Word: springsteen
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WHEN JANIS JOPLIN SANG, you could hear the years of whiskey and smoke she'd seen. And while Bruce Springsteen is usually as full-voiced as a coonhound hot on the trail, he has that same degenerate raspiness, hoarsely trailing off at the end of a line, or scream-whispering into a mike. In Springsteen's first two albums. Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, his voice jibed perfectly with his driving music and his lyric description of growing up in New Jersey. But his new album, Born To Run, is inconsistent...
...sitting-on-the-front-porch-swing-sniffing-the-honey-suckle-with-yer-sweetie, but here, makes mush of the vocal. The longest song on the record, "Jungleland," also suffers from over-orchestration: a string section introduces the central piano theme and channels the song's build up to Springsteen's slashing, cymbal-crashing guitar chords; the song seesaws from a suite for piano and orchestra to a jazzy version of the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again...
...Springsteen listeners have evolved a theory (already?) to explain the slickness and tightness of Born to Run, namely, that Jon Landau decided to take time off from his Rolling Stone column and make Springsteen a superstar. Hence, presumably, Landau's ideas of what great rock'n roll is distorted Springsteen's gutsy music. Actually, however, there is no significant stylistic difference between the title song (the only one without Landau) and the four other hot-rod rockers on the album. After all, Bruce Springsteen wrote and arranged and co-produced the album; blame for inconsistency and tightness goes...
...ambience of a whole world, a world Dylan knows all the secrets of; he won't tell us about them, apparently, but at least he's back on the job. Maybe he's right to hold back--too many words now would make Dylan sound like a Bruce Springsteen imitation: if he wrote things like "It's Alright Ma" now they might sound like self-parody. He learned about tight lipped objectivity from country music, and if he can pull out of its constricting sentimentality and oversimplification without giving up its lack of pretention, the detour from John Wesely Harding...
...Bruce Springsteen is becoming a living legend. He has constantly been lauded by critics and fans alike and the ticket prices ($4.50, 5.50, 6.50) indicate his rise to regional super-stardom. As did Dylan (to whom he is often compared in competence as well as appearance), Springsteen began by playing the more intimate spots of the Boston area. Intimacy, unfortunately, must sometimes be sacrificed for exposure, thus being the reason for Springsteen's performance scheduled in the Music Hall. Tickets are available for the October 29 appearance at Minuteman, Mainline, Ticketron, and Soundscope. Also on tap will...