pukeworthy



-noah

Lobster Magnet wrote:I've always felt his music to be extremely cheesy, and it boggles my mind that people here like this stuff....

CRAP.

I used to think that until I watched a live DVD (the Madison Square Garden one) which converted me, I guess. At first it seemed to be cliche after cliche, but after some time you realise he is one of the very few famous musicians who actually play rock and roll, in an now archaic sense. Transcendence and performance. He does stuff that seems cheesy to our indie demi-monde because he believes it's true. NOT CRAP.

The song 'Born To Run' has the best "one two three four!!" in any song I've ever heard (just before the line about the highway being jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive).

I think he has a nice smile too.

'Glory Days' really gets my goat though. What was it with huge rock bands in the 80's doing big riffs on keyboards? Dire fucking Straits (The Walk Of Life makes me want to kill people). The Boss. Van Halen. And what was the deal with rich rockers, also in the 80's, being all happy wankers in their videos? What was that about?

I've got myself quite annoyed now, with no real focus. All in the space of the above paragraph. I started this post with a simple aim: to give Bruce Springsteen a gentle N/C and mention the 1-2-3-4 in Born To Run.

Now I am angry at 80's rock bands or happy videos or something.

It's 4.45 am. What the fuck am I doing?

Bruce Springsteen. Not Crap. Whatever.

johnnyshape wrote: He does stuff that seems cheesy to our indie demi-monde because he believes it's true. NOT CRAP.

Just because he believes it's true does not make it not cheesy.

so not crap

run joe, run wrote:The song 'Born To Run' has the best "one two three four!!" in any song I've ever heard (just before the line about the highway being jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive).

You're right; that is a pretty good "one two three four!!" Now if only it weren't followed by a line about the highway being jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive...

Crap.

Springsteen deserves a place on the "Gives It Up Live" poll -- I've never seen a guy deliver the sort of energy and power that guy does in an arena show, and his band is always tight as a duck's ass. And as cheezoid as "Dancing In The Dark" may be, the song "Born In The U.S.A." is dark and menacing stuff if you're willing to look past the very 1980's production.

Oh, and if you liked Nebraska, you ought to listen to The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust.

Good songwriter, great frontman, amazing live act, really not crap.

The record 'Born in the U.S.A.' is Crap, but the songs aren't. I saw him two years ago - the only arena show I'd been to in a decade - and when he played that song, in a much different non-anthemic arrangement, the lines that stood out were 'You end up like a dog that's been beat too much/'Til you spend half your life just to cover it up' - and I thought of cowering confused short-circuited dogs and war veterans, and the song made a lot of sense, not as posturing or as "song craftsman" histrionics or as a statement, but just as something vivid and resonant and affecting. The arrangement on the hit single sabotages the great song underneath.

I saw him play solo at the United Center last month. Almost no hits, no lighters in the air, very little crowd noise for 10,000 people, some songs sung through a bullet mic and completely and deliberately unintelligible, an extended cover of Suicide's 'Dream Baby Dream' for the encore; if the songs are crap to you then the show would be crap, but the set felt almost completely uncompromising in making an effective two-and-a-half-hour set that didn't "touch on" either the hits or the rock-concert moves that an arena crowd seemingly would demand to hear but, because the show worked so well on its own terms, didn't.

salut, flaneur.

i've been following this last springsteen tour via (free and legal) recordings circulating on the internet. i rank these shows amongst the best of his work, and i envy you for having checked some of it out. actually, did you see the chicago show in october? i have a recording of that, and it is fabulous.

the suicide cover, as well as the setlists full of non-hits, make for an interesting, revisionist glimpse into the dude.

but hey, maybe i just love him 'cause i'm from new jersey. far be it from me to claim that i can think for myself.

connor wrote:"Candy's Room"

I was going to mention how much I enjoy this song...
It has a piano flourish! Right when he's like "we kiss, the blood rushes to my brain..." then -- flourish!
You can't get any more cheesy than that, and I don't mind. Although Darkness and Nebraska are the only albums that have repeat listening value for me.
And fuck a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo.