48 thoughts on “there’s an opera out on the Turnpike”

1. Get Greetings from Ashbury Park! Its a must own!

2. Hey Wil I was 18 in 1984 so I was primed for Born in the USA. I gotta tell you though if you get the chance go see Bruce in concert, it will change your life.

3. Born to Run, and especially Jungleland, changed my life in 1985. I couldn’t get away from “Born in the USA”, but an old friend and roomie from New Jersey had a vinyl of Born to Run, so I decided to try it out for a few plays. It was mostly background music while I cleaned the house and cooked, but suddenly “Jungleland” and its lyrics wormed their way into my brain. I was hooked. It was, and remains, my favorite Springsteen album. It has a unique ability to make me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been to.

4. He’s posted the recording of his show last week in Chicago for free to make up for his NYC show being canceled this weekend. It’s only free through midnight tonight, though.

   http://live.brucespringsteen.net/live-music/0,13586/Bruce-Springsteen—The-E-Street-Band-mp3-flac-download-1-19-2016-United-Center-Chicago-IL.html

   1. Thank you!!!!

5. FYI: The more you listen to that LP, the more you’ll like it.

6. Nebraska and Ghost of Tom Joad. love them.

   also, i’m going to choose to believe you didn’t intend to slight Joni Mitchell. because she’s a goddess.

7. Good to hear! You have a lot of great music ahead of you. Give the recent Wrecking Ball album a shot too. It’s one of his very finest.

8. My sister and her sister-in-law came to town to see Springsteen in concert (her sister-in-law is a Springsteen groupie), so I thought I’d a) go with them to the concert and b) get his latest album [Wrecking Ball]. It was tremendous — shades of the folk protesters of the 60s/70s — and I’m working on going through his other albums. And oh, yeah, the concert was amazing, too, so you need to see him live. [Also read Joe Posnanski’s various blog entries on Springsteen, it will give you some additional insight.]

9. I was in junior high when Born to Run came out. I distinctly remember hearing it on the radio and wondering who is this Springsteen guy…well, I probably was more thinking who is the guy, because I’m sure I didn’t really know his name for a while. I’m not the biggest Springsteen fan in the world, but that song…man…it is an all time favorite, and always takes me back to sitting in my room and listening to the local AM station on a crappy, battery operated transistor radio, singing along to that song.

   Great memory.

10. Give “The Rising” a listen, but if you get triggered by 9/11 stuff, maybe give it a miss. It isn’t all about 9/11, and there is happiness there too, it was released shortly after that, and has some of his most powerful stuff. Certainly the best he has done this century.

11. Springsteen is one of the greatest live rock performers who’s ever lived. Go see a show wherever/whenever you can, but also, he does play harder some places than others. His Ohio shows are especially good. I’ve never seen him in Jersey but I imagine that’s as good as it gets.

    Also, I’ll second the Ghost of Tom Joad recommendation. One of the best American folk albums…I was going to say, of the past 30 years, but really, ever.

12. It’s never a bad thing to discover music that speaks to you, even if it’s a different album than one that was popular in your time. Sometimes the classics speak a whole other language. As long as it’s new to you, and it makes you feel good, then it’s never a bad thing. If you ever are looking for something totally random and new, try just scanning album covers and find one that speaks to you for its art, and then give that a try. You may find even more musical surprises out there that you never knew of before that weren’t even on the radio.

13. I’m from New Jersey, so having at least a Springsteen period is required while growing up. (Seriously I think it’s in our state constitution or something.) My personal favorite album of his is Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s the next album after Born to Run but there was a considerable gap because of legal problems between Springsteen and his manager. After Nebraska things start to go downhill, there are still good songs to be found but also more misses. In his later career he went thought a gospel-inspired period that is a pretty big departure from the early albums.

    But I add my voice to those that say you must see Springsteen in concert once in your life. Even in his 60’s, he and E-Street are the most professional, hard-working rock band on the planet. They never take a night off.

14. All I can say is that I was in college when Born to Run came out. 21 years later, I ran across the finish line of the LA Marathon (my first), screaming those lyrics (because I was really in pain but did not want to be taken up by ambulance). Glad you found us.

15. From someone who’s of your generation (I’m three years older), I got into Springsteen with Born in the U.S.A., too but I very quickly bought the back catalogue and Born to Run and especially Darkness on the Edge of Town stayed with me ever since then. I might get flak from the youngsters from this but with the exception of Ghost of Tom Joad, none of his later albums came close. I listen to them now and then but while the lyrics stay great the E-Street sound has changed and that is a huge part of the appeal to me. He has been and still is amazing live, though, and he will drag you off your seat and not let go until the gig is over, which still is beyond the three hour mark.

16. Interesting that you bring up the travesty that is the Dirty Work/Undercover of the Night era of the Stones. Hi, I’m known on the internet far and wide as Far Away Eyes. The name comes from the ’78 album “Some Girls” and is probably one of my favorite tongue in cheek country ditties they’ve done. I’ve been their fan since I was 6 (and I was 6 when Steel Wheels came out) I know their catalog front and back. And yet, every time either Harlem Shuffle or the far more embarrassing One Hit to the Body plays at work, I rage inside (outside). Usually, my comment is “This song hurts me. It hurts!” They’re not good. I’m glad you found their other works. If you haven’t dug around more, I suggest the B-Side to Jumping Jack Flash titled Child of the Moon.

    As for Springsteen, I like a lot of his stuff, but haven’t really dug deep into his catalog. It might be interesting to give his music a whir.

17. are actually purchasing the records? i love the grittiness of the music on the actual albums! (Rock on) \m/

    1. oh, and i am actually old enough to be the parent kids go talk to, to find out about things like that from days of old…

18. Wil, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’, to me anyway, ranks as one of the greatest guitar solos in rock and roll, ever. Keith Richards immortalized the tune.
    Read Stanley Booth’s book, “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones”. Stanley toured with the Stones for several years. He’s one of my very best friends and lives down the street from me. I had dinner with him a couple of nights ago and told him about your great blog. He’s being honored by the University of Georgia next month for his work and lecturing at the event.
    Hope you’re having a terrific day.

19. “Greetings from Asbury Park”, dude. Toss that on and listen to what “Blinded by the Light” is SUPPOSED to sound like.

    I can’t imagine what my view of music would be like without “Thunder Road”. Hands down the most romantic song I’ve ever heard. That incredibly intricate opening, with the little music box tinkling (I can just see the one Mary has on her dresser, with the little ballerina that spins when it’s opened), to her dance across the porch, to that enormous, operative SLAM of a chord, invoking the car door slamming and the car taking off down the highway. It’s positively cinematic, that song. But the best part for me is the beginning:

    “The screen door slams; Mary’s dress sways
    Like a vision she dances across the porch
    as the radio plays…

    Have a little faith! There’s magic in the night
    You ain’t a beauty but hey, you’re alright
    And that’s alright with me…”

    Man, that hit me like lightning the first time I heard it, and it still can bring tears to my eyes. Here’s a man seeing his girl, and he sees her clearly, with no illusion, no pretensions – and yet she’s STILL a vision, still the one he wants, still his image of freedom. How many of us have ever been looked at like that? Ever been seen like that, with that kind of honesty and yet at the same time, adoration?

    Springsteen has always been amazing. I envy you the journey you’re about to take with him. Just one thing: be sure to TURN IT UP LOUD. (And don’t miss “Rosalita”. You will dance instantly.)

20. Jungleland is probably my favorite Springsteen song. I’ve been a fan since high school, which means Born To Run was my first Springsteen album. The earlier albums are definitely worth a listen, but Born to Run is THE album. If you’ve never had the opportunity to see him in concert (I have!) then I strongly recommend hitting up his website and getting a couple of the available full concerts. Try for ones from different eras, but make sure you get Jungleland on at least one of them. He’s currently on a tour looking back at The River (so doing most, if not all of the songs from that double album) and there’s a concert from Chicago already available (he offered it for free for a couple of days, maybe that offer is still going on!). Springsteen in concert is simply amazing.

21. I consider the man a true American poet. His latest recordings are a bit off-putting for me, because his religiosity has really come to the forefront, but I can listen to his old stuff over and over and over again.

22. You’re welcome from New Jersey. You have to get “Darkness on the Edge of Town”. “The Rising” is an excellent work considering it’s release post 9/11, too.

23. Same experience! I hated Born in the USA and never gave him a second thought until I heard Pink Cadillac recently. I finally get why he’s an icon.

24. Better late than never. 😉 G-uno

25. 100% with you. I liked it just fine, but the intense fan hood was not part of my experience. I was a musical weirdo anyway – heavily influenced by six older brothers and their collections – Adam Ant to Tom Waits to Neil Diamond. Loved ’em all. They say that smell is a great memory anchor, but I love to be surprised by a tuned memory. Captain of Her Heart was vaguely present in those days for me, but when I hear it now, I can see the dogwoods along a windy two lane highway in the Ozarks. I can smell the weird eggy, chemical, chickenshit smell of chicken houses, hazy light, and thick wet air. All brought back by the simple trill of a piano. Good stuff.

26. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. You’re welcome

27. My favorite song has always been The River. It takes the rebellious hopefulness of Born to Run and asks if it’s possible to still be hopeful after things haven’t turned out like you dreamed they would. It’s on a double album that has a lot of pretty serious songs but also has songs like Cadillac Ranch! I went to high school in Amarillo and had never heard of the Cadillac Ranch, and it was just outside of town!
    Nothing beats the Born to Run album, though! I saw Bruce and the E Street Band on his Born in the U.S.A. tour around 1980. They did four hours to a packed arena and you could reach out and feel the excitement and emotion. Best concert I ever went to!

28. I recently had the pleasure of introducing a middle-aged friend (no offence intended) to “Born To Run”. He’d dismissed the (seemingly) jingoistic Springsteen in the early eighties and couldn’t believe he’d missed out on so much great music over the decades.

    Personally I can’t get through a bad week without listening to BTR, full volume, at least once.

    You’ve really got to see him live while you can !

29. Technically that’s “band that re-did Harlem Shuffle”.

30. For me, it’s the saxophone I can never get beyond. Nebraska’s perfect for avoiding that.

    If you’re coming around to Springsteen, you might want to reconsider Joni Mitchell. Nothing’s cooler than Joni Mitchell at her best.

31. Wil, go to a concert. Seriously. Sit in the front row, sit in the back, doesn’t matter. You’ll have a blast. And check out Tracks. There’ll be stuff you don’t care for but you might also find obscure songs that really connect (Loose Change was one for me.)

32. Springsteen is one of my very favorites. He invades the molecules of my soul, and stays there, and expresses what my cold, emotionless brain does not. I say this without hyperbole but his music has soothed me, uplifted me, and told me there is hope at the other side of depression and divorce, and sorrow is a state of life one can feel and not be crushed by. He is perhaps the only non-bluesman I listen to who can do all these things for me. Land of Hope and Dreams has been a personal anthem for me, city of ruins became not a 9/11 eulogy but a personal one over the destruction of a long relationship. He is the poet of my crazy brain, and has always been, for me, what so many think Bob Dylan is. To each there own, I suppose. An inspiration as always, Wil.

33. Never was a huge fan of Born in the USA or a lot of what followed but everything before it is what I think of when I think of Springsteen. I was also born in ’72 but my sister – being 6 years older and in full control of the 8-track – played Born to Run and the River until they melted. It left an impression and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

34. Heh…now that you’ve revealed you’re into Springsteen, you also get to be into the SPRINGSTEEN FANS. Quite a bunch, those folks…

    I grew up in a town called Marlboro, NJ (part of the “Freehold Regional High School District,” which means many of our teachers had taught (tried to teach?) Bruce in high school, and many of the things he sang about we’re in our around town (I lived a few minutes from “Highway 9” and the “Main Street” he’s singing about is known as “Route 79” to us. Anyway, when he got married, they handed out black armbands for the girls in my high school to wear – it was that kind of crazy.

    Enjoy the music, and enjoy the fandom. Just be prepared for hundreds of “you HAVE to listen to this” messages…

    1. (perk) Marlboro? GO MUSTANGS!!!! (class of ’84 here)

       I grew up in Colts Neck, also adjoining Freehold and where Bruce now lives. Both are small towns, small enough so that my dad and uncles, who grew up in Freehold, remembered Bruce as a kid and thought it quite hilarious that he became a huge rock star. I remember being eight years old and hearing “Born to Run” and everyone freaking out because HE’S FROM HERE!!! The first song of his I liked was “Badlands,” since my brother had “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Then came the “Born in the U.S.A.” juggernaut my senior year of high school, where that summer seemingly the entire population of New Jersey saw at least one of the ten legendary shows at the Brendan Byrne Arena (I got tickets for a graduation present). If there is one thing you must do in life, you have to see Bruce live. I don’t care what kind of music you like. My dad hated rock, but my brother and I took him to see Bruce a few years ago and he LOVED the show. However, I think I got SO much Bruce in my growing up years that I only listen to his stuff occasionally now. I also used to see him around a lot in the mid-nineties when he and his family moved to Colts Neck–I worked at the town’s only convenience store and sold him many a coffee and an Asbury Park Press. The first time I was like WWLJASDYFPAYZ-9DFYHGDBFN;A but after that it was “hey, Bruce.” “Hey, Trish, how ya doin’?” Only a couple of things separated him from a construction or factory worker–he wore a diamond earring and drove a new Mercedes.

       1. Trish – I’m Class of ’87, which means I was a freshman when you were a senior. I bet we know some of the same people. Were you in the marching band, by any chance?

          Anyway, the way you describe your feelings about Springsteen (“I think I got SO much Bruce in my growing up years that I only listen to his stuff occasionally now”) is how I, and most people from the area, feel. I’ve never met him personally, but I’ve had too many “close encounters” to count (so-and-so met an E Street Band member in the restaurant last night, so-and-so said that Bruce showed up at XYZ bar last night, so-and-so’s kids went to school with Bruce’s kids, so-and-so used to bake cookies for the band and they’d let her backstage at the shows, and so on and so on).

          All of that said, try explaining any of it to a tried & true Bruce fan today – they just don’t get it.

          I will say this: as he (and I) have gotten older, I tend to like his music more than I did. The songs have become more musically interesting, the lyrics are deeper (our generation’s Dylan?), the stage show is high energy, and the singing is more than good enough to carry it all off. Or maybe it’s just that I’m not surrounded by people who talk & think about him in every waking moment. Either way, I’m not going Wil’s route (buying all the old albums, etc.), but I can listen/play some of his better stuff now and really enjoy it…

          1. Brian–I wasn’t in band and not exactly a social butterfly during my years at the ‘Boro, but I imagine a few names would sound familiar to both of us. And on occasion I miss Marlboro Pizza. I live in Richmond, Virginia now and while good pizza can be found here it’s not Jersey pizza. 😀

             I as well have grown to appreciate Bruce’s music more as I get older, although I’d compare him more to Pete Seeger than Dylan because he tells great stories. I do, however, find it amusing that he’s held up as a champion for the working man and he has literally never worked a real job in his life; that he’s cheered as an everyman while buying his daughter half-million-dollar horses. Still, he manages to be down to earth and I have never once heard anything about him being a jerk to anyone, unlike the area’s other rock star Jon Bon Jovi, who is an absolute douchebag (actually the only decent human being in that band is Richie Sambora).

35. Oh, yay! I am glad you have had a chance to dig deeper.

    We are the same age, but I was introduced to Springsteen when we bought my dad Darkness on The Edge of Town for his birthday. My favorites are Darkness, Born to Run, and the River. (My first-ever concert was the River tour when I was in 4th grade, and boy did that ruin me for most other concerts. My 2nd was the Clash and the Beat at Palladium, just cementing my unrealistic expectations….I was a lucky kid.) We sang a lot on longer drives, and Springsteen songs were my favorite for singalongs– I think this is where I developed my love and preference for harmony over melody when singing.

36. Nebraska is a work of art. It’s great that youtube & the various streaming services provide a way to discover new music. As kids – we pretty much had to lay down money on rumors & sparse radio play.

    In a completely unrelated genre… check out Bennie Goodman – guaranteed to put a smile on your face. If you want to get your wife dancing with you in the living room – this is the album that’ll do it. Bennie was the guy your grandparents listened to (and your great grandparents probably disapproved of… lol)

    http://www.allmusic.com/album/bg-in-hi-fi-mw0000199310

37. Your list of your parent’s music made me laugh. Memories of my parents involve Hank Williams Sr. The Gold Collection and the soundtrack from The Sting.

38. I’m still very ‘meh’ about Springsteen in general (listening to Jungleland from your link above as I write this, and it’s not really doing it for me). I tend to like his songs better when they are covered by someone else, so maybe it’s just his voice that I don’t like. I realize I’m in the minority on this. And I’ve never seen him in concert, which everyone always describes as mind blowing.

    1. I have a similar feeling about Springsteen, I suspect what kept me further away from it back in the day (and currently) was his voice. I think I just don’t care for his tone. I do enjoy the covers though!

39. I always think of Bruce Springsteen as the ultimate sell out, maybe not in a bad way but I discovered Born to Run somehow and loved the album and then by the time I finally saw him at the Born in the USA tour the music seemed like a completely different style but popular. Never bothered me but always made me hope that people would hear the earlier stuff and see how he became jaded but popular at the same time. All great stuff I think

40. Every recording artist/band goes through changes as do we as individuals. If we are lucky we find that one album from that one artist that speaks to us for whatever reason. I was never much of a Bruce fan while his songs were popular, they just didn’t hit me at the time. Except for Blinded By The Light. I can still hear it playing on my little AM transistor radio. Maybe I’m On Fire too. At some point in the mid to late 80’s, The River hit me like a ton of bricks, I don’t remember why although at some point in this period I bought the Live 1975–85 box set (LP’s). Great stuuf.

41. Listen to him live. Or his covers I find wonderful. Whenever I’m down I pull him up and find myself happier. When I’m cleaning house, I find myself dancing no getting those Fitbit numbers up there. When I’m in the car, epic. There is a Boss album for every moment. I resisted liking him as much as I could for years because my mother listened to him. However in college, he was there for me and has never let me down. 🙂 dorky I know.

    Now time for sleep Thunder Road

42. I could have written this exact blog. Only a month or possibly two ago I heard a song by Bruce Springsteen that I have heard hundreds of times on the radio etc but never listened to the words… never “heard” them, until I played a cover of the song. It was done with just an acoustic guitar and a guy. I realized for whatever reason the song just never spoke to me until now. I haven’t had any come into the light with Springsteen but I gained a respect for him through the lyrics of that one song. Some of the other bands you mentioned affected me the same way growing up. There are some that I still don’t get but I am completely appreciative that they did make others happy. Nice entry Wil. This one directly spoke to me.

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