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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.
