Elsewhere, or, I Ain’t in No Hurry So Just Take Your Time
In the Star books section on the weekend I had a review of Kurt Andersen’s novel Heyday. Didn’t like it too much. And also recently I wrote a little thing for PopMatters about unreleased Springsteen songs. It has no timely hook whatsoever beyond being inspired by a recent piece they ran about Stones outtakes. But there you go. And if you’re coming here from PopMatters, you can find some more Boss-related content here and here and here.
Of all the outtakes I mentioned, I think this one is my favourite. Limited time only!
Interesting that Springsteen is currently so hip with the indie kids (Arcade Fire, Hold Steady, etc.). I wonder if the eternal zeitgeist cycle is cycling back toward earnestness, since the Boss is nothing if not earnest, and not necessarily in a bad way: in his insistence that rock & roll is about community & inclusiveness & therefore mainstream populist appeal, and that there’s always something at stake for his characters, himself, his listeners.
And even in his comedy, which is less about wry comment from a distance (the stance of choice for many of our celebrated witty songwriters) than simple clownishness for its own joy. I used to think the jokey songs were weak & inessential, but now they seem like a crucial counterbalance to his more overtly ambitious impulses. I notice that very few of the outtakes I listed in that PopMatters piece are of the sturm und drang variety, and this, from the B-side “Stand On It,” is one of my very favourite Springsteen lines: “Racin’ some Red Hill boys, she had the deed to the ranch and a grand on it.” (The rhyming of “grand on it” with “hand on it” in the previous line is irrationally satisfying.)
Of all the outtakes I mentioned, I think this one is my favourite. Limited time only!
- Bruce Springsteen, “Taxi Cab (aka City at Night)” (buy nowhere)
Interesting that Springsteen is currently so hip with the indie kids (Arcade Fire, Hold Steady, etc.). I wonder if the eternal zeitgeist cycle is cycling back toward earnestness, since the Boss is nothing if not earnest, and not necessarily in a bad way: in his insistence that rock & roll is about community & inclusiveness & therefore mainstream populist appeal, and that there’s always something at stake for his characters, himself, his listeners.
And even in his comedy, which is less about wry comment from a distance (the stance of choice for many of our celebrated witty songwriters) than simple clownishness for its own joy. I used to think the jokey songs were weak & inessential, but now they seem like a crucial counterbalance to his more overtly ambitious impulses. I notice that very few of the outtakes I listed in that PopMatters piece are of the sturm und drang variety, and this, from the B-side “Stand On It,” is one of my very favourite Springsteen lines: “Racin’ some Red Hill boys, she had the deed to the ranch and a grand on it.” (The rhyming of “grand on it” with “hand on it” in the previous line is irrationally satisfying.)
posted by DW | 9.4.07
1 Comments:
"Taxi Cab" is a great, still unreleased track.
I jumped to your article, and the list of unreleased tracks was right on the money. There are a bunch of great ones there (not, of course, that I have heard "Electric Nebraska").
Also, I followed the other links and your comments on the gouging for the special edition of the Seeger LP and the similar actions on Tracks are exactly what a fellow Springsteen nut and myself were talking about earlier this week. Why does he do this/allow his management to do this?
Bruce
P.S. And as long as we are being provocative, how about this: The key tracks for me getting into The Rising were in the middle "Let's Be Friends/Skin to Skin" and "Worlds Apart". These point in TWO directions that I wish he would follow -- honest to goodness soul and rock with (good) outside influences and a screaming guitar.
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