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The River
Springsteen provides one of the biggest
challenges for
this list, only in part because he has such a lengthy catalog of great
albums. The other part of the challenge is that none of the albums,
strong
as they are, match his exhausting live shows, and that's where his
greatness
really comes through. The River, I think, comes the closest.
It's
long, but it's length is a virtue, allowing Bruce to shift from light
toss-offs
like "Hungry Heart" to dark, reflective material like "Point Blank"
without
jarring the listener. Plus, I saw the Boss twice on this tour, several
months apart, which allowed me to see how much thought he puts into
crafting
a set. There aren't many musicians willing to invest so much of
themselves
in their music after they've committed it to record. |
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Darkness On The Edge Of Town (contributed
by John Wareham)
I'm not the one who said this first but you take
the
guy and gal from the songs "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road" who
romantically
lit out for something better than the "town full of losers" they
found themselves in, and you look at 'em 4, 5, 6 years later, and,
well,
here they are in these songs. They're stuck back where they
started
from. Springsteen has the characters tell their stories realizing
they're stuck and yet they've made some peace with that. They
still
fight on for something better although in a smaller, more meager way.
There's
the line in the song "Darkness on the Edge of Town" about "lives on the
line where dreams are found and lost" and I think that's what this
record
is about. It's the grim side of the dream the characters find and
they're figuring out how to exist there. The band plays, and
Springsteen
sings, like they know exactly what it's like to be there. |
