Word: springsteens
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Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen. One Crimson reviewer thinks Springsteen's the answer to rock's current doldrums. Another says he's over-rated. Springsteen will be Bonnie Raitted tonight. (I thought twice before writing that.) Now that Raitt's moved to California, it becomes more imperative to catch her superb performances when you can. Tonight at the Harvard Square Theater...
...good A.M. song will have a verse, a chorus, and then, if we're lucky, a break--a middle part where it gets slow or bridges and changes keys, or something so it doesn't get boring. Do Springsteen's songs have breaks? How many commercials can fit in between acts on the Mid-night Special? I mean, there are breaks within breaks within breaks on this album. Even when all the music sounds like it is just good A.M. material, there is so much of it, and Springsteen's construction of his songs is so ambitious that...
...good example is "Kitty's Back" on E Street, which combines elements of Broadway, blues, barroom horns and raunch in a stunning tour of every emotion you would feel if you knew somebody named Kitty and she was back. But the best example is "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)", Springsteen's showstopper...
...ROSALITA" is a juicy, scat-sung Van Morrison-type song in which Springsteen wants to steal away his girl friend from her parents to spend what seems to be a life-long communal orgy in the hangouts of New York. The song builds up to a seemingly final crescendo with terrific fast loud chorus. Where can he go from here? But the music keeps on--you feel like shouting. Then all of a sudden it is happening, the entire band is standing up there in the studio, chanting "HEY, HEY, HEY, HEY, HEY"--it is like the Ohio State football...
LIKE SEX, even Springsteen at his best cannot completely satisfy, or inject rock with the popular meaning it had in the '60s. He offers only a partial solution, as long as we are listening to his albums or his performance and blocking out other thoughts. In talent, he probably offers more than most of the people who seemed central back then, but he cannot, after all, singlehandedly fetter the forces of production, detail the freight train of history. He should end up being a big success. Nevertheless he is a good person to have hanging around...