Happy Birthday, Bruce Springsteen

[filkertom]

I missed it -- yesterday The Boss turned 60. I can only hope I rock a tenth as hard as he does when I hit that age.

Favorite Springsteen songs? "Thunder Road", "Born To Run", "Pink Cadillac", "Blinded By The Light" (any version), "Because The Night", the amazing "Jungle Land", "Rosalita"....

Comments

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

Glory Days.

It wasn't until the "Born in the USA" album that I really appreciated his music. I liked his songwriting right from the first, but there seemed to be something about the production of his earlier recordings that I couldn't get past.

[eruvanna.livejournal.com]

The song he wrote for the movie Philadelphia.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

This.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

"Thunder Road" is the fave, followed closely by "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run," "The Rising" (schmalzy yes, but inspiring nonetheless), and "The Ghost of Tom Joad" sends the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up.

And he so totally kicks it live...I love that in any artist. :-)

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Oooh, "Dancing In The Dark" has another of my favourite Springsteen lyrics:

"Stay on the streets of this town
and theyll be carving you up alright
They say you gotta stay hungry
Hey, babe, I'm just about starving tonight"

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

There's so many great Springsteen songs, but if I had to pick one, I think it would be Tunnel of Love.

One day, I want to write a lyric as good as this:

"It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And youve got to learn to live with what you cant rise above
if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love"

bruce Springsteen

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

"Fourth of July, Asbury Park"/"Sandy" (good to listen to both the original version and the cover by the Hollies), "Spirit in the Night," "Incident on 57th Street," and there is one on his second album that contains the couplet "so walk tall....or baby, don't walk at all." This last one is so often ignored that I can't even remember the title. It also contains "She won't take the train -- no, she won't take the train. She's afraid the tracks are going to slow her down...." I saw Springsteen on his "The River" tour -- a spectacular concert.

Nate

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Re: bruce Springsteen

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

There's also a cover of "Fourth of July/Sandy" by Richard Shindell on his terrific live album Courier. Definitely recommended.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I bought a new hard drive a few weeks ago and have been going through my piles of MP3s one band at a time, making sure they're absolutely clean (proper genre, band, album name, every tag right, album art embedded) as I go through.

Yesterday I did Bruce Springsteen, without knowing it was his birthday. It took a while as we have a bunch of his albums. I also finally did some guy named Tom Smith yesterday. That was difficult too, since the music is almost impossible to classify by genre. But I like it like that.

[tommytoony.livejournal.com]

"Land of Hope & Dreams" got me thru some very difficult times. "The Rising", "Thunder Road", "Born to Run", "Jungleland"...okay, the entire Born to Run album...good chunks of The River...this could be a LONG list.

I HIGHLY recommend to everyone watching "Live in New York City", which gets run on VH1 Classic from time to time, but get the DVD if you can. The bonus disc is actually longer than the original HBO special and has some stunning performances. hat and "Live in Barcelona" is good fun as well. Captures what a Bruce/E Street show is like...although seeing him actually live is a religious experience.

[dark-towhead.livejournal.com]

The entire Nebraska album, actually, but especially the groovy-eerie "State Trooper". And "My Home Town" from Born in the USA. And his version of "Buffalo Gals" is a treat, too.

[jeffreycwells.livejournal.com]

If you have not had a chance to hear Melissa Etheridge and Bruce Springsteen's unplugged duet on Thunder Road, I urge you to find a way to do so.

[huskiebear.livejournal.com]

Bruce was one of my first major musical obsessions. Bought every book and bootleg LP I could find and listened to his first four albums non-stop through most of high school and college. Wore through at least three copies of The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle before CDs came along. I think it's still my favorite (especially "Incident on 57th Street" and "Wild Billy's Circus Story"), although "Meeting Across The River" and "Night" still give me chills.
Must go dig out cds...

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

For some reason I could really relate to "For You" and "Hungry Heart". And the ENTIRE Born To Run album.

[ldwheeler.livejournal.com]

My favorites include "Hungry Heart," "Human Touch," "Darkness on the Edge of Town," "My Hometown," "I'm Going Down," "Adam Raised a Cain," "The River," "One Step Up," "Tunnel of Love," "The Rising" and a number I'm probably forgetting.

Favorite Springsteen-related story: In college, the guy in the dorm room next door was perhaps the world's biggest Boss fan. Mark decided to do a surprise proposal to his girlfriend by taking her for a drive up a country hill -- the college was in farm country in the Genesee valley, so everywhere you went was a country hill -- and at the top they saw my car with four of us milling about, looking under the hood, etc. So Mark pulled over "to see what was wrong" -- and then the four of us promptly became his backup harmony singers while he proceeded to sing the entirety of "I Wanna Marry You" to his lady.

Dorky and corny and silly ... and sweet. Their relationship didn't last, but the pleasant memory has.

[jenk]

"Badlands", "Darkness on the Edge of Town", "Land of Hope & Dreams", most of Born to Run ... "Independance Day" taught me how to deal with my father, and "Point Blank" reminds me of my mother, and yes that's probably screwed up but that's okay.

"American Skin" is amazing, I'm just sorry it needed to be written.

[hbruton.livejournal.com]

I've always loved "I'm on Fire".

[john-d-owen.livejournal.com]

i picked up on Bruce with the second album, and have loved just about anything he's done since. Favourites? Impossible to say, there are just too many, and his standards are just so high, "Tracks" proved that with even his out-takes sounding better than many a famous names mainstream efforts. If you get a chance to watch his televised Glastonbury appearance this year, grab it, as it was fantastic, the best perfomance I've seen from the Glastonbury festival, ever! Showed all the younger bands how to really work an audience. Hard to believe he's sixty, but then the first album did come out in 1972, thirty-seven years ago. What a long, strange and fascinating trip it has been.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

It sometimes seems that Bruce almost can't write anything bad. But my all-time favorites include "Thunder Road", "Jungleland", "Meeting Across the River", "The River", "Independence Day", "Johnny 99", "Sherry Darling", and pretty much every other "summer" song ("Out in the Street", "Darlington County", etc.) he's ever written. All played live, because that's at least 1000 times better than anything he's ever laid down in the studio. (It's no surprise that I have over 60 of his concerts on the hard drive, and probably another 40-50 archived on discs.)

[wick-deer.livejournal.com]

I revere Jungleland.

I also love Lost in the Flood, Racing in the Streets and the electric version of Youngstown.

His best song, although I can't listen to often, may be "Shut out the Light", a Born in the USA B side about a Vietnam Vet coming home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkyhMLFDzr0&feature=player_embedded