Bruce Springsteen, Magic

Fantastic to hear Bruce back with the E Street Band. It's been too long. Best album since the River.

The so-called wall of sound is back, but there remains a certain Dylanesque intimacy about it at the same time. Bruce Springsteen has been one of those few figures in the modern scene to walk that line between stadium rocker and intimate folksy bluesy rocker.

Where as Magic really is Born to Run, or Nebraska, it really captures the feeling of longing and loneliness and wonder of another age, one that has passed us by, it isn't Born to Run just because there are horns and it isn't Born to Run in any derivative sense and I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about that in the future, that Bruce is simply manufacturing and recycling and that he will be compared to himself and found wanting. It is Born to Run because it isn't Born to Run, it is that great because it is original and it captures the feeling and that certain something while still being something totally new.

The first three tracks, Radio Nowhere, (You'll Be) Coming Down and Livin' in the Future are very very accessible, meaning most people who like this sort of music will probably love these first three tracks. I would recommend getting in your car, if you live in Jersey like me, go out on the Garden State Parkway, get plenty of quarters and play hook shot for a few tolls, listen to the entire album at once, at least once.

I will say this, around 1987 or so maybe it was 88, Tunnel of Love came out. I remember a friend of mine got it on Vinyl, it came out earlier, me and another friend had just gotten CD players, well, let's see, no we had ours for about a year or two at that point, can't remember which Christmas we got it, but most people still used cassettes and only about half had moved over to CD. Where as a lot of the kids that moved over to CD were metal heads and they weren't part of the conversation. And where as one friend was considered quaint for still wearing his hand-me down clothing and his hush puppies, it was more than antiquated that he was still buying stuff on Vinyl. Never-the-less he still got it first, and because he could chip in with his older brother, he got it way ahead of everyone else. I had the diamond head needle turntable I still have, and peeps loved to try out albums at my house, but I'm much more into Vinyl now than I was then. So the argument ended up being decided that, that the quality that people ascribed to Vinyl, its warmth, its crackles, could best be appreciated with Bruce. But that Tunnel of Love was a subpar performance for Bruce. But the friend who bought it on Vinyl, who admittedly was the most die-hard hardcore Bruce fan out of a group of Jersey boy Bruce fans at perhaps the height of is popular if not critical success, loved it, found it all that he had been anticipating. I wasn't really anticipating it but I knew it was coming out, it was all my friends talked about so you know I got more than an earful. A lot of people were shocked that I could make such a clean copy of the record to tape, and people were more shocked later that where as there was significant degradation from tape copy to tape copy, that one CD copy could make a virtually unlimited amount of tapes. People didn't really get the concept then. Now in hindsight, which is 20/20, I really like Tunnel of Love the single, but I still don't really like the album per se. I do think it marked a departure for him, which was pretty significant at the time, though it looks less so now, in the context of where the entire music scene went and where Bruce went himself, but I do think Magic marks a return unlike any other, back to something before Tunnel of Love.

And I think that in the context of the format changes from 8 track to cassette to CD and from 78 to 45 to LP 33, that it is significant in that the medium is the message and that the 45 and motown formed a sound as did fm radio and concept albums and that there was something of the Cat Stevens singer songwriter 70's that was still alive when Bruce put out Tunnel. And that while with the resurgence and explosion of folk, from Ani DiFranco to singer songwriters in the 70's mold like John Mayer (who I wouldn't describe as folk or even folksy) to Bruce himself who went there and back again, that it is in some effect or degree retro or throw back or for instance folk punk in Ani's case. Then too with the pop punk movement, grunge, hip hop, the country revival and Nashville top 40, the entire music scene changed so much over the course of the 90's that any personal change in Bruce's music on Tunnel of Love seemed less dramatic, and given that he tried on many different styles over the next 20 years, it has to be put into a new context.

With the real and true revival of the singer-songwriter, not quite in either the Carpenter's mold or in the Cat Stevens, which were very different, but both authentic, let's say they are at at two ends of a spectrum, I don't even think today's singer songwriter are for the most part even in between the lines, we have a fad and a trend and demographics and then we have corporate hotshots looking for the next big thing and so on and so forth. I like John Mayer, I wouldn't consider him in the mold of either Cat Stevens or the Carpenters, and yet while I don't consider him folk or folksy I do like him and I do think he is authentic, I'm not sure if he'd want to be boxed into the singer songwriter label but I would ascribe it to him for lack of a better one, though I'm sure there is some tag like alt.rock.soft.listening.non-fat.mochachina-latte.non-top40.top40 or some such which doesn't fit on the Tower Record card or the Apple iTunes file folder, which would better describe him. Non-top40 Top 40, I like that, yes that is how I would describe him.

So, with all the great singer songwriter's out there today, there is this new market for a fresh sound. Bruce Springsteen's new album, Magic, is the best album of the year by a singer songwriter. And yet it is not a singer songwriter album, it is straight ahead rock, straight up rock n' roll, it is r and b with a twist of folk, it is Christmas day wrapped up with a big red ribbon, it is an album that you should buy on Vinyl.