing with it every night and going on and on and on. We all know that he regularly clocks in at 3+ hours but when you're in the middle of London and the last train is at five past midnight, you sometimes want him to get on with it. However, it is pretty uplifting. This version was recorded in New York, so it's being consumed by its target demographic. I actually think the studio version on 'Wrecking Ball' is better, the backing singer here gives it a few too many grace notes.
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