Initial impressions from the advance releases and promo clip on YewChewb were not good. Artificial. Fake. A bunch of actors pretending to put on a soul show. Springsteen bragging about his "kick ass" voice in front of his car collection. Gee whiz.
So the album, then. My attention wandered with me out into the garden after a few tracks. I'd been distracted by the irritatingly weak guitar on the first track - once you hear that, you can't put it away. Everything but the horns and the strings are played by nobody's first call soul brother Ron Aniello, and how was this ever entertained as a possibility, leave alone a great idea? Springsteen could have - and damn well should have, given the genre - assembled a "kick ass" band and recorded live. I'm no expert on soul music, but this I know - it's real, and it's righteous. It's also black. The only thing black about Bruce is his hair dye.
Critics have been giving the man respect for paying respect to the genre. Sam and Dave weren't respecting the genre. They were living it. Springsteen is living in some nightmarish Meta©verse, acting through an icon as convincing as Zuckerberg's. If anyone prefers his karaoke versions to the originals, then they will probably be white, already a Bruce fan, and have next to no soul records in their collection. Maybe a Best Of compilation they don't play much, but it's nice to have. In case someone checks. Springsteen sums it up on the album, when he testifies during the Zoom recording session of Soul Days - I wanna hear some Ray Charles!
Bruce, you got your five hundred million bucks for your back catalog - couldn't you have given the world something better than this record-your-own-album vanity project? It's too late for you to shut the fuck up, but I don't have to listen anymore. Amscray. Your work here is done.
EDIT: Adding dramatically to the content value of this post, Four Or Five Guy© Draftervoi gives us a glimpse at what a Bruce soul album could have sounded like, were he ever in the position to assemble a kick ass band. [Link in comments, cover at left - Ed.]
I'm almost hoping he embraces his inner Rastafarian and gives the world an album of roots covers next, again played entirely by Ron Aniello.
ReplyDeleteGoogle "Kryten Red Dwarf".
ReplyDeleteGood call. Or Max Headroom.
DeleteCripes . . . that's a definite 'no' then. I just wonder, putting it into context of the appalling vacuity currently exhibited in popular music, whether you are being a trifle over-harsh. Surely he is just another old man living out his days. Think Presley and the muck he churned out once he signed to RCA - early triumph with long descent into sub-Neopolitan caterwauling, the only saving grace being that he shuffled off before pensionable age.
ReplyDelete"Just another old man living out his days ..." and asking us to pay for his little retirement hobby. And the current appalling vacuity in pop is well represented by the airless sterility of these recordings. (Add yer hancock, yah bum! You give good comment!)
DeleteApologies - I'm not really anonymous, but as an octogenarian (old git, grey and grumpy) I on occasion have outages.
DeleteIn 2022, the age of seventy-three (Bruce's age) is hardly considered old. This isn't our parents' seventy-three.
DeleteAt Mr. Springsteen's request, here's some Ray Charles. Three early albums (The Great Ray Charles, Ray Charles, Yes Indeed!) in sparkling monaural. Adjust yer RIAA curve, Bruce!
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/v2kzSfytwf7
How about this?
ReplyDeleteAn album of soul and Motown covers we know.
Brooce, Miami Steve and the E Street Band recorded live in a small theatre with an audience. Soul Man, 1000 Dances, Get Ready. How could that not be good?
Draft in any remaining Asbury Jukes, give Vinnie Lopez the drum riser - how hard can this be?
Deleteit can be hard. listen to bruce's version of ANY OTHER WAY. then listen to Jackie shayne and the band. catch the attitude that is not exactly easy to imitate. you got to mean it or don't bother. https://youtu.be/wiDVfi5dVp0
Deleteouch! "Springsteen is living in some nightmarish Meta©verse, acting through an icon". that is priceless Farq. I'm not a fan of his, but in defense lots of white men when they reach retirement age seem to want to form a soul band, but at least they have the good decency to just play this stuff in regional arts centers on a Friday night, the posters outside the venue acting as a warning to those who want to avoid.
ReplyDelete"Form a soul band ..." yep, fine, but this is not that. This is Bruce and Ron Aniello, who plays all the instruments except the flown-in horn and string parts. Nuts to it.
DeleteSwamp Dog number one soul song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3kgVSV_DRc
ReplyDeleteEtta James: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcus42ihkTI
DeleteI'll raise you this. Only the unedited version has the long intro with Aretha and the guitar (South or Johnson?) wailing the blues.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUoGMUjLae0
Listen closely to the tremolo, that can only be one man: Joe South.
DeleteThe release when Aretha kicks the band in is that sweet spot between sex and the sacred all soul music aims for — and then it prolongs it for the entire rest of the song and now I can't walk.
DeleteAt least, Bruce hasn't made a Blues album.
ReplyDeleteYet.
DeleteGood point. Probably when he runs completely out of steam, we'll see one.
DeleteI remember when Cyndi Lauper did her "Blues" album, the advertising copy read: "Cyndi Lauper revisits her blues roots". What a joke!
I'd forgotten all about her blues album. Now I feel a dreadful urge to hear it...
DeleteHere's some deep southern soul, most people are unaware of:
ReplyDeleteSandra Wright's 'Wounded Woman' from 1974
https://mega.nz/file/8CVy0BxC#xXQMdzOIv4kjsX4ucWprvhMNmVG8zOmMOLr8Ti2NPlg
I understand your disappointment, Farq. You had every right to expect better from a kazillionaire who hobnobs with ex-presidents and makes Super Bowl SUV commercials.
ReplyDeleteI will have to ingest this album soon enough, as the blog doesn't write itself, but I've got one line I can't wait to use, so I will.
ReplyDeleteI just spent a week cleaning up a Huey & Lewis & the News live show from '86, where they took the 5-piece Tower of Power Horns along with 'em. It's still Huey... affable pop-rock that makes you want to golf...put the horns are a nice touch.
ReplyDeleteI was recently listening to Otis Redding's Coca-Cola commercial, and thinking, "he does so much with so little."
Bruce...I took the kids to see him in 2008 or 9; I figured that they should see him before the Wheelchair Tour. You know how the fame of a movie star can take out out of the narrative, overwhelm the acting and plot, and you're AWARE that you're watching a charismatic professional mummer give you their all but not quite pull it off because of their own fame outside of the act? Yeah, that. He'd sing "working all day in my daddy's garage" and in the back of my mind, it was "you've never gapped a spark plug in your life, pal."
An unfair criticism, in that I never actually think Clint Eastwood is a deadeye gunslinger. Springsteen and Eastwood are playing roles.
Maybe it's that Springsteen's role more closely mirrored his real life background? He was a working class New Jersey kid and his songwriting gave voice to characters that seemed to be him.
I'm gonna bring in our friends from another thread here, the Firesign Theatre. At some point, it became, "Presenting honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars."
Again, it's unfair, but so's life.
Isn't a lot of this just down to people not knowing when to stop?
DeleteI doubt, in BS' case, that he needs the money, so is it a personal compulsion to keep on playing, or to make your fans happy, or to keep on being famous?
Personally, I'd take the millions I'd made and then retire and do exactly what I felt like doing - but then again, is it that easy to just give up?
Springsteen doesn't need the money. But some musicians do, because that's all they can do, and the money is needed, I saw Steve Marriott (Humble Pie/Small Faces) a few years before he died aged 44, and in his case he was ripped off by managers (most British 60's compilation albums will have a Small Faces song) and made some bad personal choices, it was great to see him, but he was playing in a small club, when I would have thought he'd play theatres. Sorry I seem to have gone off at a bit of a tangent.
Delete@draftervoi - I never minded his writing about the working man, where he takes on the role to tell a first-person story. His background is authentically blue collar, and the fact that he used rock (and indeed roll) to transcend it, to never do an honest day's work in his life, makes him more of a hero, not less. He's an artist, and he can write about what he wants to write about. Steinbeck never gets the kicking he deserves for being a cosseted upper class kid slumming it. His parents rented him a charming cottage to write his harrowing tales of the working man's struggle. So I always give Springsteen all the slack he needs here. But this is something else. Not only is it real pretence (the "I've always been a soul man" pose), but there's something deeply patronising and arrogant about his unasked-for advocacy. Soul music needs Bruce Springsteen like jazz needs Kenny G. Add to that the stunning artificiality of the one-man band studio project, which goes right against the show-band ethos of soul, and it's a betrayal on every level.
DeleteP.S. I'm up for the Huey Lewis clean-up, should youse be desirous...
DeleteKenny G fer krissakes . . . he really is an obscenity and probably, in this instant, wangs the crumpet over the nail. I gotta say I have an occasional nightmare where Miles Davis is jamming with Eddie Calvert - bizarre or what? Better take me medication!
DeleteIf you haven't read the Pat Metheny evisceration of Kenny G, it's worth googling for.
DeleteThen there's Richard Thompson's song about Kenny G.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucgZQGPZOpk
The Huey Lewis show (Portland, 1986) is at: https://mega.nz/file/WUYGyaYZ#tbNRfSOtZUnLfwufixv9h9G26VCwTtICiAt2eepN80o
DeleteThe Lewis show included a tl:dr essay about how the show is misidentified (repeatedly) on the Internet as being from 1987 (or 1983), and Portland somehow being in Ohio.
DeleteOn Bruce, yeah, as I said, I understand my perception is unfair; he's a writer playing a character, and his background is authentic. At the same time, there's last year's headline, "Jessica Springsteen is latest child of the super-rich to compete in show jumping at the Olympics."
And good for her, as a parent, we're in the same boat...kids who followed sports and excelled. But at the same time, that knowledge takes me out of the art for that fraction of a second these days in a way that never happened in 1975.
But yeah....I will get to the new album, but I'm in no rush. I've got hundreds of hours of authentic soul and don't really need a vanity project from Springsteen.
Regarding Kenny G, a good friend of mine knew that I liked jazz, but he himself was clueless about it, so he asked some jerk for advice. When he surprised me with Kenny G Live I managed not to burst out crying, but thanked him instead. Still it hurted badly...
DeleteOnce, a coworker gave me a Dave Koz CD, she told me, "I got it for you, because, I know how much you like Jazz".
DeleteIt's the thought that counts...
Bruce's youngest son, Sam Springsteen, is a Firefighter in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Deletethanks, i feel the same about this two kitchen sinks production. this is just the latest embarrassment to his catalog.
ReplyDeleteMy impression from listening was it was a decent soul album, but not a proper boss one. I've experienced this before when artists do covers albums. -useo
ReplyDeletemaybe you meant "sole" as in fish, 'cause this thing stinks ...
Delete(Off topic) Does anyone have any Jackie Leven material?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do somewhere... Are you looking for anything in particular?
DeleteHere's what I have digitally, Mr. Pune:
Delete'The Forbidden Songs of the Dying West' and 'Songs from the Argyll Cycle'
https://mega.nz/file/gaUk3ZQT#SZW9qyE4s3JM_cOwL6pIFldDnnBxOrls8Ev7Jl7QqGI
I think I have the Jackie Leven / Ian Rankin CD titled 'Jackie Leven Said', so let me find it, rip it and post it. Check back tomorrow evening.
Possibly another, but for now...
Delete'The Mystery of Love is Grater than the Mystery of Death'
https://workupload.com/file/TFNPacj5dCg
I found a few CDRs of Jackie’s:
DeleteCreatures of Light And Darkness
Defending Ancient Springs
Elegy for Johnny Cash
For Peace Comes Dropping Slow
Jackie Leven Said (with Ian Rankin)
Control (under the pseudonym John St Field)
Lovers at the Gun Club
Night Lilies
Only The Ocean Can Forgive
Shining Brother, Shining Sister
Songs For Lonely Americans (under the pseudonym Sir Vincent Lone)
The Argyll Cycle, Volume One (the version I posted yesterday was an EP)
https://mega.nz/file/lC9RmDZR#iMnvDzK43c1fwT1dcXEvsp8ReDGbIwa7lqEIIHNDCuc
This should keep you off the streets for a while…
Enjoy!
Whoa! Thank you, Babs - that's filled a huge gap in my Leven collection!
DeleteThanks, Babs, Steve & art58koen.
DeleteI got talking with Ian Rankin at a book signing and he really recommended Leven.
@Mr. Pune - I met Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004.
Delete@SteveShark - I only have the Rhino reissue of 'Remember'.
https://mega.nz/file/ZSERiKKY#6S5yOGAhOHlys18Jif8AlwFwbFxswk346563gBycDbs
Steve, I do not have Doll by Doll.
Delete4 more by Doll by Doll.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/98UUymXjPHf
Cool, thanks Steve!
DeleteI misinterpreted your post "Do you have his albums with Doll by Doll?" as a request, rather than an offer.
Ah, I can see how that was ambiguous!
DeleteLevens' Forbidden Songs of the Dying West is a wonderfully recorded/produced album.
DeleteHe has one of those voices that can sing anything and I like it.
DeleteOkay, I'm dipping into it, and the first thing that I want to say isn't about the soul...it's about covering the Walker Brothers... I mean, WHY? It just seems so....not needed. It's not that it's bad...remember that Todd Rundgren LP, Faithful? Wherein Todd showed that he could created letter-perfect clones of Beatles, Yardbirds, Beach Boys classics? It's like that. Really, really, well-done, but I never need to hear it more than once.
ReplyDeleteUnlike, say...most of the Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs covers, wherein they add some magic to the song and make me want to hear their version, too (even if I still like the original better.
Bruce does "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore?" Okay, great, but "great" means I'm never going to play it again.
I'll give Bruce a miss, but it's funny to see Huey Lewis poppin' up here as he did something similar in 1994, remember his Four Chords & Several Years Ago? Not bad at all I thought, still have that CD.
ReplyDeleteI'm increasingly coming to the view that music should be judged only on its own terms: not the "who" but the "what". And all I hear here is a relentless onslaught of saccharine (because even the sugar is fake) over-arrangements of some old soul tunes that some ProTools wrangler has slapped some old white guy's voice on top of. Just whose voice that may happens to be is quite irrelevant when it comes to deciding whether this "works" or not. But works as what? The genre - old soul and R&B - clearly suggests that's how it should be judged - if someone made an album of polkas, you'd want to here some proper polka-ing, right? - so where’s the soul here? It's MII: missing in inaction. But, worse than that, it doesn't even work as a workmanlike-if-quite-unnecessary covers album. Bowie's Pinups, Lennon's Rock and Roll, Rod Stewart's Great American Songbook, even Vegas Elvis's last-gasp covers of "What Now My Love?" and the like (which at least had a shit-hot band behind them)... all were more successful in what-not-who terms than this cloying, clogging aural fatball. It doesn't work, and that's that. Surely we can face the truth about the existence of this atrocious record: If the Big Idea had been presented to a record company as a proposal by any other old white guy whose name didn't happen to be Bruce Springsteen, it wouldn't even have merited a boilerplate reply to the cover letter.
ReplyDeleteRecord Company HI! lol i have grate idea for ALBUM!!! surefire hit. i am seventy year old dude with KICKASS VOICE and i got like this buddy what plays like EVERTHING you woudnt blieve kickass GIUTAR KEYS DRUMS he has HOME STUDIO pro setup and we gonna run thru some old ICONIC SOUL songs in RESPECTFUL HOMMAGE to this iconic genre! we are both white but buff like you wodnt believe so skin color age no issue here i get compliment all the time and my vocie is KICKASS!!! i also got like this project Trans am in the driveway we could use on the album cover lookin forward to workin together on this eciting project!
DeleteNorm "the Rocker Soul guy" Kowznofski
There are nuggets in these comments. I feel most aligned with the initial thrust of Archie, as he speaks to my inclination to let folks do what they want and leave it to others to go along with it or not. I don’t care if BS is white – EVERYBODY has the right to sing soul music. I don’t care if BS is rich – EVERYBODY has the right to sing about the travails of being on the downside of capitalism. I don’t care if you’re born in 2012 – EVERYBODY has the right to be knocked out by something made before even their parents were born. Where Archie kinda lost me was about the polka stuff; yes, I’d love to hear “authentic” polka music, but I’d also like to hear someone not steeped in its traditions take stabs at it, because art at its best is a whore who welcomes all comers (sic) and isn’t bound by the rules that its all-too-human guardians impose on it. I’m not particularly a BS fan – he’s too showy for my taste, most of the time – but when he’s firing on all cylinders, he’s really, really great. The two I’ve heard off the soul covers album are anonymous to me, so I’m not interested in pursuing more, but then I haven’t actively checked a BS album since The Seeger Sessions, and that was years after the fact when I by happenstance heard a cut off it that I liked.
ReplyDeleteI’ve seen some weird-ass (to me) comments/posts on this blog in the past – the Beatles, Dylan and Tom Petty as hacks – but what that tells me is that the discriminating folk who visit/reside here have different tastes and takes than I, and….not a problem (I know this also by the advocacy of things I find unlistenable). I “get” the passion, even when it doesn’t coincide with mine. For this one, tho, I’m kinda flummoxed. Who cares what he’s done to keep up his sense of what’s healthy (i.e., staying in shape) for him? Who cares if he’s cut his hair short (Better than the 70-year-olds with the long black curly locks, an incongruent sight if ever there was one. On the other hand, if it pleases them to see it in the mirror, it’s no sweat to me)? I’ll take his word that he’s a long-time soul fan – aren’t most of us here (Indeed, isn’t that where the sniffling I’m detecting is coming from?)? As a less-than-casual fan, even I’m aware that he’s been doing soul covers for scores of years, and I’d guess they were part of his initial repertoire as a teen. Does soul music need BS? No, of course not, but I’m not aware that BS thinks that, much less spouts that implication. Then again, as a less-than-casual fan, so haven’t read/seen his promotion of the album.
C in California
There's some weird-ass assumptions in yer own comment, C in California! My reading of Archie's comment is definitely not the wishy-washy liberalism of "letting folks do what they want and leave it to others to go along with it or not". Nobody here, as far as I understand them, is against anyone singing soul music (or playing polka) if they want to, regardless of race, age, sex, bank balance or any other social indicator. Nobody's against people wanting to look their best. And NOBODY is against EVERYBODY "having the right to be knocked out by something made before even their parents were born." What kind of crypto-fascist pharma-bro mag-hat people do you think we are? All that's a given. It's a shit album, is all. Because it ain't got no soul, and here's for why. And he needs calling out for it because otherwise music criticism has no value and all music is equal and neither bad nor good so what's the point? Not being discriminating is fine, I guess. Just not interesting or entertaining or thought-provoking.
DeleteMethinks the man doth protest too much. Seriously, we're not the miles apart on this that I think you think we are. I didn't take Archie's comment as 'wishy-washy liberalism of "letting folks do what they want and leave it to others to go along with it or not"', nor did I detect that in my comment. I also think there's a li'l disingenuity going on here. I reckon I could get behind a review that said something like "BS brings his patented overkill to a set of music best served by grittier settings, leaving what should sound passionate or thoughtful as sounding slick and lifeless". Based on the two I've heard off it, and, yes, my expectations of BS (I DID say I find him overly showy), that review would ring true to me. Instead, your second paragraph expends much virtual ink on his physical appearance, and much of the call and response that follows seems hung up on his (lack of) melanin levels and his "right" to represent working-class folks (Similarly, I don't care if Steinbeck came from comfort; it's his results that matter. That seems to be a point you make more than once here, but I'm seeing a lack of coherence, I guess). Rather than being a wishy-washy lib worried about everybody not getting a chance to earn their merit badge, I'm actually advocating for folks going and following their muses. That the results may suck big time is a separate issue, and one that I can ameliorate by merely eschewing. The thing is, I really enjoyed your review for your writing -- it's a bit, dare I say, Springsteenian in its showiness, and the kinda pretzelly patter I come here for -- but I just don't care that it's an old, buff, white rich guy blowing this record; I just care that it's a lousy record (and I don't know if it is, but I'm presuming he put his two best feet forward in the two advance songs I've heard, which don't impress) and a lost opportunity.
DeletePeace and love from California, maaaaan! I didn't mean to harsh on your mellow. (insert other vacuous Cali cliches here)
C in California
"Advocating for folks going and following their muses" isn't an unusual stance here, is it? In fact, do you know *anybody* who's against it? As to my review, it's strongly expressed because nobody holds his best work in higher esteem than me (just try it - your arms will ache), but it's one more time the man has sold us something that smells like the cheap footwear aisle at the supermarket. A fawning, indulgent reception is the last thing he needs if the threatened further volumes are to be aborted. He needs to spend a little quality time with himself and wait for the muse to alight at his shoulder, and if it doesn't he's already done enough - more, unfortunately - to ensure a lasting place in rock, pop, and roll.
DeleteI enjoy your comments - keep 'em coming!
I kinda regret using the phrase "old white guy" now, because it's open to being misconstrued. Of course non-POCs of any age can "do soul". Without the contributions of Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Jerry Ragovoy, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Brad Shapiro, Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd & Co. - for the most part a bunch of Bible Belt good ol' boys with a couple of New York Jews thrown into the mix - then classic soul music as we know and (I hope) appreciate it (1965-1974-ish) would be barely recognisable as such. So I certainly wasn't saying that Springsteen, because of his background, had no right to be covering these songs. I was saying that that anybody at all who has seen fit to cover them under these circumstances - with this particular faux band and compressed-to-death overdubs and these particular Big-with-an-uppercase-B arrangements - isn't doing those songs any favours at all. A terrible reckid is a terrible reckid, no matter whose name is printed on the label; that's all I meant by "what, not who".
DeleteBasically, this is a Ron Aniello album feat. Bruce Springsteen. As Chandler: "How great can that BE?"
DeleteI find no argument with either Arch or Farq here. My guess is that his bigger fans -- of which I'm not one -- are more let down than more casual fans like me are, so take it more personally when the guy underwhelms. That's completely understandable, as I've been there with my big loves.
DeleteAnd I'll add that an objective criticism of the slickness of it all really hits with me, as I've continually sought out live and demo and rehearsal recordings of music I love since I often (not always) prefer the grittier takes than the run-thru-the-boards productions; that rawness likely informs my love of the pre-rock forms that eventually (via black and white alchemy) became rock-n-roll/rock.
C in California
On the polka thing, which I explained poorly. Whoever plays them and messes about with them, they should still be polka-like in all essential respects. Agreed. So if we apply this to someone performing soul songs, the very least we should expect the result to be is soulful. And this just isn't. I've heard more soul in some library music.
ReplyDelete(This was me, by the way. I forgot to do the "Comment as" thing.)
DeleteI am Anonymous!
DeleteGoing forward, I am pleased to roll out IoF©Blue™ checkmarks to enable authorship verification in the comments! To get your own non-fungible IoF©Blue™ checkmark simply mail a hunnerd bucks (not confederate) used non-sequential Federal Diplomas to me right here! Oboy!
DeleteHow much is a hunnerd, in Crypto?
DeleteAsking for a friend...
To you, Toots, one yard.
DeleteA hundred clams....you're an okay Joe!
Delete*whistles thru teeth, snaps elastic bowtie*
DeleteNo-one should ever criticise the great BS until they witness the sheer terror and pain the guy had to go through on BBC talk show Graham Norton on Friday night. He also took on the hue of the orange backdrop which suggests he been injected with uranium..maybe a health supplement. I love Nebraska....tolerate Dust rest overblown. Saw him at Earls Court mid 90s. Did Born in USA solo acoustic most of crowd went to bar....best bit of gig. He was not orange then. Maybe set up a charity for Aging Orange People now?https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-tupperware-soul-of-bruce-springsteen.html
ReplyDeleteapologies age..here the correct link...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx0GllhVJks&ab_channel=TheGrahamNortonShow
ReplyDeleteFor Uk only https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dfl78v
ReplyDeleteHa ha the nME claims "Bruce Springsteen scrapped “entire record” before making ‘Only The Strong Survive’
ReplyDelete"There were some good things on it but didn't feel quite right" FFS how bad must that have been? https://www.nme.com/news/music/bruce-springsteen-scrapped-entire-record-before-making-only-the-strong-survive-3347912
The NME review went: “resurrects these classics as a means of celebration, pointing back to some of the strongest songwriters and vocalists of all time with 15 huge and heartfelt tributes. Not only does it shine a light on what inspires one of the greatest living American songwriters, it also works to preserve the greats of the past and ensures that the best music and stories continue to survive.”
DeleteSo much to wince at there, not least the fake Ben Fong-Torres corporate Rolling Stone tone. "Ensures that the best music continues to survive". Yes, we have Bruce to thank for giving soul music a much-needed lifeline. Still, if he does this stuff live with a real live band ... oh, wait, he's been including soul songs into his encores for decades ...
"soul songs for decades..."
DeleteCome to think of it, can we take a quick pass through the hundreds of live tapes and complle a set of soul covers that we find more exciting? There are few obvious ones, some already released, such as Edwin Starr's "War," Eddie Floyd's "Raise Your Hand," Gary U.S. Bond's "Quarter To Three," Jackie Wilson's ""(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," the Contours "Do You Love Me..."
This is your mission, should you decide to accept it.
DeleteWell, I'll take a look at the project. I've got a ridiculous amount of Springsteen live shows, enough that it's daunting to think about. :)
DeleteYou could probably pull out the first dozen you think of, and that selection would be as good as anything else. Let's do this, people!
DeleteI'm not criticising the man so much as the album. I picked on the artificiality of his current appearance because it's of a piece with the artificiality of this album. I'm not sure he was ever "real" in the way he'd like us to think, but he got real emotion across and brought it out in his audience like no-one else. I was a convert - and there was something religious about it - in '73, first saw him live in '75 (hands down the best gig I ever saw), I still listen to everything up to Nebrasky, all of it superb, but since then it's been mostly disappointment, Western Stars being a major exception. Like every great star (which he is) he's loved for what he's done rather than what he's doing, which is where indulgence and forgiveness comes in. If he was a restaurant we'd be sending this half-baked crap right back, not saying the chef's amazing for his age.
ReplyDeleteNME was sold down the river to some corporate online babylon whoreville screed wasn't it? I couldn't swallow a word of it stuck in the caw. Yes I'd agree post Nebraska some good moments on Ghost of Tom Joad ....I will give Western Stars another go.
ReplyDeleteLast night I saw a young man called Dietrich support Jeffrey Foucault in a pub who himself was brilliant on a shiny National (Eric Heywood on lap steel) and whilst impressed with structure of his songs it as a producer ( a la Wilson he shines) listen here http://www.dietrichstrause.com/....reminds me of sparklehorse too...think you might find mellifluous my dear Farq :-)
Matt Hancock or Boy George such is the dilemma of modern life which one do you become...
That was quite savage, probably more than needed. I personally don't need Bruce singing MOR versions of soul classics, either, in the same way that I didn't need the mumbled-through orchestral pop of "Western Stars" (ha, opinions vary on that one...).
ReplyDeleteBUT
Bruce has played soul music throughout his career, and in the early stages of The Bruce Springsteen Band it made up the majority of their repertoire. There's even an amusing press notice/flyer praising "that great soul man Bruce Springsteen" or something of the like. (I'm citing from memory). He played soul covers throughout his career. So his bona fides as a soul fan are not in question.
By the way, the one truly disagreeable part of your love letter, Farq, was the "And black" part. Unnecessary, and unnecessarily divisive.
So, yeah, I was also massively underwhelmed by what I've heard from the album. He's doing what he likes now and has earned the right to do so...as audience and critics have the right to say "uh, not great, buddy"; They won't, of course, in the same way that Uncle Neil is regularly farting out mediocre or worse stuff and yet there's a hardcore fan group that will find all of it awesome and whip out the four star reviews. I guess you earn that when you're around for fifty years or more...
I banged together a compilation of Springsteen doing soul-style music, live tracks from '75 to '12.
ReplyDelete01 Sweet Soul Music
02 War
03 Green Onions
04 Back In Your Arms
05 It's Gonna Work Out Fine
06 I'm A Coward
07 Higher and Higher
08 Knock On Wood
09 The Dark End Of The Street
10 Having A Party
11 Raise Your Hand
12 Night Train
All covers except "Back In Your Arms." I avoided 1950's R&B and "rock and roll" covers like "Twist and Shout."
https://mega.nz/file/jM4SAaQQ#cktK_RpUJ0qcdqxuFQ0EF3wi7BPfx5fynYJNu3OiPbM
I didn't dig too deep, that is...I didn't listen to fifteen versions of Raise Your Hand and try to determine which was the best. This is mainly just to show Springsteen's got it in him to pull together such an album.
This is very probably excellent, and thank you, and you may choose your reward from the Showcase of Desirable Things in the Arcade of Fulfilment (closed during renovations).
DeleteHere's Draftervoi's comp, tagged and bagged to appear as an album in your device of choice (at an FDA Approved 192). He's the first to admit this is a first, quick attempt, not intended to be definitive, but in a blindfold comparison test eleven music fans out of ten preferred it to his latest effort, marking it high for grit, sweat, and righteousness.
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/S9x22fRzRey
Thanks for adding a cover!
ReplyDeleteIt also occurs to me that no one brought up Neil Young's similar genre experiment in 1988, "This Note's For You," which I liked better than some of the other projects (Trans, Shocking Pinks...). Hmm....Springsteen doing electronica...maybe a version of Autobahn, given how he liked to write about cars....
I liked TNFY at the time, and at least it was a real band he assembled. That's at the root of any criticism of Only The Strong Survive - it's a Ron Aniello studio project, feat. B. Springsteen. I see that the shrift it's getting over at the Huffman forum is appropriately short.
DeleteYes I enjoyed This Note's For You, but have not listened to it for years.
DeleteSame here. I thought that out of all of the genre experiments Neil tried out in the 80s, This Note's For You was the best of the lot.
DeleteIn retrospect, the whole "I'm not singing for a corporation" seems like the last whiff of Sixties idealism dissipating in the ever-blowin' wind...and I happen to LOVE the Budweiser commercials from the 80s and early 90s. They're not as well known as the Coke commercials from the late 60s, but they're almost as well done.
What I wouldn't give for a good Neil Young Budweiser jingle....
Speaking of how worthwhile later Bruce albums are, I maintain that song for song "Magic" is one of his finest, but the mechanical, overly processed production by Brendan O'Brien is a serious setback, one I also had to overcome in my appreciation of this album.
ReplyDeleteIt gives me a headache. When I listen to his first, or rather this version of it-
Deletehttps://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-boss-recovery-dept-bring-on-band.html
or the absolutely peerless TWTI&TESS, the air and light is stunning. I put it down, partially, to Bruce's depression. It's like the later albums are clogged with meds.
I haven't decided how I feel about the Bruce album yet. I don't begrudge him having a little fun, I just fail to understand why he didn't do it live with a great band like the Draftervol versions. And a shout out to Draftervol for not only sharing some great cuts but correctly tagging all the correct years. It drives me crazy when I get a "Best of" compilation and the tagged year is the year the compilation was released, not the year when the song came out. That doesn't help me. It's like when the DJ says "That was 'Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?' from the Stones' "More Hot Rocks." No. No, it wasn't.
ReplyDeleteSorry to go off on a tangent, just thanks to everybody, and to Draftervol in particular.
Older readers may remember Hugh Candyside from his years as Sneedhorn Crumbly's announcer on the long-running NBC radio show "The Crumbly Comedy Hour". His catchphrase "take it away, th' Sneedster!" entered common slang in the late 'forties, famously used by Martha Raye in Paramount's "Ski Chalet".
DeleteHi, Hugh! Yeah, as I move into my second decade of documenting live radio shows I'm moving towards more robust file tagging. It became an issue with the Grateful Dead setting up a take-down of Asha Bhosle; the constant archival releases by the band and tag-team partners, plus the annual 30 Days of the Dead left me with conundrums like "Is this Sugar Magnolia (Winterland 1977.06.09) or Sugar Magnolia (Winterland 1973.11.10)? Because I thought it was Sugar Magnolia (Berkeley Community Theatre 8-25-72)...."
DeleteHence the improved file tagging.
Now, there's a WEIRD future I didn't see coming. "In times to come, you
shall not get the promised lunar vacation at the Tycho Crater Black Monolith Resort & Convention Center, but shall discuss file tagging with people from all corners of the Earth."
This is why I heart this blog -- I subject I could give 2 sharts about, not being a Springsteen fan and not the least bit interested in what he's doing now, is the most interesting and thoughtful discussion I've read all morning (all week most probably). So glad you've come back to the Isle Farq -- I've missed your commentary and the debates it often inspires!
ReplyDeletea fairly measured take from NY https://waynerobins49.substack.com/p/springsteen-is-a-soul-man
ReplyDeleteThanks, Trailer. He likes it a bit more than I do. It's not a bad record, it's...it's that I thought if Springsteen would take the time to tackle such a project, it would have been better than it is.
Delete