duggup

Artist: Saturday Sample – Bruce Springsteen
Website: www.brucespringsteen.org
Album: Magic – Samples and Lyrics
Playback: streaming samples
Download?: No

The music of Bruce Springsteen has made up a big part of the soundtrack of my adulthood. I’ve loved the twangy guitars, and the even twangier keyboards, the plaintive notes blown by the big black man called Clarence, the songs about the pleasures and pain of being young and about being alive. The sound that epitomised Bruce Springsteen and the musicians of the E Street Band.

I suppose if you added it up I’ve probably spent weeks with headphones clapped to my head as the voice of Springsteen whispered and thundered in my ears and even more weeks dancing around the kitchens and lounge rooms of the different houses that I’ve lived in with the strains of Bruce Springsteen songs dictating the beat of my heart.

It’s a flawed piece of work this new album (and I’ll let Thatch tell you about that) despite it being the strongest studio album that Bruce and the Band have ever released in my estimation. I had planned to say a lot about the flaws but I’ve changed my mind. I want to share what brings me joy about this album instead. Let me just say that production wise I expected rolling thunder and instead we got a barrel of pickled fish rolling down a very small hill.

Otherwise it’s not that different really from the likes of Born To Run or Born In The USA but it’s a mature work full of songs written by a man whose heart and arms are still open up to life and love.

Twelve tracks (or eleven and one hidden track Terry’s Song dedicated to the memory of Terry Magovern his friend and aide since about 1987.) Songs that coaxed the tears from my eyes and more than ever I caught glimpses of the human behind the words.

I want to tear open every last song like a ripe fig to show you the truth inside because Bruce has always been able to write vignettes about American urban life that make the prosaic seem anything but ordinary, but I suggest you go out and buy a copy and make the discoveries yourself.

jools is a graphic designer who used to front a band on vocals and bass. All evidence of which have mercifully been obliterated or otherwise lost.
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