The headachey title track from Born In The U.S.A. was, of course, misunderstood and misused by Republicans in their time-honored tradition of Chiclet-toothed grinning idiocy. It's an overwhelmingly bleak, bitter rant, and put me off the album to the point where I deleted it. I get it, Bruce. I get it and I agree with it but I'm tired of hearing it. And there was something too slick about the album. I saw him on the tour, and it broke my heart. My life had changed in the ecstatic communion of the Hammersmith Odeon in '75, I witnessed rock and roll future, and here he was in wifebeater denim and a fucking headband at an enormodrome getting thousands of fat fuckers punching the air to a song I hated. Welcome to the future, fanboy.
The album sleeve was another depressing missed opportunity, striving for the iconic - although that word was only used for Russian church imagery back then - and making a statement that nobody quite understood. Was he pissing on Old Glory? Or was he waving the flag as a patriotic prop, backing up the apparent pride of the title? Nobody cared. It sold shitloads. Seven top ten singles. Yadda yadda.
Springsteen apparently wrote seventy songs during the sessions, which also produced Nebraska. He planned a double album at one time, discarding both the idea and the more reflective, downbeat songs - to make this monster of an album. A bunch of those songs have surfaced on The Essential Bruce Springsteen and Tracks, and here they are, seamlessly interwoven with the songs that made the cut. Thirty-one songs, a triple album. Why not?
It's a much deeper and richer album - more nuanced - with greater dynamics and echoes of the bleak minimalism of Nebraska. The slickness is gone, for the better. The rejigged track order works, but you can put it on shuffle, whatever, it's all good. There isn't a single song that doesn't deserve to be heard, and there are some that get the jaw hitting the floor. Songs that in anybody else's career would have been high points.
The cover continues the more *cough* literary approach of Tunnel Of Love (which older readers, and those not in a fog of Adderall, may remember). It's a difficult theme to pull off, too easy to fall into cliché. The overall tenor of the album is positive and upbeat, so I wanted an image that did all of this, preferably without using his ass.
It's true that "Born In The USA" belongs on Nebraska, in its original form. Maybe throw out one of the gangster songs...
ReplyDeleteNow, I love Weinberg's drums-like-gunshots on it, but with the kind of production Landau proposed, it was obvious that this song would get misunderstood.
Faster 'n a speeding bullet yourself there, OBG!
DeleteBITUSA is included on my Nebraska Recovered, up later.
i'm just going to shut up, right after my announcement to shut up.
DeleteYou're a man of your word, and we respect that here. Not much, it's true, but you must make do with what you get.
DeleteHere's the beef, the gravy, and the biscuits.
ReplyDelete...bon appetit, tout le monde...
DeleteListening to it right now. It's a keeper, thanks!
DeleteThanks, looking forward to this!
ReplyDeleteYou are, Don Farq, as the saying goes, good...and when you're bad, you;re better.
ReplyDeleteBorn In The U.S.A. has always sounded a little too glossy to my ears.
ReplyDeleteAs for the title song: along with Bohemian Rhapsody, Sweet Caroline, Free Bird, Don't Stop Believin', Hotel California, Stairway to Heaven, to name but a few, not to mention the entire Beatles catalog; never hearing any of those songs again would suit me just fine. Its use as a right wing rallying call, along with Uncle Neil's Rockin' in the Free World, always causes me to snicker.
A few words about the cover. C'mon guys, it's just one for the ladies!
Hi Babs, I'm in the UK, and our lazy assed radio producers/programmers overplay the same songs as you have mentioned to the point that as soon as Stairway starts (or other over familiar ruined song), I reach for the off button. Here they overplay Sweet Home Alabama not Free Bird, I used to love both those songs.
DeleteThe other week, I was in my local supermarket, when Sweet Home Alabama came on the muzak, and a guy a few feet in front of me screeched to a halt, so he could play air guitar.
DeleteThat would be Clarence Pune.
DeleteHow did you know I was grocery shopping in New York last week?
DeleteThe Foam-O-Drone©.
DeleteNote to self: close blinds
DeleteI've never been a fan, but I'm finding some real nuggets here.
ReplyDelete"County Fair" is a great song - reminded me a bit of James McMurtry, or even Joe Ely. More country than I've heard from Bruce before.
Thank you!
So, do ever have the moment...and I've had more than I can count, but one happened again just the other day. In a local chain grocery store and "Walk on the Wild Side" comes and there are even people sorta singing along and I wanna say, "excuse, do you have any idea what this song is about?" I of course don.t and like to imagine they have some vague notion of who Candy or Little Joe is. The store stereo version of "Lola" is another one like that as is, in the part of the country I live, Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." What do they think those brown eyes reflect and who do they think that judge's wife and the beautiful daughter were? It beggars the imagination...
ReplyDeleteOTOH, so does the idea that they pay me to teach people about stuff like this...
Great Popular Song Misunderstandings have to include Every Breath You Take, by Sting And His Policemen. Not only the only Police song I can listen to without feeling a little ill, but a great song, sung from the man's nasty, shrivelled, mean little heart.
Delete"and she never lost her head, even when she was giving head" is a supermarket singalong if I've ever heard one...
DeleteNever cared for Sting's faux Jamaican accent.
DeleteI always laugh when I see an obviously straight guy in the supermarket singing along to Diana Ross' "I'm Coming Out"
From the ridiculous to the sublime: I heard Ornette's "lonely Woman" in Whole Foods.
"an obviously straight guy" - like Jughead, right?
DeleteThe last time I tried to explain hypermasculinity, you stuck your finger in your ear and said ting-a-ling-a-loo.
DeleteYou didn't "try to explain" it. You said not to trust it; the subtext being Jughead - an alpha male dude and personal friend - is sexually diverse.
DeleteCrazy thing about the Brucester circa 82-84 is, he has another ten or so outtakes from the period which he never released. If anyone is interested in that, give me a holler...
ReplyDeleteThis is the place. This is the time. OBG, step on up - the World is Watching. (*Farfisa organ plays military-style march, desultory applause*)
DeleteLet me see tomorrow morning if I can get rid of the count ins and then we're good to go for a quadruple album. Eat your heart out, Use Your Illusion I & II!
ReplyDeleteMy TOS excludes bootleg recordings unissued by the man in some form, but hey. I used to have two or three shitloads of outtakes, but I realised I was never listening to them, just feeling a vague completist fanboy satisfaction at "owning" them.
DeleteAlways makes me laugh when people say they're collecting all the live Allmans/Gov't Mule or whoever from an era, "I'm still missing all of February 98 North West tour". FFS when are they going to listen to all this content? I too collected dozens of Gov't Mule live shows, but only listened regularly to about 6 shows.
DeleteWell, let me see if I can get these into a listenable form that even the most discerning non-lover of "outtakes" outtakes such as yourself can appreciate. And if not, there's always the delete button...
ReplyDeleteWell, that took me a little longer than expected, so I hope you give it at least a cursory listen, Farqster.
ReplyDeleteQuality over quantity, so the ostensible title track got kicked off at the last second for inferior sound quality. Which makes this either a long EP or what they called a mini-album back in the days. Nine songs, less than thirty minutes.
Didn't have the time to make an elaborate cover, so a quick, BITUSA-inspired one will have to do.
https://workupload.com/archive/JP9rbAae
I'm sure a bunch of the 4/5g© will grab these - thank you. I think they were part of my Unsatisfied Heart set, too.
DeleteFollow That Dream
One Love
Richfield Whistle
Seven Tears
Fugitive's Dream
Tha Klansman
Downbound Train (Nebraska versh)
DeleteYup, most of these were on the Unsatisfied Heart boot, minus Seven Tears and the acoustic Don' Back Down. Downbound Train was on a Nebraska demo boot. But instead of being glued at the end of BITUSA discs, they now form their own little album. I took off all the count-ins to make these sound less like the demos they clearly are.