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Fovurite Sprignsteen song?

Because I am bored I have been listening to a lot of Bruce He has the backing of brilliant musicians. 

If you like “The Boss” then what is your favourite dong?

For me it must be “Point Blank” It is almost entirely the biography of a former girlfriend. She told me that her father (something of a child abuser) was found dead in the forest outside Montreal. She said the Montreal police knew what he did but for reasons I could not understand, could not get him convicted. I suppose then, in those days, children did not want to talk about those things. She reckons a Montreal Police patrol picked him up. Took him to a place outside Montreal. Then shot him in the head.

@ Favorite ‘dong’?

I laugh at myself

I meant “favourite song”.

Sorry.

Obviously “Thunder Road” or ‘The Wreck on the Highway’ Obviously. 

 

 

@ Preiclean 15.42

Great call there.

Do you think that Burt Lancaster knew he was going to die? I am not sure how to call it. It is what it is. (Although  Burt did not die before about another 20 years after that film.)

I watched 

Racing In The Street.  Even better version released on The Promise (various DOTEOT remixes, rejected tracks etc.).

Thunder Road solo at Hyde Park was pretty epic too.

My hometown, or tougher than the rest, in both cases the performances from Springsteen on Broadway (on Netflix). As much for the lush warm tone, and skillful playing, of the piano as for anything else.

Philadelphia is v good too.

When working on a PE fund, I also take a perverse pleasure in humming Wrecking Ball to myself during particularly tedious meetings.

Far too many to mention.

Leaving songs not cited above:

Song for Orphans, Janey Needs a Shooter and Burnin’ Train off the current album are great efforts.

Long Walk Home is great.

Land Of Hope and Dreams is great.

My City of Ruins just destroys me.

Badlands, Promised Land, Darkness.

I Wish I Were Blind.

Backstreets.

The Ghost of Tom Joad.

How Can A Poor Man Stand These Times And Live? from the Seeger Sessions live show.

I think Dylan probably edges it for Greatest Living American Songwriter.

But Springsteen for Greatest Living American, hands down (Dylan’s a bit of a c**t, in truth).

He didn’t drive anywhere and even then, his blood alcohol was way low. Those charges were dropped.

He admitted drinking a couple of small shots of tequila in a national park, which is an offence, apparently (fooking weird place, America).

He was fined $500 and ordered to pay $40 in legal fees and said: "I think I can pay that immediately, your honour."

Legend. Yeah, you got me and of course I’ll pay the fine, your honour.

 

Just listening to to 41 Shots again.

What an amazing song.  It keeps reaching these glorious discordant crescendos of American tragedy.

”We’re baptised in these waters

And in each other’s blood”

41 Shots got him into a whole heap of trouble with the police (even though it’s pretty sympathetic when you consider the facts he was singing about and even though (honest) police officers have a pretty positive image in his work and he’s at his best as a chronicler of working class American life and culture).

He still played it every night anyway.

His podcasts with Obama are great as well. Check them out.

I really didn’t get the police response. Other than they they are a bit dumb and easily riled by loudmouths. Like everyone nowadays.

The song is very subtle; the key lines are written from the perspective of the police. It’s more about the tragedy of American gun culture than race.

I love This Hard Land - it was so good that that the Boss had it written for several years before he decided to include it on any album that he put out in the meantime. 

I also think that Across the Border is a great song that so vividly expresses the hopes and fears of the many Latino 'Dreamers' who so desperately have wanted (and still want) to make their way to the USA by whatever means: although even the Boss himself admits that the wonderful cover of this song by Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Neil Young  takes this song to yet another level. 

Agree.  I understand that. I thought the song was really very carefully worded and didn’t take sides.

Compared to the current tribal debate it’s very subtle.

 

I know quite a few Springsteen fans who think that it all started with Born to Run; but this in fact was his third album (although it was the one which propelled him to fame). New York City Serenade off his second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle is a wonderful song imo, and of a type that the Boss has so rarely written since then, on the grounds that he did thereafter consciously aim to put out songs that were more 'radio friendly' in length. 

Going with a left field shout of Because The Night - Bruce’s version, not the Patti Smith one. I saw him play it in the Circus Maximus in Rome after the sun had set and oh my lord. So much emotion. The whole gig was utterly incredible - naturally - but that was the highlight. All hail the Boss. 

Fair.

I only really know the tracks on those albums that still get played live or are on greatest hits compilations, never really given Greetings or the Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle a listen.

Although they strike me as lyrically indebted to Dylan, a man and a band sporadically inspired but yet to really hit their stride.

I think Song for Orphans and If I Were A Priest on Letter To You  date from that era, though, and are highly enjoyable. Janey Needs A Shooter similar but I think Darkness-era.

And what greater testament to the Boss’ legend status is there than writing possibly (in my opinion) one of the greatest songs ever and then (i) not including it on the album because it didn’t fit the context of the other songs; and (ii) giving it to a fellow artist to put their own spin on it and release it (to huge success). 

When I'm really p*ssed off about someone or something on being told/advised to do something that I'm opposed to then I often listen first to the Boss's 'No Surrender' before making a call on what to do!

Oh and how could I forget Racing in the Streets, especially when I saw it performed live with just the Boss, the Professor on piano and the Big Man on sax. Pure magic. Even the rest of the E street band felt compelled to applaud loudly what must have been a 15 minute rendition when it was finally ended! 

I love Philadelphia but for one thing...

The line goes

"Ain't no angel gonna greet me
It's just you and I my friend"

SPOT THE GRAMMATICAL ERROR! This is unnatural, ugly and wrong!

My hometown, or tougher than the rest, in both cases the performances from Springsteen on Broadway (on Netflix). As much for the lush warm tone, and skillful playing, of the piano as for anything else.

thanks for the netflix tip, Mr P 

You're welcome. I love not just those 2 songs but also the spoken introductions to them. About what is meaningful in our lives: the first one about place, the second about relationships.  

KG - er, the verb to be generally takes a nominative person/pronoun, in most languages.

Strictly, “it’s me” is incorrect grammatically albeit common oral usage. So “you and I, my friend” is correct. 

Unless you’re getting at the double negative “Ain’t no...” which is fairly common vernacular oral usage (albeit not brilliant written style) and the context and meaning are clear.

I think that’s one of the most haunting lines, actually - isn’t the next line “and my clothes don’t fit me no more”?

It's a simple subject/object distinction Jack.

You would not say it is correct to say 

"Ain't no angel gonna greet me
It's just I my friend"

Clearly "it" is the subject of the verb, and he is using "I" as the object, which unless you are Jamaican is WROOOONG. 

Yes, KG, that’s rather the point, “to be” is correlated with the subject, not the object.

If someone asked who was the lawyer, you would not say “me is the lawyer”, you would say “I am the lawyer”.

“Me is it” is equally wrong - you mean “I am it” or “it is I”.

I agree the distinction is rarely drawn in oral usage, but I promise you “it’s me” is not - grammatically speaking - entirely correct.

 

Hmm, Jack/George, the issue here surely is that we are not talking about any simple subject/object analysis, as in a phrase such as :"it is me" the pronoun is being used in a disjunctive way and by convention the use of "me" in this context is generally regarded as correct - so I understand!

I don’t care, really, to be honest. One of the charms of English (and what makes it very easy to learn superficially but very hard to learn to fluency) is its total disregard for rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax.

It is much easier to write and speak idiomatic German as a foreigner, than it is to write and speak idiomatic English. Even despite the much more complicated grammar and syntax of German.

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