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| Tonight! |
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| (1982) Darkness on the Edge of Bruce. |
Bryan: Here's Bruce's first solo record, released 35 years ago today. (Not that we planned that timing!) It didn't start out that way - Bruce intended the tunes he recorded at home (on a newly purchased and state-of-the-art-of-home-recording-in-the-early-80s Tascam Teak s144 4 track) to be fleshed out by the E Street Band as per normal, but as Bruce wrote in his 1998 book Songs: "I went into the studio, brought in the band, rerecorded, remixed, and succeeded in making the whole thing worse." He tossed the "spooky acoustic demos" cassette to Toby Scott and said "Maybe we should just use these."
Bruce's decision was based mainly on the inability of the studio to reproduce the "sunken beatbox sound" of the home recording, which came from when the Panasonic boom box he'd used as a mix down deck fell into the river and later came back to life, but the demos now sounded... well, muddier. It was, in Bruce's mind, the key component to the album's sound.
And it's tough to argue with that decision, given the results. (Hell, Asbury Park sounds much closer to "muddy" in my own estimation than Nebraska.) With me again is the only other man to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs, Mr. Bryant Burnette. Bryant!
Bryant: The hour: six-and-a-half. The man: writing about Bruce Springsteen. The location: Needstogotobedsville, USA, right outside of Sleepwhendeadsburg. Oddly enough, I feel in a river, but have come back alive so I could … uh, make spooky blog-post comments? Nah, that really doesn’t work, does it? Well, anyways, regardless of all that, the point where we are chronologically feels to me like about the right time for Springsteen to try something different. A solo album from him at this time certainly qualified as different.
Bryan: Even if the E Street Band didn’t make the final cut, they recorded most of Born in the USA while trying, so hey, for that alone, probably the most productive sessions of their career, even if they didn’t make the then-current album. According to Max Weinberg, a full-on E-Street Band electric Nebraska album exists somewhere in the vault. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the 6-album with DVDs release of it. (Maybe by the time we’re done getting through the catalog it’ll be out there.)
Bryant: God almighty. I better start saving money now. Because I will have that.
“Nebraska”
Bryan: 5/5 I'm not the hugest fan of folk. That said, having come of age in an era where almost any stretch of Americana seen from a moving car or bus window was accompanied by this song or something almost exactly like it, I came to appreciate it (the genre) as killer (no pun intended) mood music at the very least. Occasionally some couplet or musical phrasing will make me perk up and say oh that was cool, but for the most part, I appreciate it almost exclusively as mood music. The exception is pretty much Nebraska, which hits me like some dark offspring of John Steinbeck or Jim Thompson, a murdering ghost of the Dust Bowl/ Appalachia sort of thing.
Bryant: 4.75/5 You can probably guess just from that first score that this album is doing to do quite well with me. You're not wrong. If people who were Springsteen fans at the time heard “Nebraska” and just rolled their eyes and went and bought a Jackson Browne album or something, I don’t guess I could blame them too much. I mean, let's face it: there's not much in Bruce’s catalog up to that point that prepares one for this song. “Wreck on the Highway,” sure, but that's at least got a positive message, so you can connect it to Bruce's other, sprier songs. But it's a long way from “Promised Land” to Charles Starkweather asking for Caril Fugate to sit on his lap when the electric chair is activated. No doubt about it: that takes a leap of faith on the listener's part.
I wonder how it would have been for me if I'd been listening in 1982 when the album came out; and I don't really know for sure. All I know is that the first time I heard the album, it blew me away. I already had a solid Bob Dylan fandom under my belt, so I wasn't much challenged by guy-with-a-guitar-and-harmonica music. That helped. But it struck me then and now as quintessentially BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (capitalized to emphasize the _________ as opposed to merely the man), due to the sheer talent and the passion for storytelling. Make me a song this great, and I don't care what style it's in. I don't care what the instruments you use (if any) are; I don't care what it's about. I'm with you, Boss.
Bryan: I know that within the country/ folk tradition there are songs galore about killers, but setting the tale of Starkweather to the “This Land Is Your Land” melody? And starting the album with it? Pretty badass. While we're here, Springsteen's famous quip about Reagan's referencing "Born in the USA" during his re-election campaign in '84 (“Which album's his favorite? I don't think it's Nebraska”) always makes me imagine Reagan (or maybe Phil Hartman as Reagan) responding with “'From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap / Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.' Yes, Mr. Springsteen, Nancy and I drop a needle on "Nebraska" whenever we want to 'get dark.'”
Bryant: 7/5 Better than perfection. Perfection wishes it was this good.
Bryan: 5/5 I like it a little less than that, but not by much. Not my absolute favorite of his songs but arguably his most quintessential. That mandolin that comes into the mix as the song goes on is pretty sweet. Sounds ghostly, or like it's coming up from underwater somehow. What drowned river bard, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Atlantic City to be born?
“Mansion on the Hill”
Bryant: 2.5/5 Nothing wrong with it at all, but it's one of the lesser songs on the album, in my opinion.
Bryan: 5/5 I’m surprised this one doesn’t rate higher with you! I love this one. There’s a version of this from that Nebraska cover album that came out a ways back that I’ve always liked. I have a distinct memory of my then-girlfriend's housemate at Vassar (which can accurately be described as several mansions on the hill) playing it a few times in their dorm.
Bryant: I don't think I'd ever even heard of that Badlands album. I'll have to check it out.
Bryan: Surprisingly, I don't think Johnny Cash is at his best with “I'm on Fire”. Figured that would be a slam dunk.
“Johnny 99”
Bryant: 4.5/5 Think a guy with a guitar that isn't even plugged in can't rock your face so hard your ear hairs fall out? Bull SHIT. Here's my proof.
Bryan: 5/5 These first 4 tunes are about as perfect an album opener as you can get. The Live 75-85 version was my first introduction to this, and I think I may like that one a tad more.
“Highway Patrolman”
Bryant: 4.75/5 I was tempted to go the full 5 on this one. It occurs to me listening to this one that while Frankie may be no good, he -- I'm assuming, granted -- is under no pretensions that he's anything more than what he is. The narrator, on the other hand, seems to be routinely abusing his position so as to keep Frankie out of the trouble he's earned. So who's the real villain of this one?
Bryan: 4/5 I'd forgotten that Sean Penn's movie The Indian Runner was based on “Highway Patrolman.” I tried watching a little of it last night, but the circumstances of my life these days are alas mutually exclusive to watching things like The Indian Runner. That's a film best suited for a bachelor, in his 20s, with a bong, I think. Or medication. Not necessarily a dis - I'd say the same thing for Blow-Up, and that's one of my favorite films.
Bryant: I've never seen that, but I knew it was based on one of the songs from Nebraska. Of all the albums, it's that one that has generated a movie adaptation!
“State Trooper”
Bryant: 4.25/5 It's slower than “Johnny 99,” but seemingly comes from the same sort of punk-rock attitude. That barbaric yawp he unleashes toward the end is nerve-wracking. This brings up something that seems worth discussing: the production. What's he using that causes those echoes? All I know is, this album sounds like gold-covered dynamite.
Bryan: 4.5/5 I'm assuming it's a mix between that Echoplex pedal and the Panasonic boom box that drowned and came back to life: “The remnants of river muck that brought out the desolation,” as it’s put in the Carlin book.
Bryant: So in other words, this is a little bit like Cthulhu Unplugged. Okay, I can dig that.
Bryan: Here's a pretty great version from the '84 tour. I assume that's Roy or Danny doing the cool keyboard sounds. To echo one of your comments from another album, I wish it was sometimes clearer which of those two was doing what, as I hate to attribute the wrong part. Whoever it is, though, totally synched-up on this one.
“Used Cars”
Bryan: 4/5 "Now the neighbours come from near and far / As we pull up in our brand new used car / I wish he'd just hit the gas and let out a cry / And tell them all they can kiss our asses goodbye."
Bryant: 4.75/5 Oh, you can kind of imagine this getting revamped and fitting quite well on Born to Run, can't you? My mind can almost make that happen. But I don't need it; this version is great on its own.
“Open All Night”
Bryant: 4.5/5 Not quite as hard a rocker as “Cadillac Ranch,” but it's close. I wonder if he's ever done this with the band? I bet it slays.
Bryan: 5/5 Hell yeah he has - here's a relatively recent one and here's the one from the Stand Up For Heroes benefit. (I hope I synched that up right.) Kind of a bad recording, but admirable energy from the E Street fellas. And this version with the E Street/ Pete Seeger superband is pretty sweet, too. This is kind of an odd choice for a song for Nebraska, eh? It's totally made for the big band swing version.
“My Father's House”
Bryan: 3.5/5 I mean, it’s a brilliant tune and all, but maybe it’s a bit too much after all the rest. I might’ve cut this one, actually and just got to “Reason to Believe” a little faster. But, maybe not. Probably not, actually - the album would seem incomplete without it, or any of these songs, really.
Bryant: 4.25/5 Heartbreaking. I can see how this sort of thing isn't everybody's cup of tea; I mean, if you're only into Bruce for the “Rosalita”s and “Thunder Road”s, I get it. But I feel bad for those fans; they're missing out.
“Reason to Believe”
Bryant: 5/5 That's a hell of a closer. And imagine! Not even the best song on the album!
Bryan: 4/5 Couldn’t agree more. I scored it a little less only to keep consistency with some of my other scores, but I love this tune and I think it's the perfect ending to the record.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Bryan: 45 total 4.5 avg. It's the sort of thing that is great all on its own but even better when you consider it as the interlude between The River and Born in the USA - sort of the troubled dreams of a rest between those two mega-journeys. I hadn't listened to Nebraska this much in such a small period of time since the late 80s. If indeed I ever did cluster-listen to Nebraska back then - it wasn't my favorite when I was in my Bruce Phase One fandom. Which was not a fault of the album, just my mindset at the time: nothing country or folk could penetrate my sphere of musical appreciation. That Nebraska even got in there is thanks only to Bruce.
Bryant: 46.25 total, 4.63 average, which means that I am indeed saying this album is superior to both Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Not by much; all three are indispensable. But if I have to pick a winner among them, here's mine.
PERSONNEL
Just Bruce – vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, tambourine, organ, synthesizer, production
FURTHER READING
Deliver Me From Nowhere (2005) by Tennessee Jones. I've never read it, but I'd like to: a collection of short fiction inspired by Nebraska.
Oh, I guess I answered my own question in the Personnel section re: Danny/ Roy on who supplies the other parts on "State Trooper."
ReplyDeleteHere's Brian Roberts with some thoughts on "Nebraska."
ReplyDelete"There probably isn’t an album in existence that I have changed my mind about more than “Nebraska.” When I first got a copy I listened to it a couple of times, completely disregarded it as not being “my kind of thing,” and promptly forgot that it existed. That’s a bit of an exaggeration; there were the songs on “Live 75-85” that I liked, but I just couldn’t find enough interest to go back and listen to it. Where were the drums? Where were the big chest pounding anthems? Where was Clarence?!?
Thankfully around 6 years ago I started spending a lot of my off time at a brewery that my brother co-founded, and that place just happens to be a heaven for music lovers. There’s always a vinyl record playing instead of a Spotify play list, there’s an Open-Mic for musicians once a week, and there’s a never ending supply of fighting to be discovered traveling musicians that play there at least twice a week. Because of that my musical tastes have been opened up to a lot of stuff that I hadn’t really paid much attention to.
One byproduct of really hearing great music in different styles and becoming friends with song writers is that I decided to go back and give “Nebraska” a fresh listen. It’s well established that the younger me was a complete moron, and here’s just another example of that.
“Nebraska” - this was one that I always liked because of the “Live 75-85” set. Why did I like that and not realize that the rest of the album is just more of the same? Moron. Complete moron. As Bryant said, I can’t imagine what this album starter must have done to the minds of Bruce’s fans. It’s not like the internet existed to allow easier access to reviews that might have prepared you. Instead you just get smacked in the face with this story of the aftermath of a brutal killing spree set loosely to the tune of an American standard. “Out into that great void, my soul be hurled.” We’ve come a long way from talking about an “adolescent pumping his way into his hat.” This song is every bit as iconic of an album starter as the titular one of the next album. 5.0/5
“Atlantic City” - you would think it would be tough to top a 5-star track 1, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. Much is made about the “swampiness” of the sound, and this is probably the most bayou-rific one. If the first version of this song that someone heard was The Band’s cover or the version from “Live in New York City” I can imagine them preferring that version. There are days when I might prefer it myself. It’s a frequently covered song because it’s not only a piece of genius, but there’s so much room in it for musical experimentation. Not many songs can claim that. Certainly not ones that begin with chicken men being exploded. 6.0/5"
B.B. here. (Bryant Burnette, that is, not B.B. King.)
Delete"I started spending a lot of my off time at a brewery that my brother co-founded, and that place just happens to be a heaven for music lovers." -- Having been there, I can vouch for this.
"It’s well established that the younger me was a complete moron" -- The younger me was a moron as well. I suspect the older me is going to be just as daft, because the one in this middle period is stupid as a sack of toenails. I got a strong working love of "Nebraska," though, so I got that going for me, at least.
"It’s not like the internet existed to allow easier access to reviews that might have prepared you." -- I assume the criticism mainly took the form of unbearable dudes like the characters of "High Fidelity," sitting around record stores grousing about the Boss reverse-selling-out, or whatever you'd call this.
B.R. part 2:
ReplyDelete"“Mansion on the Hill” - Before this listen I would have said that if I hear this song in the wrong context - like on “Live in New York City” - I find it just boring as hell. I don’t know what that context will yield going forward, but I’m looking forward to finding out. This is a really wonderful portrait of small town Americana and the little things about our hometowns that get inside of us. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he wrote this and “My Hometown” at essentially the same time. I liked it more on this listen than I ever have before, especially the two times that a second guitar comes in lightly to add some texture. I hope that carries over to hearing that live version in a few albums. 3.5/5
“Johnny 99” - I love this song. My first exposure to it was the version on “Live 75-85” and I prefer that one, but that doesn’t diminish this version one bit. This song has the kind of driving force to it that inhabits most of Johnny Cash’s best songs. He stopped playing it live for a long time, but brought it back out after the housing collapse during the W administration. It’s a pissed off and angry song, so it makes sense that he’d write it under Reagan and rediscover it under W. “Your honor, I do believe I’d be better off dead, and if you can take a man’s life for the thoughts that’s in his head…” You gotta figure he wrote that around the same time he was writing the title track. 4.75/5
“Highway Patrolman” - this is my favorite song on the record, tho it won’t garner the highest score. Why? I don’t know. Make your own damn scores and you can do what you want (knowing full well that you two made your own damn scores). This is not only my favorite song on this album, but I think it’s the best piece of narrative storytelling that Bruce has written in his career. There’s a reason that this is the song that has a film adaptation. It’s an absolutely brilliant story that evokes some of the same small town vibes as “Mansion”, while also revisiting the themes of responsibility he addressed in “The River” and “Independence Day”.
Most people have had family or close friends that have done stupid shit that we would love to write them off for doing, but we’ve experienced the same pull of “blood on blood” that carries Joe Roberts right on up until the point that he just can’t do it any more. And even when he can’t do it any more, he still can’t bring himself to actually bring Frankie in. That’s some powerfully sad shit.
I’ve got a friend named Tom Rathe, who I’m convinced is going to make it as a singer songwriter, and if he doesn’t ultimately cover this song, I’m gonna have to beat the crap out of him. Mostly I’m just putting that out into the ether hoping to speak it into existence, or hoping his wife has a google search thing that sees the mention and suggests he do the cover to avoid bodily harm. You hear me, Rathe?!? 5.5/5"
re: "Johnny 99" It's so funny that Bruce retires songs during Democratic administrations and then brings them back, scolding the audience, serious-eyed, during Republican ones.
DeleteAh well. He's not the only one.
B.B. again.
Delete"This song has the kind of driving force to it that inhabits most of Johnny Cash’s best songs." -- Springsteen writing for Cash; now there's a concept I coulda endorsed.
On the Tom Rathe subject, I was at a gas station earlier tonight and I heard two guys at the next pump over discussing how if Tom Rathe doesn't cover "Highway Patrolman," they are gonna fuck him up bad. I didn't get a good look at them, but they sounded serious.
B.R. part 3:
ReplyDelete"“State Trooper” - there were times when I used to get this title mixed up with the previous one. Back to back tracks with songs whose titles are specific types of cops. Strange decision. There’s an alternate level of The Dark Tower where a sped up version of this song is the theme song to “The Sopranos”. I always find it interesting when Bruce recycles lyrics for songs, especially on the same album. There are three lines of this that are also in “Open All Night”, so it’s clear he was taking a lot of notes and just trying stuff out. I don’t think he really had any intention of some of these songs ever seeing the light of day. This isn’t a favorite on the album, but it’s still really solid. 3.75/5
“Used Cars” - Bruce is right back into that well of small town America that he pulls from so well. I can imagine this one is probably a bit autobiographical, as well. Knowing his background, and the fact that his family grew up without much money, I would doubt his parents ever brought home a new car. I know I can still remember what it was like when my family would get a “new” car, or when our neighbors would. It’s a nice song that I don’t connect with quite as well as you two do. 3.5/5
“Open All Night” - by the time I rediscovered this album I had already fallen completely in love with the live version of this from “Seeger Sessions Live”. This version is so radically different that it’s tough for me to really hear the same song, but because my stubborn ass knows that they are, I have to judge it accordingly. Is it fair to knock points off of this version because there is, I feel, a vastly superior version? Probably not. Especially since this is the original. I haven’t actually decided what to score it yet, so we’ll see as it plays while I type.
This has a drive to it that’s pretty incongruous with the sound of the rest of the album, with the exception of “Johnny 99”. I think that it probably pissed me off back in the day, because this was soooo close to what I wanted the album to be, but it doesn’t quite get there. “It sounds like a demo for a great song!” is probably what I thought. That’s sadly correct, but I think there’s a lot going on here anyway. I don’t know that it necessarily fits on this album, but since he had already used a bunch of these ideas and lyrics on “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)” and then discarded those ideas when that song became “Factory”, and then again on “State Trooper”, so my guess is that he decided it was time to put up or shut up with those ideas.
So it’s what I’m calling an inferior version of a song that really doesn’t fit on the album. Low score; right? Nope. The song rules. 4.5/5"
"There’s an alternate level of The Dark Tower where a sped up version of this song is the theme song to “The Sopranos”."
DeleteExcellent.
"There’s an alternate level of The Dark Tower where a sped up version of this song is the theme song to “The Sopranos”." -- That level is vastly preferable to the one where it's "Outlaw Pete."
DeleteLOL
DeleteB.R. part 4:
ReplyDelete"“My Father’s House “ - Even in really listening to this album again a few years ago, I didn’t connect much with this song. After reading his autobiography and hearing his Broadway show, and thus understanding more about his relationship with his dad, I finally get where he was going here. And woo boy is it sad. He’s taken a glimpse at regret as a theme a few times before, mostly on the song “The River” so maybe that’s what happens when he goes hard core into a personal experience. I don’t think this one is as directly from his life, but knowing what I know about his dad, it feels like he was really reaching out here in a way that maybe he wasn’t even comfortable with.
It’s a little too wordy in places, and that throws the vocal melody off a good bit. But I also think this is his best vocal performance on the album. There’s a real sadness in the way he sings, and it gives this song a real haunting quality. The last verse is profoundly sad and it says a lot about his mindset that this song wasn’t the album closer. He just couldn’t leave us all with that deep pit of regret that hangs over the end of the song. 4.0/5
“Reason to Believe” - we get this as an album closer instead, and I think it’s absolutely 100% deliberate. Every song on this album (except “Open All Night”, but like I said, it doesn’t fit) is a story about someone going through something that has changed who they are on a profound level. Charles Starkweather and Ralph from “Johnny 99” have reached their breaking point and given up completely. The narrators of “Atlantic City” and “State Trooper” have reached their limit with life holding them down. The narrators of “Used Cars” and “Mansion on the Hill” are coming to grips with the fact that nostalgia and the love of their hometown are a little fleeting. Joe Roberts from “Highway Patrolman” and the narrator of “My Father’s House” are accepting their failures in their relationships with family. And all of those songs are sung in the first person, except for “Johnny 99”, which gets there by the final verse. It’s not tough to imagine that stripped down version of “Born in the USA” fitting really well with this group of songs.
So what does this have to do with the final track? It’s the outlier. We see portraits of various people who all have reasons to give up. To let all of the burdens and awful shit in our life make us want to quit. Yet here we are seeing that “At the end of every hard earned day, people find some reason to believe.” Maybe I’m reading it wrong. Maybe the song is meant to be cynical and the narrator is mocking people for finding reasons to keep on fighting. I don’t hear it that way, tho.
I hear this song as a plea to us to not give up. It’s the capper to the album because he wants to leave us with the idea that we aren’t alone in feeling alone. We don’t have to let our mistakes define us. We don’t have to let the hardships that impact us shake us from our core values. We don’t have to suffer the fate of any of the characters that we’ve just heard from if we just look inside ourselves and find that one more reason to just keep on trying. Maybe I hear it that way because I’ve frequently needed that reminder. Or maybe it’s just a great fucking song. 5/5
That makes a total of 45.50 for an average of 4.5. That means it’s just behind “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Born to Run” while also being significantly ahead of the other three albums. That seems about right. I have friends who claim this is his best album, and from a pure storytelling standpoint, it’s tough to argue with that opinion. The transition from “Darkness” to “River” to this is pretty staggering. He showed the ability to write three completely different types of albums, with three radically different sounds, that are all clearly of one voice. They are all clearly and distinctly “Bruce Springsteen.” That’s pretty damn impossible to do."
Excellent breakdown and especially those last few sentences.
Delete"Maybe the song is meant to be cynical and the narrator is mocking people for finding reasons to keep on fighting. I don’t hear it that way, tho." -- You could probably turn it into that if you did a sneering punk-rock cover, but nah, I don't hear it that way either.
Delete"We don’t have to let the hardships that impact us shake us from our core values." -- Don't tell 2021 that, it's not listening.
"They are all clearly and distinctly “Bruce Springsteen.” That’s pretty damn impossible to do." " -- I'd argue he did it a fourth consecutive time next time out; and maybe even made it five with the one after that. Dude's a legend!