New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

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Jack of All Parades
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New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Jack of All Parades »

A very probing, insightful profile piece from the July 30th edition of the New Yorker by the managing editor - David Remnick. I found the parts on his bouts with depression and creativity very intriguing as well as the commentary on the new record both by the author and the performer/writer. Interesting to read of his immersion into the great Russians these days. Just a tremendous piece of reporting by Mr. Remnick:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... ct_remnick

One of the best musical pieces I have read in some time!
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Who Shot Sam? »

Wife was reading that on the train on Saturday, as we took the kids down to the soccer game in Jersey. Must be a good piece, because she's no Springsteen fan.
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Boy With A Problem »

Yes, it was an excellent piece. I have a ton of respect for Bruce. I went to see him for the second time in my life a couple of weeks ago.....own a bunch of his records etc.... It's almost unfathomable how he can do what he does - 3 hours plus - keeping 25,000 people completely engaged......and yet......and yet......he somehow still doesn't do it for me.........it's me, not him.......right?
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Boy With A Problem wrote:Yes, it was an excellent piece. I have a ton of respect for Bruce. I went to see him for the second time in my life a couple of weeks ago.....own a bunch of his records etc.... It's almost unfathomable how he can do what he does - 3 hours plus - keeping 25,000 people completely engaged......and yet......and yet......he somehow still doesn't do it for me.........it's me, not him.......right?
Nah! I do not think it is you- I have much the same reaction to these 'stage extravaganzas'[have to love Remnick's description of the triage unit that is set up backstage for the performers]. I have found his stage show quite off putting for many, many years now and will readily go on record that I am not so enamoured of the E Street band. In my household, and spearheaded by my wife, his sound with that unit is often referred to as 'bombast Bruce'. I was on the bandwagon at the beginning in the early 70's and his and his band's exhuberance then was a thing of joy. Over the decades my appreciation of them has wained. Last show I saw was in 1978 and I have not been tempted to go back. Too often I found only over the top theatrics that bored me in the later shows. Consistently the material that has held my strongest interest is his folk influenced efforts where he simply goes on stage and performs with his guitar, voice and harmonica and a catalog of material that has a depth and humanity that few can master. Albums like "Nebraska", "Devils and Dust", "Tunnel of Love" and his latest-"Wrecking Ball" seethe with life and righteous anger and indignation. Not so much the big production efforts with the band on stage for my ears. That the latest record from him has not had a stronger sales and social impact is, I think, criminal.

Remnick's piece gets at this, I think. You almost sense towards the end of the article that this is a last hurrah for them as a working unit; that Bruce will become that solo performer who connects more with me these days in the decades to come.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Jack of All Parades »

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... rg&cad=rja

Found the above piece a reasoned and articulate response to both the Remnick profile and to the 'Bruce' phenomena. It addresses some of my own discomfort with his band act and how I feel it has been co-opted by the establishment. How in essence, it is the establishment, now.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Boy With A Problem »

Articulate, reasoned and sometimes funny (Gov. Christy's sausaged ass)...... but a bit hostile!

I mean Bruce is definitely using his powers for good and not evil.....

I've just never been as enamored of the voice and the songs as I think I should be.....I honestly got a bigger kick out of seeing my friends' band play 10th Avenue Freeze Out this past Halloween than I did when Bruce played it a couple of weeks ago...I don't know - not enough whimsy in the songs (certainly some whimsy in the between song banter) - too much earnestness?
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by Poor Deportee »

The New Republic piece seems a bit harsh to me. I disagree about Bruce's supposed 'musical decline' - an off-the-shelf criticism lobbed at practically every musician who has had a long career, really code for 'he doesn't do exactly what he used to do when he was younger.' Nor does it trouble me in the least that he has a lot of money and tours in style (wouldn't we all do the same, given our druthers?)

My criticisms of Bruce are twofold. First, his albums - excepting the splendid 'folk' material in the Nebraska vein - are bombastically overproduced. I'll grant you that this is less true of his earlier records, altough the fault probably lies as much with the recording business itself as with Bruce per se (in other words, he works within whatever the mainstream production ethos of the day happens to be, at least when he is in Bombastic Bruce mode with the E-Street Band). This kind of lacquered production always grinds against my ears, but if the material is strong enough it overcomes this problem. E.g., Wrecking Ball is exactly what the title advertises; Magic is the reverse, an unlistenable exercise in radio-friendly sludge.

The second problem is sentimentality. Bruce has always straddled the line between going for the easy heart-tug and genuinely moving and challenging his listener. A big part of his creative project centres on activating a sense of community - both a community of Bruce fans and the community of America itself. In this his music is a strange echo of the folk scene of the early 1960s, and the failings are oddly similar, where it becomes ultimately less about the music per se and more about the community for which the music is a vehicle. There is a tension between the basically sentimental desire to be part of this community, and making great music. Sometimes Bruce successfully navigates the tension, as on his most recent record (quite possibly his best rock album, believe it or not). There, songs like 'Wrecking Ball,' 'We Are Alive' and 'Land of Hopes and Dreams' really do express and transmute our longing to belong to a transcendent, greater whole, in way that bores through the detritus of the mind and piledrive directly into the subconscious. But when it doesn't work, it's just about BRUUUUUCE and the crowd in a mutual exercise in self-adulation, akin to the pious self-congratulation of the 1960s folkies at their worst. What makes it worse is the suspicion that a good chunk of the people in any given crowd haven't paid the least attention to his latest work, regardless of how good (or bad) it is. They're just there because of some lazy allegiance to a once-youthful identity as BRUUUUCE fans.

So for me, Bruce has always been an artist to approach with care. His best work gives the full measure of his prodigious gifts. But a fair amount of it is compromised by his desire for radio-friendly sound and fan-friendly sentiment. When he's at his best, though, he's a powerhouse.
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Re: New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen

Post by bambooneedle »

I think the last two Bruce albums are probably his worst ever, sadly because he is focusing on dumbing down to gather the maximum number of sheep to vote for Obama in the next election (btw, I would vote for Obama). Most of the material is so weak and insufferably generic that it soils any possibly stronger songs with mistrust. And makes you suspect that songs like Outlaw Pete and Life Itself are self-indulgent and unfocused waste of his talents. It's true that the overearnest fodder is hard to take - eg. Jack Of All Trades. Anthems like We Take Care Of Our Own ultimately ring hollow, but will fit nicely on Greatest Hits No 2 with Working On A Dream. The Boss is trading on his fame and that is fucked up. He is rustling up thoughtless sheep... no doubt he thinks he can make a HUGE difference, and probably that he... could BE the difference...

That's alright... after the election, every several years he will make an intense and lucid solo album to be highly critically acclaimed and admired by those talented in-the-know self-made critics all over internet forums, and then a lot of people will keep interested in what he does next. For me, he has slid down out of my radar for any foreseeable time.

The downhill slide started with that ridiculous singalong just-like-the-old-times Seeger sessions period. With attrocious accents. All that phony feelgood backslapping crap. The River on the Live In Dublin DVD done in an Irish folksinger's accent.... wtf?! ... does he believe his reputation will endure anything?! I liked him better when he seemed to sing about stuff that you were sure few other people understood, "but those things don't seem to matter much to him now"...



Come on Bruce, get off the messianic trip, please..
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