The 50 Greatest Singles in Rock and Roll

[Dr. Drum]

Hell, as much trouble as I have getting into Springsteen, even I own Nebraska and Tunnel of Love.

[Kensterberg]

As JAC and Dr. D just stated, even if you really don't like Springsteen much, you really need to hear Tunnel of Love. It's one of the very best records about "the arc of a love affair" (as Paul Simon once wrote) ever released. Think Blood on the Tracks, but less bitter and more sonically varied.

[Galactus]

You can skip Lucky Town, Human Touch and Ghost Of Tom Joad. The rest you need...and after you get those you'll want the other three...

[Kensterberg]

ded said:

You can skip Lucky Town, Human Touch and Ghost Of Tom Joad. The rest you need...and after you get those you'll want the other three...

LMAO! Great recommendation there Mantis. Just go buy the entire Springsteen catalog, Tunes, that should get you started!

Seriously, I don't think that The Essential is a poor choice as an intro to the Boss' studio work. Between that and the live set (if you start pulling it out and putting it on the turntable, that is!), you'd actually have a pretty good reference to then seek out the albums that might interest you the most.

I could talk about Springsteen albums all night ... and have. But rather than just prattling on and on, I'll just say that you can't go wrong with the four I mentioned earlier, plus Tunnel of Love. In fact, I would call those five the "essential" Springsteen records, with The Rising and the Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle right behind. Then there's his debut, followed by the three that Mantis mentioned (well, some days I'd put Lucky Town above Greetings, so maybe those four really constitute a single grouping).

Whatever you do, don't bother with the Greatest Hits cd released in the middle nineties. This is a perfect example of how NOT to summarize the career of a great artist - the only reason you'd want this would be for Murder, Inc., and This Hard Land, both of which you'd be better off to simply buy for a buck each online. You know how a great compilition makes an artist's career look even better than their albums would indicate (think Now That's What I Call Quite Good, for example), well, Greatest Hits is just the opposite: you hear it and wonder what the hell the fuss is about. If you want a sampler, stick with The Essential.

OK, I'll stop blathering on and on about Bruuuuuuuuce ... maybe ...

[frag]

Greetings

[Galactus]

Seriously, the Essential is a good overview. If you wanted to start with an album I'd suggest Born To Run or Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

From Best to least best IMO:
1. Born To Run
2. Drakness On The Edge Of Town
3. The River
4. Nebraska
5. E Street Shuffle
6. Born in The USA
7. Tunnel Of Love
8. The Rising
9. Greetings (if this album was made up of live versions this would be in the top five)
10. Devils & Dust
11. Lucky Town
12. Ghost Of Tom Joad
13. Human Touch

[Kensterberg]

Nice rankings there Mantis. The only big changes I'd make would be to move Tunnel of Love up to (at least) the top five, and I'd rank The Rising at about six or so ... and finally, Tom Joad would be at the bottom of my list. Excellent comment about Greetings, BTW. Some of those songs (Growing Up, Blinded by the Light, It's Hard to be a Saint in the City, etc.) are among the best things Bruce has ever written. Too bad he didn't have a real producer in the studio to focus the sound a bit more. But considering the circumstances it was made under, it's not a bad debut ... and the live versions of all those songs are incredible.

Speaking of which, the Hammersmith Odeon show has (yet another) killer take on Saint in the City, as well as a smouldering burn through The E Street Shuffle featuring some moving slide guitar work from Miami Steve Van Zandt. Highly recommended.

[bowiglou]

I did buy a few Springsteen albums way back then (Born to Run/Darkness on the Edge of Town/The River/Nebraska) but I really was never a huge BROOCE fan...though I always had deep admiration for Darkness...but I tell ya all (and Tunes), The Rising really upped Mr. Springsteens currency in my mind...just a deep, trenchant, heartfelt work..........so Tunes, in my personal opinion Darkness on the Edge of Town and the Rising are the two indispensible works.......

[Weeping_Guitar]

I've been kind of holding off on getting Springsteen's older records hoping they'll put out some sharp remasters since I've heard the CDs out now could use some cleaning up. That Born to Run set last year was amazing, I'd love more stuff like that. I've only got that one, plus The Rising, Devils & Dust, and The Essential.

[frag]

I am utterly clueless on the proper ranking of Springsteen's material. With the exception of Born to Run, which is without a doubt his finest moment, I absolutely adore everything I've heard from The Boss.

Sooooo...yeah...don't want to imply that any album in particular is better* They've all had a pretty big impact on me.

*except Born to Run. My God, what a truly truly truly amazingly phenomenal masterpiece.

so many adjectives escape me right now.

[frag]

And despite what others may say, Greetings from Ashbury Park is one album I could not live without. Not that anyone would impugn my account...just seems that Greetings is never quite favorable.

[JACkory]

It's been a few days since this discussion kind of wound down, but I wanted to say that Greatest Hits is worth picking up in the used bins not only for the tracks that Ken listed (which are certainly excellent) but also for "Streets of Philadelphia" and especially "Secret Garden", which is one of the most intoxicating love songs ever written, worth owning for Clarence Clemons' gorgeous tenor sax solo at the end if nothing else. Whoah. That's sheer beauty.

And it will be no surprise that I think Mantis is being somewhat harsh on The Ghost of Tom Joad by ranking it with Human Touch and Lucky Town. There is not an album in Springsteen's catalogue that displays his mastery of the narrational lyric as well as Ghost. It's not your typical Springsteen offering, admitted, but it is a top notch album that I will always consider one of his greatest.

Yesterday I listened to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks so many times that I couldn't sleep for the refrain of "You're a Big Girl Now" echoing in my brain. This one may very well be Dylan's all time masterwork. Sitting there trying to keep up with the story and all the angles in "Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts" was pure entertainment.
And "Idiot Wind" has lost none of it's vitriolic power since the last time I listened to it a few years ago..."It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves..."

Oops...thought I was on the What are you Listening To board...

[melon1]

Sorry to resurrect a dead horse, but I just wrote this to Rocky and then decided,"Ah, what the hell, I'll post it too."

As for the other stuff, yeah, porno exists and little kids shouldn't see it. Jerry Springer covers some racy topics and little kids shouldn't see it. But you know what? Porno has always existed. Always. And there have always been some racier things in pop culture as well.

First off, there was a time(I'm not sure if this is still the case now cuz I hardly ever watch TV any more) when Jerry Springer came on at 3 in the afternoon when kids were getting out of school and most of their parents were at work. That is one of the worst decisions ever made if you ask me. Yeah, porno has always existed but it wasn't always available at your nearest gas station in the form of a magazine, now was it? And you're kidding yourself if you think kids aren't getting a hold of it because they aren't old enough. Older kids are buying them for them. Tell me they aren't. My brother had somebody buy his for him when he was 12 or 13. He got addicted, needless to say, before he had a tearful repentance over it.

What's wrong with people changing their minds about things?


Absolutely nothing if it's for the better rather than the worse.

See, that's a great example of where you've shown yourself to be susceptible to brainwashing -- your assumption that all non-religious people have such a strong negative opinion towards religious people. You've been told that over and over again by paranoid people who have a blanket opinion about anyone who doesn't share their beliefs, and you've convinced yourself that there's some sort of attack on religious people by non-religious people.

The hostility toward religion exists in not only unbelievers but believers as well. The beast lives in us all and hates anything of true spirituality. But those who have never accepted the truth are given to this hostility even more, obviously. That doesn't mean they hate Christians or necessarily have a "strong negative opinion towards religious people."

Or it could be that people are always changing their minds about things. Societies and cultures are constantly in a state of change, and always have been. Do you really think that, up until the early '90s, our society's mores and beliefs had been completely static since it's inception?

Absolutely not, Rocky. In the early 90s a massive acceleration of immorality began. Not for the first time ever in this country. Of course, there's the late 60s also.

Then I said:

"When the "gays in the military" thing was introduced, and most people freaked out, I remember saying,"That's just the beginning. Before you know it they'll want legal marriage and then it will go further than that. Adoption? Sure. Why not?" If you're moving comfortably along with all the media is spitting out these days all around you, you don't even realize that you're being programmed."

And you responded:

Or maybe people's changing viewpoints are being reflected by the media, not being controlled by it. The media is covering these changing ideas.

I would actually expect you to know better than this, Rocky. Surely you remember how the VAST majority of the nation responded to this. It was basically shoved down our throats. The argument on such matters began then, and, of course, Hollywood, as well as the rest of the influentual pop culture, influenced America into believing it was the next step in a "progressive society" to take such a view. The hip crowd bought into it immediately and the much of the rest of our nation soon followed suit.

You still haven't explained to me why swearing and/or sexual language is worse than the systematic oppression of a large part of our population.

I suppose I'm lucky that I'm responding to this now rather than a week ago. I took a short look at the CE board last night and they had been discussing the imbalance of children's rights vs. adults, or something like that(I didn't have time to read very much). First off, "swearing and/or sexual language" is not nearly all that I mentioned in the post you responded to with this. What I mentioned involved visual corruption as much or even more than auditory corruption. I absolutely, positively garauntee you, Rocky, that if people from 50 or so years ago saw what children are being exposed to on a day to day basis today, they would start a revolution over it. They might even fight until they shed their blood over it. Black and white, male and female would all come together over the matter probably. Of course, there's now way at all to prove something like this until we get to the other side and find out everything. It is nothing short of shocking what is being fed the young and innocent today. The people who aren't upset about it are obviously calloused and/or desensitized.

But somehow we survived. How? Well, for one, little kids weren't watching that stuff because their parents paid some sort of attention to what they were doing.


I had to go back and find this so I could address the parent factor. Yeah, we turned out OK, didn't we. Most of us are on alcohol or drugs, into pornography, swearing like sailors. They can't build prisons or insane asylums fast enough. And it probably won't be long before half of the population is dependent on some kind of pill for their depression or other mental illness.

I'm convinced that parents paid more attention to what their kids watched years before than today. And ALSO that they weren't nearly as lenient on what they allowed their children to watch. I'm glad you wrote this part, so very glad, because I get a chance to mention this:

What are we to do about kids who have sorry or terrible parents? Should we as a society decide that it's up to parents to shield children from filth, obscenity, moral corruption? What if they have terrible parents? Should we say to them,"You're screwed. We're not going to take any responsibility for the trash you see on a day to day basis. Not only are we going to allow it, but we're also going to show it on your local TV stations, even at 3 o'clock in the afternoon because it's up to your parents to protect you from it." And I'm the one who doesn't give a damn about kids after they're born, only before? And furthermore, if we don't want to take ANY responsibility for the trash that gets put out by the media, why do we complain and bitch when a politician(or any famous person for that matter) comes out against a motion picture like Natural Born Killers? That's what Bob Dole did and that's how most responded to it. Why? He didn't ask that it be censored, if I remember right. He simply spoke against it. It's called persuasion, not censorship. Shouldn't we want more of that from our leaders? We want our rights to filth and moral corruption more than we want kids to be shielded from it. How can you not see this, Rocky? How? Again I say, How?

That's all I have to say about your post, and I honestly don't understand at all how you, or anyone, would disagree with most of what I said. And I never will.

[melon1]

To be fair, when Clinton spoke with passion(I'll give him credit for this) about having a rating system on television, I saw with my own eyes the response by the media. Yep, the word "censorship" was used. Does that make my point further?

[melon1]

And I wrote Rocky this last night:


2/10/06 at 13:21, Melonius Thunk wrote:Your willful blindness to the fact that young teens are engaging in oral sex and doing drugs probably, no joke, 100 times more than 50 years ago, doesn't seem to phase you.




Your response:

That is an insane assertion. I think you're going to need to cite some numbers on that before any credence can be given to that assertion. 100 times more? Holy shit. That's ridiculous.



I'm not going to do a study showing exact numbers, Rocky. Yes, I'll admit that it was an exaggeration, but not NEAR as much of an exaggeration as I believe you think it is.


I still haven't ever heard an even semi-coherent argument about how hearing a swear word damages a child.

Well now, Rocky, how could you possibly prove something like that in the first place? Especially with everyone having a different opinion of what is and isn't damaging to children's minds. My focal point here is children's innocence. Should we argue now what the definition of innocence really is? It's quite clear, I think. Now, what society considers obscene is a subject that we could go on about forever, I suppose, but what's the point? It used to be obvious what is and isn't obscene. Some things are arguable, sure. But it's common sense that demands we don't swear in front of children. We don't want them hearing obscenities or curse words of any kind for that matter, because they are innocent. Funny how the vast majority of us don't want our kids to curse even when they grow up while we do it ourselves everyday and don't even think there's anything wrong with it. Of course, it's not nearly as big a deal as just about everything else I brought up. My point is this: when we start running with that kind of thinking(it doesn't damage 'em anyway, does it?) we start paving the way to an amoral society in the future. That's why it really, REALLY, bothers me that such great films that are so good in fact that everyone should see them, have terrible obscenities like "Fuck" and "Goddamn" thrown in the middle of them. I'm convinced that Hollywood has no conscience. I understand that you have to portray real events in life in a realistic way, but many, many times those words are absolutely unnecessary when and where they are put in.