Bruce

[AstroDan]

Bruce Springsteen was once the biggest artist on planet Earth, and he put out an album that was 'mastered' on a re-animated Panasonic boombox that fell in a muddy river.

[soundguy]

they didnt call him the boss because he took a bunch of shit...

dave

[LeedyGuy]

So the Seeger Sessions album is out. Allmusic.com has a lot to say about it. It's a philosophical type of recording and it sorta makes me wonder if The Boss subscribes to tapeop based on the way he talks in the liner notes. DOES he have a subscription?

anyone have this record yet? recorded completely live and with no rehearsals in 2 days. i havent heard it yet, but im holding the CD in my hands.

-Ken

[heylow]

I just wanted to say that the Seeger Sessions record restored my faith in the man. That band is on fire, he is complete command of the material and he sounds completely energized.

So much of the record is off the cuff as you can hear him calling out the arrangements. According to the liner notes the record was done in 3 one day sessions with little rehearsal. The DVD side is worth the price of admission alone.

It's really great stuff even just from a production/engineering standpoint. That drummer....sheeesh.....awesome work.



heylow

[ideaofnorth]

"racing in the street" definitely leaps out of those 70s records to me. perfectly captures that haunting nostalgia, the "teenage feeling" (neko case). I like the 70s boss pretty well, but that track is a stunner, I think.

the 1975 hammersmith concert on pbs was also pretty amazing, i thought.

i don't think there's anything "bloated" about tonight's the night or on the beach. both seem pretty stark and reserved to me. just my 2 cents.

[eeldip]

not so into this new bruce record.

seems like they were really focused on playing the songs WELL as opposed to playing them INTERESTINGLY... and i think if you are gonna make a record of very familiar covers, you gotta do SOMETHING other than play them. (oh great another "john henry")

the arrangements are particularly boring.

all in all, it reminded me of background music for a ken burns sunrise shot.

the sound quality is really cool. that i agree with.

[JGriffin]

whatever I feel about the seeger sessions as a record, the video totally helped me figure out how to record a country band in my living room...which, as it turns out, I had to do less than a week after I saw the video! So that part was good.

[eeldip]

speaking of recording a country band in a living room, this great record:
http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews ... wood.shtml

was recorded in the old "carter family homestead".. or at least 1/2 of it. if you get the CD, it comes with a long video clip that shows the setup. lots of old neumans everywhere, and the house had no AC, so a PA was constantly fanning june carter while she sat down and sang in a mu mu.

great video.

[the brill bedroom]

I dunno. i've always had a lot of respect, but mixed feelings about Bruce- I think it's a geographical thing as I grew up in the New Jersey tristate area. As big as you all think he was in 1984, quadruple it for that part of the country. I mean, it was like the messiah had arrived and that was, what? 12 years into his recording career? That said, he's one of the major dudes of our time- there's really no denying his impact as an artist. I saw him for the first time last year- solo acoustic, played absolutely no hits. Not one. He was flippin' great. My favorite part was the guy next to me who shouted himself hoarse yelling "Glory Days" and the look on his face when the lights went on at the end.

Anyway, an important thing to remember about "Born to Run", the song, is that it was cut before the rest of the album in a cheapo studio and Vinnie "Mad dog"Lopes playing 8th notes on the kick drum throughout. The real vision of "Born To Run"- the album- with all the Phil Spector and Roy Orbison aspirations- came a bit later. It was literally a cas eof "the kid" going for it and you have to applaud the effort. Put it in context: at the time he was a club attraction who had released two unsuccesful albums and was probably on his way to getting dropped. It was a last ditch situation and the album put him on the map, so maybe it worked in a big picture sort of way and that's more important than nitpicking the EQ 30 years later.

Besides, "Darkness" is the real masterpiece.

[Catoogie]

Vinnie "Mad dog"Lopes playing 8th notes on the kick drum throughout

Actually it was Ernest "Boom" Carter on drums. Vinne Lopez played on the first two records.

[jeddypoo]

The drums on "Born To Run" are absolute shit. Wasn't that recorded somewhere fairly famous in New York, too? Like Electric Ladyland or The Hit Factory or some shit? However, that glockenspiel is heavenly. Heavenly.

[vvv]

I liked the last Springsteen album (Devils and Dust) quite a bit, and was surprised at that. "Reno" seemed a big step for him in combining Woody Guthrie with Lenny Bruce.

My favorite opening lines to any song, ever, are "The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves..."

[Mix413]

[quote="jeddypoo"]The drums on "Born To Run" are absolute shit. Wasn't that recorded somewhere fairly famous in New York, too? Like Electric Ladyland or The Hit Factory or some shit? However, that glockenspiel is heavenly. Heavenly.[/quote]

The track BTR was recorded at 914 Studios in Blauvett NY. Threst of the album was done at the Record Plant NY.

The drum track is very dry and gated sounding with very little room sound, but that sound was in vogue in '74. Ernest Carter once told me that they had him go back and overdub another snare on top of the live drum track.

[Aj]

Ok, here's my weird, intellectual theory about Springsteen.

As a teenager discovering classic rock in the '80s, I was also underwhelmed with Bruce Springsteen. (I also don't care for his recent stuff - The Rising, Devils & Dust; although that Pete Seeger tribute is fun).

Somewhere in my 20s, Bruce 'clicked' with me. His is a very strange sound; it wasn't until I moved past my usual teenage fixation on the "greats" of classic rock (Beatles, Floyd, that sort of thing) towards more esoteric stuff like Bo Diddley and doo-wop that he started to make sense.

My theory about BS...

Springsteen's music sounds like the mid-to-late '60s rock revolution never happened. There's barely any trace of "classic rock" in his sound. Imagine that The Who, Led Zeppelin, CSN... heck, even most of the British Invasion bands... never existed. It's almost as if Springsteen was placed in a cryogenic chamber right around the time Motown was starting to happen, - ok, maybe he strolled past The Gaslight in Greenwich Village and caught an early set by Dylan first - and didn't emerge from the deep-freeze until 1973. (And then, you know... he found a band and recorded his first album.)

So, like I said, his is a really weird sound. It's hard to see this now, but he was sort of the Jack White of his day, rejecting all that had come immediately before him musically (even the Beatles!) and embracing some sort of vintage aesthetic borrowed from his dad's generation (while still finding something new to say). Pretty much no one else was taking that approach at the time - this was the era of Prog, for chrissakes! - so it helps to keep that in mind.

Take, for example, all that saxophone. What a weird choice, especially in the 1970s. But, frame those sax lines in the context of late '50s rock n' roll, and it starts to make sense: back then, sax WAS the lead instrument.

So, Bruce was just building on that - no one else was doing it anymore, so at the time it was sort of both backwards and brave all at once. The glockenspiel stuff is another example of what I'm talking about... it's like he was channeling early '60s Phil Spector or Roy Orbison (or even Petula Clark).

If you love lots of kinds of rock (especially older rock) , but don't like Springsteen, take another listen to him with all this in mind. It might help.

Adam

[drumsound]

That's a really interesting observation. I think it's spot on too.