Word: soundness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...drummers on the albums. Max Weinberg, who handles drums on this album, plods unimaginatively compared to Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez, who lays down the beat on The Wild, the Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle. Moreover, Springsteen has given this album a very dense texture, creating a wall of sound effect on many of the cuts. Springsteen has used this approach befire, but on this record he lays certain things too thickly, specifically the less-than-sprightly rhythm section and his own vocals. "Badlands," basically a good cut--as energetic and rambling as the best Springsteen can be--suffers...
...chorus--"Summer's here and the time is right, for racing in the streets"--does a twist on the innocence of an earlier time in rock. But this sight of the traps awaiting the outlaw man of the road, who always thought he was free, seems to sound the bottom of Springsteen's cars and speed theme. Where else he can go, having once exposed it as a delusion...
...awful turkeys, "Adam Raised a Cain" and "Streets of Fire." Almost identical, they throb like a migraine with leaden, new-wave-inspired beats while Springsteen growls incoherently and lays down overamplified guitar riffs. These songs seem to be his answer to the anger of punk rock, but they sound more like annoying filler material...
...jazz borders on bedlam. At its best-as in the Newport concerts of Taylor and Coleman-the music has internal rhythms and themes that give it direction. For 50 minutes, Taylor-hallmark shades and knit cap in place-and his sidemen wrapped Carnegie Hall in a solid sheet of sound, each member of the group swapping and developing ideas from the others. A frenzied, virtuoso performer, Taylor roiled tempests on the bass of the piano, then modulated into short phrases and lyrical passages that contained echoes of Bartók and Debussy...
...elements as it goes. On some of his funkier tunes at Newport, Rollins' group used an electric piano and Caribbean conga-drum rhythms. Pianist McCoy Tyner, 39, worked over the keyboard with his great John Coltrane-inspired chords. But backing him up was a new, lush sound provided by a chorus from his latest recording group and a genie of a percussionist who appeared and disappeared, armed with a startling array of gourds and mallet-like instruments...