Tag Archives: Bruce Springsteen

Today: Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska in 1982 – 30 years ago

“The fact that you didn’t intend to release it makes it the most intimate record you’ll ever do. This is an absolutely legitimate piece of art.” Steven Van Zandt

“I felt that it was my best writing. I felt I was getting better as a writer. I was learning things. I was certainly taking a hard look at everything around me.”
Bruce Springsteen

I really love this album. I did not buy it in 1982 I got it a few years later, I listened to it at the record store when it was released, but it didn’t impress me. I couldn’t connect to it musically or lyrically. It is not an album that imidiately catches your attention, it needs to be listened to, properly.

When I did that I became very impressed!

Some facts (from Wikipedia):

Released September 30, 1982
Recorded Mostly January 3, 1982 at Springsteen’s Colts Neck, New Jersey bedroom
Genre Americana, folk rock, folk
Length 40:50
Label Columbia
Producer Bruce Springsteen

Nebraska is the sixth studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1982 on Columbia Records.

Sparsely-recorded on a cassette-tape Portastudio, the tracks on Nebraska were originally intended as demos of songs to be recorded with the E Street Band. However, Springsteen ultimately decided to release the demos themselves. Nebraska remains one of the most highly-regarded albums in his catalogue. The songs on Nebraska deal with ordinary, blue collar characters who face a challenge or a turning point in their lives. Unlike his previous albums, very little salvation and grace is present within the songs.

Initially, Springsteen recorded demos for the album at his home with a 4-track cassette recorder. The demos were sparse, using only acoustic guitar, electric guitar (“Open All Night”), harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, tambourine, organ and Springsteen’s voice.

Springsteen then recorded the album in a studio with the E Street Band. However, he and the producers and engineers working with him felt that a raw, haunted folk essence present on the home tapes was lacking in the band treatments, and so they ultimately decided to release the demo version as the final album. Complications with mastering of the tapes ensued because of low recording volume, but the problem was overcome with sophisticated noise reduction techniques.

Springsteen fans have long speculated whether Springsteen’s full-band recording of the album, nicknamed Electric Nebraska, will ever surface. In a 2006 interview, manager Jon Landau said it was unlikely and that “the right version of Nebraska came out”. But in a 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg praised the full band recording of the album as “killing.”

Critical Reception:

Allmusic:

by William Ruhlmann

“There is an adage in the record business that a recording artist’s demos of new songs often come off better than the more polished versions later worked up in a studio. But Bruce Springsteen was the first person to act on that theory, when he opted to release the demo versions of his latest songs, recorded with only acoustic or electric guitar, harmonica, and vocals, as his sixth album, Nebraska. It was really the content that dictated the approach, however. Nebraska‘s ten songs marked a departure forSpringsteen, even as they took him farther down a road he had been traveling previously. Gradually, his songs had become darker and more pessimistic, and those on Nebraska marked a new low. They also found him branching out into better developed stories…”

Promo poster for Nebraska in 1982

Robert Christgau:

Literary worth is established with the title tune, in which Springsteen’s Charlie Starkweather becomes the first mass murderer in the history of socially relevant singer-songwriting to entertain a revealing thought–wants his pretty baby to sit in his lap when he gets the chair. Good thing he didn’t turn that one into a rousing rocker, wouldn’t you say, though (Hüsker Dü please note) I grant that some hardcore atonality might also produce the appropriate alienation effect. But the music is a problem here–unlike, er, Dylan, or Robert Johnson, or Johnny Shines or Si Kahn or Kevin Coyne, Springsteen isn’t imaginative enough vocally or melodically to enrich these bitter tales of late capitalism with nothing but a guitar, a harmonica, and a few brave arrangements. Still, this is a conceptual coup, especially since it’s selling. What better way to set right the misleading premise that rock and roll equals liberation? A-

Rolling Stone Magazine:

Nebraska is an acoustic triumph, a basic folk album on which Springsteen has stripped his art down to the core. It’s as harrowing as Darkness on the Edge of Town, but more measured. Every small touch speaks volumes: the delicacy of the acoustic guitars, the blurred sting of the electric guitars, the spare, grim images. He’s now telling simple stories in the language of a deferential common man, peppering his sentences with “sir’s.” “My name is Joe Roberts,” he sings. “I work for the state.”

 

“Now judge I had debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin’ my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away
Now I ain’t sayin’ that makes me an innocent man
But it was more ‘n all this that put that gun in my hand”

Bruce Springsteen would try to recreate Nebraska in 1995 when he released The Ghost of Tom Joad,  an album that is very similar musically and lyrically. As much as I love The Ghost of Tom Joad, it was impossible to recreate the “accident” that happened on this simple casette demo, recorded in a New Jersey bedroom in January 1982.

– Hallgeir

Today: Tom Waits – Rain Dogs was released in 1985 – 27 years ago

“We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”
~Tom Waits

If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home.
~Tom Waiys – “Blind Love”

From Wikipedia:

Released 30 September 1985
Recorded RCA Studios
Genre Rock, experimental rock
Length 53:46
Label Island
Producer Tom Waits

Rain Dogs is the 9th album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about “the urban dispossessed” of New York City, Rain Dogs is generally considered the middle album of a trilogy that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.

The album, which includes appearances by guitarists Keith Richards and Marc Ribot, is noted for its broad spectrum of musical styles and genres, described by Rolling Stone as merging “Kurt Weill, pre-rock integrity from old dirty blues, [and] the elegiac melancholy of New Orleans funeral brass, into a singularly idiosyncratic American style.”

The album peaked at #29 on the UK charts  and #188 on the US Billboard Top 200. In 1989, it was ranked #21 on the Rolling Stone list of the “100 greatest albums of the 1980s.” In 2003, the album was ranked number 397 on the magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.

Pitchfork Media listed Rain Dogs as 8th best album of the 1980s. Slant Magazine listed the album at #14 on its list of “Best Albums of the 1980’s”.

Reception:

From allmusic – William Ruhlmann:

With its jarring rhythms and unusual instrumentation — marimba, accordion, various percussion — as well as its frequently surreal lyrics, Rain Dogs is very much a follow-up to Swordfishtrombones, which is to say that it sounds for the most part like The Threepenny Opera being sung by Howlin’ Wolf. The chief musical difference is the introduction of guitarist Marc Ribot, who adds his noisy leads to the general cacophony. But Rain Dogs is sprawling where its predecessor had been focused: Tom Waits‘ lyrics here sometimes are imaginative to the point of obscurity, seemingly chosen to fit the rhythms rather than for sense. In the course of 19 tracks and 54 minutes, Waits sometimes goes back to the more conventional music of his earlier records, which seems like a retreat, though such tracks as the catchy “Hang Down Your Head,” “Time,” and especially “Downtown Train” (frequently covered and finally turned into a Top Ten hit by Rod Stewart five years later) provide some relief as well as variety.
Read more over @ allmusic.com 

 From The Guardian – Killian Fox:

………………..  I can’t choose all three albums as my all-time favourite, so Rain Dogs – the best by a snout – clinches it. Waits had refreshed his sound on Swordfishtrombones two years earlier by moving beyond piano and guitar to dabble with a wider variety of instruments, and on Rain Dogs his repertoire continued to expand, with pump organs, accordions and bowed saws. He also gained the talents of guitarist Marc Ribot, whose humid Cuban licks on Jockey Full of Bourbon perfectly complement Waits’s suave dishevelment.

The range of musical styles sprawled, too, and Rain Dogs contains cabaret numbers, country songs, gospel, polkas, ballads and sea shanties. Waits is a sucker for the theatrical, and the ragbag cast here is at the carnivalesque end of things, plus sad-eyed dames and a girl with tattooed tear – “one for every year he’s away, she said” – at the late-night, romantically downbeat, Edward Hopper-ish end. (Most of the album was written in a lower Manhattan basement.)

…. read more over @ The Guardian

The album has been noted as one of the most important musically and critically in Waits’ career, in particular to the new direction which he undertook from 1983’s Swordfishtrombones onwards.

The album is notable for its many different musical styles; among the album’s 19 tracks are two instrumentals (“Midtown” and “Bride of Rain Dog”), a polka (“Cemetery Polka”), a “kind of a New Orleans thing with trombone”  (“Tango Till They’re Sore”), ballads (“Time”), pop music (“Downtown Train”), and “a gospel thing”  (“Anywhere I Lay My Head”). “Blind Love” marks Waits’ first fully-fledged attempt at the country genre. As Waits said on the Rain Dogs Island Promo Tape (which consisted of taped comments on songs as sent to radio stations, circa late 1985):

“Blind Love” is one of my first country songs. I like Merle Haggard. Most of those other guys, though, sound like they’re all just drinking tea and watching their waist and talking to their accountant. This one I think subscribes to some of that roadhouse feel.

The song “Hang Down Your Head” is loosely based on the folk song “Tom Dooley“, with the lyrics altered but the melody remaining mostly intact.

Rolling Stone called Rain Dogs Waits’ “finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets.” The album’s title comes from an expression which suggests such an atmosphere. Waits cast further light on the metaphor by stating that the album was about “People who live outdoors. You know how after the rain you see all these dogs that seem lost, wandering around. The rain washes away all their scent, all their direction. So all the people on the album are knit together, by some corporeal way of sharing pain and discomfort.”

According to Barney Hoskyns, the album’s general theme of “the urban dispossessed” was inspired in part by Martin Bell’s 1984 documentary Streetwise, to which Waits had been asked to contribute music.

Track Listing:

  1. “Singapore” 2:46
  2. “Clap Hands” 3:47
  3. “Cemetery Polka” 1:51
  4. “Jockey Full of Bourbon” 2:45
  5. “Tango Till They’re Sore” 2:49
  6. “Big Black Mariah” 2:44
  7. “Diamonds & Gold” 2:31
  8. “Hang Down Your Head” Kathleen Brennan, Waits 2:32
  9. “Time” 3:55
  10. “Rain Dogs” 2:56
  11. “Midtown” (instrumental) 1:00
  12. “9th & Hennepin” 1:58
  13. “Gun Street Girl” 4:37
  14. “Union Square” 2:24
  15. “Blind Love” 4:18
  16. “Walking Spanish” 3:05
  17. “Downtown Train” 3:53
  18. “Bride of Rain Dog” (instrumental) 1:07
  19. “Anywhere I Lay My Head”

Personnel:

Performer
Musicians
  • Tom Waits – vocals (1–10, 12–17, 19), guitar (2, 4, 6, 8–10, 15–17), organ (3, 19), piano (5, 12), pump organ (8), harmonium (18), banjo (13)
  • Michael Blair – percussion (1–4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17), marimba (2, 7, 10, 12), drums (8, 14, 18), congas (4), bowed saw (12), parade drum (19)
  • Stephen Hodges – drums (1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 15, 16), parade drum (3)
  • Larry Taylor – double bass (1, 3, 4, 6, 8–10, 15), bass (7, 11, 14, 16)
  • Marc Ribot – guitar (1–4, 7, 8, 10)
  • “Hollywood” Paul Litteral – trumpet (1, 11, 19)
  • Bobby Previte – percussion (2), marimba (2)
  • William Schimmel – accordion (3, 9, 10)
  • Bob Funk – trombone (3, 5, 10, 11, 19)
  • Ralph Carney – baritone saxophone (4, 14), saxophone (11, 18), clarinet (12)
  • Greg Cohen – double bass (5, 12, 13)
  • Chris Spedding – guitar (1)
  • Tony Garnier – double bass (2)
  • Keith Richards – guitar (6, 14, 15), backing vocals (15)
  • Robert Musso – banjo (7)
  • Arno Hecht – tenor saxophone (11, 19)
  • Crispin Cioe – saxophone (11, 19)
  • Robert Quine – guitar (15, 17)
  • Ross Levinson – violin (15)
  • John Lurie – alto saxophone (16)
  • G.E. Smith – guitar (17)
  • Mickey Curry – drums (17)
  • Tony Levin – bass (17)
  • Robert Kilgore – organ (17)


Technical personnel:
  • Tom Waits – producer
  • Robert Musso – engineer, mixing (A1–B7, B9, B10)
  • Tom Gonzales – recording
  • Dennis Ferrante – recording
  • Jeff Lippay – recording, mixing (B8)
  • Howie Weinberg – mastering

Tango till they’re sore @ Letterman 1986:

“Jockey Full of Bourbon” and “Don’t Go into that Barn – London Nov. 2004:

Rain Dogs:

Other September 30:

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Bruce Springsteen’s 10 best songs – according to Hallgeir

Ok, so where do I start? Do I pick one from each of his ten best albums, or do I divide his career into 10 year periods and pick equally from every period? Or do I simply let my emotions decide, and pick what feels right today? That’s what I ‘ll do, like I allways do, I go with what feels right at this particular moment.

Springsteen is a fantastic songwriter and a formidable performer, for me he is easily in the top 3 both as a singer/songwriter and as a performing artist.

To pick 10 songs from the hundreds he has written is not easy, but here we go.

1.) Racing in the Streets

My main post on Racing In The Streets

2.) The Promise

My main post about The Promise

3.) The River

4.) Thunder Road

5) Adam Raised a Cain

Continue reading Bruce Springsteen’s 10 best songs – according to Hallgeir

Today: Bruce Springsteen is 63

They call him the Boss. Well that’s a bunch of crap. He’s not the boss. He works FOR us. More than a boss, he’s the owner, because more than anyone else, Bruce Springsteen owns America’s heart.
~Bono (induction speech for at the 1999 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

From Wikipedia:

Also known as The Boss, Bad Scooter
Born September 23, 1949 (age 63)
Long Branch, New Jersey, United States
Genres Rock, folk rock, heartland rock,roots rock
Occupations Musician, Songwriter
Instruments Vocals, guitar, harmonica
Years active 1969–present
Labels Columbia
Associated acts The E Street BandSteel Mill,Miami HornsThe Sessions BandSouthside JohnnyThe Gaslight AnthemDropkick Murphys
Website www.brucespringsteen.net

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed “The Boss“, is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey and his lengthy and energetic stage performances, with concerts from the 1970s to the present decade running up to an uninterrupted 250 minutes in length.

Springsteen’s recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time, the 96th Greatest Guitarist of all time on their latest list and the 36th Greatest Singer of all time in 2008.

From allmusic.com – William Ruhlmann:

In the decades following his emergence on the national scene in 1975, Bruce Springsteen proved to be that rarity among popular musicians, an artist who maintained his status as a frontline recording and performing star, consistently selling millions of albums and selling out arenas and stadiums around the world year after year, as well as retaining widespread critical approbation, with ecstatic reviews greeting those discs and shows. Although there were a few speed bumps along the way in Springsteen‘s career, the wonder of his nearly unbroken string of critical and commercial success is that he achieved it while periodically challenging his listeners by going off in unexpected directions, following his muse even when that meant altering the sound of his music or the composition of his backup band, or making his lyrical message overtly political. Of course, it may have been these very sidesteps that kept his image and his music fresh, especially since he always had the fallback of returning to what his fans thought he did best, barnstorming the country with a marathon rock & roll show using his longtime bandmates.
.. read more over @ allmusic 

Some of his recognition’s: 

  • October 27, 1975: Bruce Springsteen appears simultaneously on the covers of Newsweek and Time
  • Polar Music Prize in 1997.
  • Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1999.
  • Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1999.
  • Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, 2007.
  • “Born to Run” named “The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey” by the New Jersey state legislature; something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song “is about leaving New Jersey”.
  • The minor planet 23990, discovered September 4, 1999, by I. P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor.
  • Ranked No. 23 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
  • Ranked No. 36 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time.
  • Made Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People Of The Year 2008 list.
  • Won Critic’s Choice Award for Best Song with “The Wrestler” in 2009.
  • Performed at the Super Bowl XLIII half time show.
  • Kennedy Center Honors, 2009.
  • Rolling Stone magazine also ranked 8 out of 16 Springsteen’s studio albums in their 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list.
  • Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” in its 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time list, in 21st and 86th, respectively.
  • Forbes ranked him 6th in The Celebrity 100 in 2009
  • John Steinbeck Award
  • Named 2013 MusiCares Person of the Year

We will post some Bruce Springsteen lists later today / tomorrow.

Thunder Road – live @ Hammersmith 1975:

Atlantic City Live:

Album of the day – Hammersmith Odeon London ’75:


Other September 23:

Continue reading Today: Bruce Springsteen is 63

Today: Gram Parsons passed away in 1973 – 39 years ago

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Ingram Cecil Connor III
Born November 5, 1946
Winter Haven, Florida
Origin Waycross, Georgia
Died September 19, 1973 (aged 26)
Joshua Tree, California
Genres Country, country rock, rock
Occupations Singer-songwriter, guitarist,pianist
Instruments Vocals, guitar, piano, organ
Years active 1963–1973
Labels Reprise, A&M
Associated acts International Submarine Band
The Byrds
The Flying Burrito Brothers
Emmylou Harris
Website gramparsons.com

Gram Parsons (November 5, 1946 – September 19, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist. Parsons is best known for his work within the country genre; he also mixed blues, folk, and rock to create what he called “Cosmic American Music”. Besides recording as a solo artist, he also worked in several notable bands, including the International Submarine BandThe Byrds, and The Flying Burrito Brothers. His career, though short, is described by Allmusic as “enormously influential” for both country and rock, “blending the two genres to the point that they became indistinguishable from each other.”

Born in 1946, Parsons emerged from a wealthy but troubled childhood to attend Harvard University. He founded the International Submarine Band in 1966, and after several months of delay their debut, Safe at Home, was released in 1968, by which time the group had disbanded. Parsons joined The Byrds in early 1968, and played a pivotal role in the making of the seminal Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

After leaving the group in late 1968, Parsons and fellow Byrd Chris Hillman formed The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969, releasing their debut, The Gilded Palace of Sin, the same year. The album was well received but failed commercially; after a sloppy cross-country tour, they hastily recorded Burrito Deluxe. Parsons was fired from the band before its release in early 1970. He soon signed with A&M Records, but after several unproductive sessions he canceled his intended solo debut in early 1971. Parsons moved to France, where he lived for a short period at Villa Nellcôte with his friend Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones.

Returning to America, Parsons befriended Emmylou Harris, who assisted him on vocals for his first solo record, GP, released in 1973. Although it received enthusiastic reviews, the release failed to chart; his next album, Grievous Angel (released posthumously in 1974) met with a similar reception, and peaked at number 195 on Billboard. Parsons died of a drug overdose on September 19, 1973 in hotel room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn at Joshua Tree, California, at the age of 26.

Since his death, Parsons has been recognized as an extremely influential artist, credited with helping to found both country rock and alt-country. His posthumous honors include the Americana Music Association “President’s Award” for 2003, and a ranking at No. 87 on Rolling Stones list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.”

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic describes Parsons as “enormously influential” for both country and rock, “blending the two genres to the point that they became indistinguishable from each other. … His influence could still be heard well into the next millennium.”

In his essay on Parsons for Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Artist” list, Keith Richards notes that Parsons’ recorded music output was “pretty minimal.” But nevertheless, Richards claims that Parsons “effect on country music is enormous[, t]his is why we’re talking about him now.”

The Flyin Burrito Brothers – Chritina’s Tune:

Gram & Emmylou – Streets of Baltimore (Bad quality, but GREAT stuff!!):

A Great documentary about Gram from BBC – “Fallen Angel”:

Album of the day – Grievous Angel (1974):

Other September 19:

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