One of my friends is always listening to that satellite radio station that plays Bruce Springsteen 24/7. As much as I’m down with the liberal subtext and the notion deep inside that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive, it eventually dissolves into tuneless mumbling about how awful things are in teh Jersey, at least for me (bear in mind, each concert is like five hours long, so that isn’t so damning). I’ve gotten to love the song “Racing in the Streets”, though:
I really like the country covers of this song too: Townes Van Zandt, Emmy Lou Harris, Nancy Patty Griffin.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The guy with a 69 Chevy with a 396 is a Real American. Elitists would pull the 396 and drop a 572 in it.
ETA: Regarding Jersey, of course things are horrible there.
It’s Jersey!
General Stuck
I had a 67 Camaro, 4 speed, 302, I think. black with headers and chrome mags. Oh, and air shocks. My buddy had a 396 Chevelle with big cam, would fly, but drunk gas like we did MD 2020. Of course gas was 36 cents a gallon.
MikeJ
I feel strangely refreshed, like Futurama was never canceled at all.
Ed in NJ
Oh, good. It’s been at least a couple of days since the last post where everyone around these parts demonstrated how well-versed in NJ stereotypes they are.
Bring on the Snooki and toxic waste jokes. Perhaps throw in a “what exit?” or reference Bon Jovi so I can sit back and enjoy how clever you are.
For the record, it’s 136 on the Parkway.
Ailuridae
I hope you die of AIDS you ignorant twat.
OBV note serious
Three-nineteen
As a Badger fan, I would just like to say this: FUCK.
That is all.
KG
I’ve never been a big fan of Springsteen. I’ve tried a few times, but it just never worked for me.
I tend towards the Jimmy Buffett, BB King, and alt rock stations on the satellite radio. And the Sinatra channel when the mood strikes.
KG
@Ed in NJ: you forgot about the Mob.
JasonF
Some guys they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece,
Some guys come home from work and wash up,
And go racin’ in the street.
Darkness on the Edge of Town is one of the most perfect albums ever made. There’s a great anniversary edition coming out in November.
Josh
DougJ, your amalgamation of Nancy Griffith’s and Patty Griffin’s names (to make a country singer who belongs to two different generations and is simultaneously from New England and Texas) reminds me of the great Smokey Robinson, who when asked whether he thought of himself as a poet, reportedly said, “I’m proud of my lyric-writing, but I ain’t no Walt Whitworth.”
Mike in NC
I had a good friend from Hoboken back in the 80s/90s. Visited him quite frequently when I lived in New England. He was such a masochist that he eventually moved to New Orleans! Went to visit one time and rated it Worst City in America!
But nothing says New Jersey like the old SNL faux ad about the Navy: Port of Call Bayonne.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL-OtsN9VdM
DougJ
@Josh:
Always happy to be compared with Smokey Robinson.
PaulW
Hey Mister DJ
Won’t you hear my last prayer?
Hey Ho Rock n Roll
Deliver me from nowhere…
Three-nineteen
@Three-nineteen: OK, I feel better now.
Bill Murray
Maybe we can talk about the Hoboken sound — The Feelies, The Individuals, Chris Stamey, they made NJ music greater
Ross Hershberger
I was a little too old for the taste of teh Springsteen Kool-Aid but I totally understand why people love him.
And because I stopped listening to Top 40 radio about 30 years ago and haven’t overdosed on it a dozen times over, every time I hear Born to Run I get a lump in my throat. Absolutely stupendous song, and a pinnacle of popular music.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
I suggest people listen to these:
(Part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omfInocGYnU
(Part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFUptqHlzc4
And remember something. This is pre-E Street. And Bruce is the guy playing lead guitar. Playing a Gibson Les Paul, when he’s pretty much played a Fender Telecaster(or equivalent) since the start of his E-Street days.
Cacti
This opinion has never won me many friends, but I, for the life of me, can’t understand what so many people find so wonderful about Bruce Springsteen.
Amir_Khalid
For me, the most rocking Boss album is The River — Ramrod, Sherry Darling, Drive All Night, Out in the Street. My own favorite cover of a Springsteen song was Living Color’s emotionally intense take on American Skin, performed at the Montreux Festival. The guy has a genius for songs whose protagonists people identify with. I think the Onion AV Club review of The Rising summed him up precisely: “part rock star, part secular saint.”
ChrisB
@Three-nineteen: You spoke too soon. That was a perfect demonstration of power football in the second half.
@Cacti: I’m guessing you never saw him live.
@Ed in NJ: And Ed, here’s a shoutout to Linden or perhaps Winfield Park.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
And here is something else for everyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksDUUkaoqY
Three-nineteen
@ChrisB: If I don’t complain too early, it’ll be too late.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
And here is Bruce and Co. doing The Animals classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKQYpRT-88
asiangrrlMN
Add me to the ‘eh, it’s Springsteen’ group. Don’t love him, don’t hate him. He’s just–there.
JenJen
Patty Griffin rules. Typing from phone, but music fans will gather riches by looking up “Truth No. 2” or “Top Of The World.” Both songs were famously and well-covered by the (treasonous) Dixie Chicks; I’ll give the Chicks the win on the “Truth No. 2” but they just can’t touch Patty’s original on the latter.
So much love and respect for Patty.
suzanne
Am I weird for thinking that Bruce Springsteen is still a total hottie? I know I’m less than half his age, but… damn. He still looks GOOD.
JenJen
@suzanne:
Hell no, that doesn’t make you weird. In fact, it makes you a red-blooded American woman. A Real American Woman, I might add. Also too.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
And here is even more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuc4BI5NWU
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@suzanne: Are you under 30? And how many times have you seen him live? Because you aren’t a true Bruce fan unless you travel all over creation to see him live. ;-)
Yutsano
@JenJen: Well not to put too fine a point on it, but that condition is not exclusive to straight American females. I wouldn’t kick Bruce out of bed for eating crackers.
burnspbesq
@Bill Murray:
Not to mention the pride of Middlesex County, the Smithereens.
“Strangers When We Meet” is the second best rock song ever recorded.
suzanne
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: I am exactly 30. Sadly, I’ve never seen him live. I know, I know, my loss. He’s hot.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I would. So not my type.
suzanne
@asiangrrlMN: He’s my type. Hot without being pretty. I hate pretty.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: And when do we agree on our respective male company? Oh it does happen every now and again, but our tastes are quite disparate. I kinda like it like that!
JenJen
@Yutsano: Word.
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was the Springsteen drool-fest. I’ll just go back downstairs to the other open thread now. ;)
(if I’m declaring mancrushes, Bob Mould, Ray LaMontagne, Damien Rice would be far ahead of Springsteen)
Steve V
Nice vid. Bruce is the man.
asiangrrlMN
@suzanne: Me, I also like hot without pretty, but I do not find Mr. Springsteen hot.
@Yutsano: This is very true. It’s also a good thing because it would cause family strife if we were both attracted to the same kind of guy.
@arguingwithsignposts: Well, you can throw your weight into the ‘eh, it’s Springsteen, whatevs’ camp. That is where I reside.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: Heterosexual mancrushes are completely legal and acceptable. Hell my brother gets one every baseball or football season whenever some new hot talent struts their stuff for the Mariners or the Seachickens.
And forgive me for indulging my inner child, but I couldn’t get this song out of my brain.
suzanne
@arguingwithsignposts: I have a thing for Michael Stipe when he isn’t wearing guyliner. And Robert Downey, Jr.
Yutsano
@Yutsano: Yep. Broke my own link and didn’t have time to fix.
Earworm
@JenJen: I feel for you on that situation. I honestly do. But I just cannot see how two massive egos trying to pretend to get along could ever end well. I suppose they could dump the pretense and come out as a couple, but I don’t think they’re done milking their 15 minutes yet.
JenJen
@Yutsano: Dude, my totally straight male coworkers are at the moment completely gay for Chad Ochocinco and TO. Something about sports and boys has me constantly wondering.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@suzanne: I am in my late 30’s. I knew about him since the says of BIUSA. I wasn’t really turned on to his music till 1991. Needless to say I’ve never looked back. I’ve seen him from Richmond to Boston and as far west as Buffalo/Pittsburgh/Toronto(yes, I’ve seen him live in all 3 places). I’ve been to 70 shows since 1992 and probably would have made 100 if not for an unfortunate event or two.
suzanne
@JenJen: My husband has copped to a man-crush on the Old Spice guy. I understand.
fucen tarmal
sorry folks,
i had to sneak in here and correct a huge misunderstanding. the best springsteen album, unless you are a souless poseur, is greetings from asbury park.
Princess cards she sends me with her regards
barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see her you gotta look hard
Wounded deep in battle, I stand stuffed like some soldier undaunted
To her Cheshire smile. I’ll stand on file, she’s all I ever wanted.
But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back
you wouldn’t even give me time to cover my tracks.
You said, “Here’s your mirror and your ball and jacks”.
But they’re not what I came for, and I’m sure you see that too
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency
and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free
Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
reveal yourself all now to me girl while you’ve got the strength to speak
Cause they’re waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now if only you could ask.
And don’t call for your surgeon even he says it’s too late
It’s not your lungs this time, it’s your heart that holds your fate
Don’t give me money, honey, I don’t want it back
you and your pony face and your union jack
well take your local joker and teach him how to act
I swear I was never that way even when I really cracked
Didn’t you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive
able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?
And your Chelsea suicide with no apparent motive
you could laugh and cry in a single sound.
And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?
You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach
Remember how I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach
And the band they played the homecoming theme as I caressed your cheek
That ragged, jagged melody she still clings to me like a leech.
But that medal you wore on your chest always got in the way
like a little girl with a trophy so soft to buy her way
We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore
So you, left to find a better reason than the one we were living for
and it’s not that nursery mouth I came back for
It’s not the way you’re stretched out on the floor
cause I’ve broken all your windows and I’ve rammed through all your doors
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores?
And you should know that’s true…
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency
and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free
arguingwithsignposts
@suzanne: Stipe’s on my list too.
JenJen
@suzanne: The Old Spice guy provides hours of material for men and women alike, I’m thinking. Speaking anecdotally, from personal experience. As in, rrrrooowwwrrrrw.
ETA: I felt kind of dirty after typing that; it’s as I’ve (clearly) fallen for Pete Campbell and Don Draper’s trickery. Bastards.
ETA2: This is an open thread, right? JenJen +coupla
asiangrrlMN
@suzanne: I totally don’t get it. That guy completely turns me off.
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
ditto. the Old Spice Guy phenom just went right over my head. As did the Axe thing.
{sniffing underarms}
JenJen
@asiangrrlMN: @arguingwithsignposts: Understandable ad-campaign cringing reaction, and maybe I’m being a little mainstream here, but really, if Mr. “I’m On A Horse” isn’t gorgeous then I don’t know what is.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: The Axe commercials make me postal on the few occasions I wasn’t quick enough to hit the mute button.
@JenJen: Oh, I’m sure I’m the weird one as usual, but he just doesn’t do a thing for me.
TrishB
@JasonF: Please tell me where to find more info. I haven’t heard about this. Bruce is the only artist I’ve owned all the 8-tracks, the albums, the 45s, the CDs, and now all the digital tracks. Darkness is my favorite album.
arguingwithsignposts
@JenJen:
I’m on the mancrush scale here, which is a bit diff. ;)
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: Looks almost always aren’t a consideration for mancrush requirements. Usually something where the heterosexual male admires another attribute of the other male.
Amir_Khalid
@fucen tarmal: There’s at least a little bit of “poser” in someone who insists that Springsteen’s best album was his first, as though it were all downhill for him creatively after that. Greetings From Asbury Park does indeed have some magnificent flights of lyrical fancy, but there’s much more to Springsteen’s art — the storytelling ability he showed in Meeting Across The River was still some years away, not to mention the social commentary of Factory or The River or American Skin or Youngstown.
Also, the E Street Band’s sound evolved a lot in those early years, before it settled around the core group that remained constant until Danny Federici died. Those first three albums sound very different from one another, and from Darkness on the Edge of Town.
TrishB
@JenJen: At least Bruce is a few years younger than my only other celebrity crush. Harrison Ford is one day younger than my dad. Well, maybe it’s not Ford, so much as it’s Solo and Jones.
Yutsano
@TrishB: FWIW that didn’t stop Calista.
burnspbesq
@fucen tarmal:
Not.
The Ghost of Tom Joad is the best studio album, and Hammersmith Odeon is the best official live album.
And the best song Springsteen ever wrote, he gave to Southside Johnny. Yes, I am referring to “Hearts of Stone.”
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano:
True that. You will note that all my list are musicians. :)
Also, I have numerous crushes on lesbians as well who happen to be musicians. Could be a theme emerging…
TrishB
@arguingwithsignposts: Stipe and Bruce were awesome together at Vote for Change up in Cleveland a few years back.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: You like musicians. Nothing wrong with that.
TrishB
@fucen tarmal: I’m a replying fool in this thread, but while Darkness is my favorite album, For You is one of my favorite songs.
Lysana
@JenJen:
One of my favorite cartoonists working today, Keith Knight, also happens to be a Patriots fan due to his childhood in the Boston area. He did a strip about watching the Pats win the Super Bowl the first time in which he repeated a snippet of conversation he overheard in a Boston bar. Two straight, working-class white guys with their beers were looking at the TV screen.
“Y’know, with everything Tom Brady’s done for us, I’d do him.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
fucen tarmal
@Amir_Khalid:
i didn’t suggest it was all downhill after that, just that that is the best. it didn’t go downhill until “the river” though i do like nebraska.
fucen tarmal
@TrishB:
i like “darkness” but to me the best springsteen is the excessive exuberant stuff before he started reading what critics were writing both good and bad. i love the maestro of the ever evolving bar band that still has to entertain a crowd of people who didn’t come there to sit and listen.
Honus
@TrishB: Bruce never made any 8-tracks. He was after them. And you can’t put fuelie heads on a 396. They are for small-blocks.
Honus
@Amir_Khalid: Yeah, right, no stories on those first two albums. And that band was all together and much hotter circa 1974 when they were all still hungry.
You kids will never know what you missed being born after that tour with Clarence, Max, Bruce on guitar (he couldn’t afford to pay Miami Steve) and the 18 year old girl on violin. Of course you would have had to have seen them in half-empty 5000-seat halls.
Thlayli
@burnspbesq:
You spelled “Blood and Roses” wrong.
I assume we’re all in agreeance that #1 is “Red Dragon Tattoo” by Fountains of Wayne.
pdf
I’m 38 (which means I was in sixth grade when Born in the U.S.A. came out), I grew up in New Jersey and I don’t get the Springsteen thing at all. (I’m a music journalist, and was invited onto WNYC radio last January, when his most recent album came out, to argue the anti-Springsteen side in a debate.) I just don’t hear that much difference between Born to Run and Meat Loaf, sorry.
Re the whole Jersey stereotypes thing, the town I live in is mostly immigrants. The stores downtown have signs in Spanish. The people on the street are all various shades of brown, and it’s not ’cause they’re spray-tanned Italians. That’s the New Jersey I love, not the version that exists in idiots’ imaginations.
Ross Hershberger
Why would an debate on art require an ‘anti-‘ side? A ‘non-‘ side would be more appropriate. Music is a matter of taste. The Stooges for some and Mahler for others. There’s no need to grade and cull to make room in the cultural marketplace.
I can listen to a little Springsteen and enjoy him but like Dylan, The Smiths, Tom Waits, Schoenberg and Philip Glass among others a little goes a long way. The emotional level in Springsteen gets exhausting.
master c
Im late to the drool fest. Bruce has remained so great so long, he will always be one of the good guys for me. I was in high school when
The River came out, and from there I worked back to Darkness.
Just perfect albums. I was annoyed when BITUSA became so massive and MTV, but he really stayed on a true path. I want to recommend this in case anyone hasnt heard recent great pop songs from him:
master c
Maxwel
It’s too bad that Emmylou hasn’t recorded ‘Racing’.
master c
I suck.
wanted to link girls in their summer clothes.
kth
The title track is better than Racing: “TONIGHT I’LL BE ON THAT HILL with everything I’ve got”, etc. It has the same slow burn as “Racing” but is triumphant rather than brooding.
BobS
@pdf: It’s to your credit as a music journalist that you recognize the influence of Springsteen (although not to the extent of Todd Rundgren) on Bat Out of Hell. But to say there’s “not much difference” between the music of Meat Loaf and Springsteen reminds me of the studied contrarian viewpoint that was espoused on a thread here several months ago by someone arguing The Beatles were ‘just another band from the 60s’.
Part of the explanation could be that these are the points of view of people considerably younger than myself who weren’t around to put the music in the context of what the prevailing soundtrack of the time was. In the case of Springsteen, Born to Run is one of the two dozen or so most significant albums in the history of rock’n’roll music. However, the good songs he writes is only part of the story. He unfailingly delivers an energy to his shows that’s matched by very few performers (among his peers, the MC5, the Who, and J Geils are a few of the bands that matched his intensity. And let me take this opportunity to suggest no one miss an opportunity to see the Roots, Ozamatli, or Trombone Shorty perform live). However, to me, what really separated Springsteen from the pack is that every time I saw him, he seemed to be having more fun than anyone else under the roof. The man knew he’d been blessed with a life most of his audience would trade for and that was his ‘thank you’ to them.
Ross Hershberger
A music critic claiming not to see the difference between Meat Loaf and Springsteen is like an automotive writer saying the Pinto and Mustang are two Ford coupes with horse names.
The distinctions may not matter to you personally but a critic’s job is to point them out for readers. Claiming that the differences are irrelevant is injecting personal taste into the analysis.
kth
When someone tells me they don’t like Bruce Springsteen, that’s fine, but I tend to suspect them of deeper and darker sins: e.g., not liking Little Richard, Roy Orbison, or the Ronettes.
pdf
Responses in reverse order:
kth: My dislike (actually, “dislike” is too harsh, let’s call it my “lack of need”) for Springsteen is in large part based on the fact that I already have and love records by Little Richard, Roy Orbison and the Ronettes.
BobS, Ross H.: I wouldn’t call them identical, but there are a lot of commonalities in terms of (to my ear) overblown passion, loads of pumpin’ piano, the songs are frequently too long, etc., etc. And while I won’t dig my own grave by fully articulating my lack of interest in the Beatles, I will concede that calling them “just another band from the ’60s” is a step too far. They were massively influential, one of the last times there really was a musical monoculture.
What’s particularly interesting to me is BobS’s comment about the live shows being a blast. I’ve never seen Springsteen live, obviously, but when I’ve seen him perform on TV in recent years it’s never seemed like all that much fun. Maybe it’s because he was playing songs like “Come On Up For The Rising” that move at more of a death march than a rock ‘n’ roll tempo, but it felt weirdly funereal and heavy – not heavy like Black Sabbath, but emotionally heavy, and the opposite of wild rock ‘n’ roll abandon – to me. Rock ‘n’ roll should have an element of gospel fervor, and the more recent Springsteen live performances I’ve seen have felt more like Catholic high mass. But I’ve heard very good things about that live record from 1975 or thereabouts that was released the other year.
Anyway, my biggest problem with Springsteen – and this is one I brought up in the radio interview, and in my earlier post in a roundabout way – is that I’ve spent my whole life in New Jersey and he doesn’t represent the Jersey I know. Number one, nobody I know talks like that – he has this weird accent that I’ve never heard come from anybody else’s lips but his. And number two, like I said earlier, the part of Jersey I know is almost all Latin American immigrants and their families, not broken-down white working class dudes and their muscle cars. Which is fine. Nobody really lives in the world Tom Waits sings about (or talks like him), either, and I love Tom Waits. But in Springsteen’s case, for some reason the mythmaking has been mistaken for reality.
Personally, if I’m in the mood for the poetry of the working class set to great music, I go straight for Merle Haggard. “Mama Tried” is one of those songs that just knocks me out – so good, even the Grateful Dead couldn’t ruin it, try as they might.
fucen tarmal
@BobS:
c’mon, lets be honest, the beatles were a scam, you think all those american girls knew who they were when they just got off the plane from the u.k., and if so, how?
clever marketing. mediocre music..and i don’t care who claims them as an influence.
Death Panel Truck
Yes, because no rock journalist on earth has ever let his or her musical taste influence a review. (Rolls eyes.)
Michael Stipe once referred to the Beatles as “elevator music,” oblivious to the obvious irony that if it weren’t for John Lennon, the members of R.E.M. would have spent their lives flipping burgers at Wendy’s. Gotta love these idiots who pop out of the ground and act like they singlehandedly invented rock and roll, influenced by nothing that came before them.
burnspbesq
@Thlayli:
“I assume we’re all in agreeance that #1 is “Red Dragon Tattoo” by Fountains of Wayne.”
‘Fraid not. I can only assume that you’ve never heard “A Million Miles Away” by the Plimsouls.
Ross Hershberger
Okay, I’ll take the bait. In simple terms, it’s one thing to say “I prefer A over B”, and another thing to say “A is the same as B to me”. The first statement reveals the critic’s personal taste, which is fine. The second reveals that the critic does not recognize differences between A and B that many other people may feel strongly about. That is not useful criticism because it fails to take into account factors that are relevant to the audience.
burnspbesq
@pdf:
“I just don’t hear that much difference between Born to Run and Meat Loaf, sorry.”
Do you also not hear that much difference between “Maiden Voyage” and the guy who plays the piano at Nordstrom at Garden State Plaza?
Part of the issue here is generational. I was a junior in high school when “Greetings from Asbury Park” came out. I didn’t live in the parts of Jersey that Springsteen wrote about, but I knew kids from those towns as a result of being in the All-State high school chorus, and I knew that they faced a very different world than the one I faced coming from an affluent bedroom town in Bergen County. One of Springsteen’s great strengths as a writer, all the way from “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” to “Youngstown” and beyond, has been his ability to write with great insight about the lives of people with no good choices.
Springsteen also put together a truly great band, built around three phenomenal players (Bittan, Federici, and Weinberg) and one truly larger-than-life cartoon character (The Big Man). During my lifetime, I can think of only two or three bands have been able to approach the power of a Springsteen show, and then only on a special night. Little Feat at the Capitol in Passaic on the last tour before the death of Lowell George, Los Lobos at the Greek, the Hendrix concert that was captured on “Band of Gypsies,” and a couple of others I’m forgetting.
KevinNYC
Just a thought experiment, I’m curious about. For the folks who don’t get Springsteen, are you Catholic?
I never thought about it when I was a kid, but when I found out Springsteen was Catholic a lot of things clicked and I realized why his songs resonated so deeply among me and other kids I grew up with.
KevinNYC
googling, I found this interesting article on Springsteen’s Catholicism
KevinNYC
@fucen tarmal:
Fucen, I’ll cop to being a souless poser then and I went through phase where I would call people up and try to sing all of “For You” on their answer machines in 40 secs.
I do like that album, but it’s not his best.I prefer Springsteen doing what he does best rather than trying to do what Dylan does best.
KevinNYC
For you Fountains of Wayne fans upthread, have you heard Robbie Fulks’s song “Fountains of Wayne Hotline” It’s a service for blocked songwriters to tap into the many tricks/ideas of Fountains of Wayne.
For John Cole and other footballs fans, check out Fountains of Wayne’s All Kinds of Time
sparky
@pdf:
there are perhaps two reasons for this: (1) the NJ of today is NOT the NJ of the late 1960s-1970s. it’s changed quite a bit. exh A of this would be Hoboken, but there are plenty of other examples. (2) there are plenty of places where you can still hear that dialect. i heard it yesterday in a Starbucks in Linden. i know an auto mechanic who is a pitch-perfect dialect speaker. in 2009 i watched him and another dude spend five minutes arguing over which fuck should fix a fuckin problem with the guy’s 1980s shit station wagon.
in any case, dismissing someone on that basis is a pretty thin rationale. i am not going to tell you your business (nor do i hold any brief for Springsteen), but it is unfair to your readers/listeners to analyze pop music from the past without understanding the context it arose from. you are practicing the same kind of flattening out of history that we see in the tea party version of american history, where everything from the past looks the same, leaving the present to pick and choose on the basis of nothing other than personal preference. (as you described it, your objection is apparently based wholly on your personal experience rather than any investigation.) finally, your objection, if i understand it correctly, is more properly lodged against the image of the performer than the music. if you are a music critic, this objection is simply not relevant to your task.
@Ed in NJ: greetings from Union County! i am currently near, yes really near, Exit 13 on the Turnpike, or the ass end of 136.* the refinery is one of the few still going concerns around here.
*i am not from NJ, which perhaps makes it even odder that i am here at the moment.
fucen tarmal
@KevinNYC:
i never thought of dylan and springsteen together, so i don’t carry that particular bias, to me dylan was a guy who sang about stuff that happened to other people. i never got that from early springsteen at least. if you don’t have dylan on a pedestal its not as casual a comparison as you make it out to be. to that is what springsteen does best, try to cram 20lbs of music into a 5lb sack…