My Insipid Record Collection – Bruce Springsteen

Hope you enjoyed that Valentine’s Day smorgasbord of tunes the other day.  I’ll be doing that again next year for fun.  Hope I still can find that notebook with the pages of songs again.   It’s still February and we’re still talking romance.  I never dreamed, being from NJ and all, that of all the Bruce Springsteen records I’d be posting about 1987′s Tunnel of Love would ever stand a fighting chance.   I read, over on Wikipedia, that Q Magazine once voted it the 91st best record of all time.   That is lunacy as far as I’m concerned.  Where did this alleged sample poll take place?  AsburyPark?   I’m sure to catch some Springsteen wrath here, but to me, Tunnel of Love was the dividing line between his great records and his merely good records.   I’m a fan of Tunnel of Love, no doubt, but it was here that he took his foot off the gas pedal it seemed.  There were moments after this, and I’m not counting his Live 1975-1985 box set, which was brilliant, when he seemed to regain the old Springsteen fire, but by and large the mellow Bruce Springsteen was the norm after 1984′s Born in The U.S.A.

I love the track “Local Hero” from 1992′s Lucky Town and I thought 2002′s The Rising was a great record, but I’m not all that enamored of the Nebraska style Springsteen.  We only need one of those for my money.   I’m a rocker.  The Ghost of Tom Joad (love that Rage Against The Machine cover), Devils and Dust and The SeegerSessions are nice records if you want to totally chill out, but those aren’t my favorite Springsteen records.   Not even close.  I don’t mean to say they are bad records because they aren’t, but I Wanna Rock.   I made a decision to skip those tours and people came back raving about them, but with maybe 15 Springsteen shows under my belt, I had other fish to fry.   I will say that the only show I ever got shut out of was Bruce Springsteen at whatever they were calling Boston Garden back in 2002 during The Rising tour.  I only needed a single and there just wasn’t anything decent around.   And they wanted $400 for that ticket.  I’m not afraid to pay the big money for a good seat, but I had to pass on what that less than stellar citizen was pedaling that night.  I turned tail and went home.  It had never happened before, at any event and it’s a black mark on scalping my record to this day.   Hope that dude ate the ticket, but I doubt it…

I grew up in New Jersey, as I have mentioned many times here in the past, but it was not on the shore.   We used to go to Point Pleasant or Wildwood in the 70′s as kids with the family, but I was maybe 10 or 11.   By the time we were cutting school to drive an hour and a half to the beach it was 1977 or so.    We’d head for Asbury Park or even Atlantic City, get a mad sunburn and then deny it all when it would give us away.   The truth is I moved away in the fall of 1978 to Boston and give or take a couple of early summers, I never went back.  New Jersey gets a bad rap; it’s the butt of jokes and people think of The New Jersey Exit 16W Nets, but it was a great place to grow up.  I got into just enough trouble not to get caught and or derail my apparent aspirations of complete mediocrity.  There are no do-overs in life, but I doubt I’d do all that much differently.  I’d still get flattened by the same three women, I’d probably wish I was a DJ a major metropolitan radio station while radio still mattered and I’d probably have still headed for the nearest college in a big city far enough away to escape routine family commitments.  If I die alone, so be it.  I’ve had a blast and I Frank Sinatra’ed it.

Regarding Bruce, we did come here to discuss him didn’t we?, I first became aware of him as a result of my best friend’s older sister having a copy of Springsteen’s 1973 LP Greetings From Asbury Park.   I wasn’t completely blown away by it, but I loved (and still love to this day) “Spirit in The Night, Growin’ Up, It’s Hard To Be a Saint in The City and For You.”  The record has grown on me more as I age, but I wasn’t thinking about the Future of Rock & Roll as the famous quote goes.   I didn’t even really pay any attention to The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle until many years later.  If I could drop kick one song out of the Springsteen catalogue into oblivion a candidate might be “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).”  I understand why people like it, but I used to man the door at The Bull & Finch Pub, better known by some as the bar the show “Cheers” was based on, and the bar manager would not let up on this song…ever.  The only song that may have come close is Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”  I’ve just heard it one too many times I’m afraid, but I still love the old timey feel of “(4th of July, Asbury Park) Sandy” and “Kitty’s Back” so it’s not like I don’t own the record.  It’s just that I don’t play it very often anymore.

What followed those two 1973 records is legend, pure and simple.  Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge of Town, The River, Nebraska and Born in The U.S.A.  all made Springsteen a household name.   He was able to sustain Superstar status all the way into the Madonna, Prince and U2 eras.   Today, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Bruce is known for putting on the best live shows you might ever want to see.  The good news is women love him.  I remember buying two tickets to the 1980 River tour at Boston Garden.  I was attending Emerson College at the time and I used to sit the security desk at one of the dorms as part of my work-study program.  I must have been hauling in $45 a week, but you could buy anything with an American Express card…or more probably my mother’s Visa Card back in those days.  The reason I tell the story is I asked out this girl, we’ll call her Cindy, who lived there and she accepted.  I had no idea of the kind of effect a Springsteen concert had on women, let alone on me.  I behaved myself that evening and was justly rewarded within the week and I owe it all to Bruce Springsteen.   You can bet I was paying attention now…

Bruce has a long and storied history, so I don’t feel the need to go over every record or song.   Everybody has their favorites, but I’m a “She’s The One, Adam Raised a Cain, Candy’s Room” kind of guy myself.   I went and saw him last summer at Great Woods in Mansfield, MA, or whatever crappy name they are calling it now and had a ball.  I showed up, scalped a ticket, went back to my car, opened the trunk, pulled out a beach chair, poured a libation and began talking to a couple in the next car over.  It was their first time.  I was excited for them and Bruce didn’t let us down.

Tunnel of Love, as some of you may remember, basically told the story of his love affair (and eventual marriage to) actress Julianne Phillips.   I look at it more of a celebration of what he had thought he had found versus a blow by blow of the deteriorating relationship, but I’ve been wrong before.   The bottom line is that there were some good songs on this record.   As always I was looking at the quasi rockers like “Spare Parts” and “One Step Up” as opposed to “Brilliant Disguise” or “All That Heaven Will Allow.”   This was not an East Street Band record officially and that is part of my issue I suppose, but I don’t begrudge Mr Springsteen for doing what he wanted at the time.  Lord knows he had already provided me withenough great music to last me.  I thought it was a phase…and I’m sure The East Street Band did too, but it lasted all the way until the 9/11 catastrophe.   I’m very thankful he reunited that band so we could do it all over again.  I can afford to see him now, well at least before the economy collapsed, but of course ticket prices are no longer $10 a whack either so I suppose it’s relative.  And don’t think I didn’t notice “Valentine’s Day” on this record as I was doing my post the other day, but I just couldn’t fit it in.   I could do it here, but what would that leave us with next year?…

OK, I better shut up now because I’m sure what I write rarely gets read by the surfing for MP3s crowd much anyway.  If they have to scroll down two pages to get the goodies they might move on.   To summarize; Tunnel of Love had it’s positives and it’s melancholy, but I don’t see how anyone could rate it in the top 100 records of all time.  That said, Bruce is a five star performer and the ladies love him.   It doesn’t suck to be him.   Enjoy.

Bruce Springsteen – Ain’t Got You.mp3

Bruce Springsteen – Spare Parts.mp3

Bruce Springsteen – One Step Up.mp3

Bruce Springsteen – One Step Up.mp3

Buy or download Tunnel of Love from Amazon here.