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Bruce Springsteen — Point Blank

1978, Passaic, Joisey. With the E Street Band.

This entry was posted by brianS on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under WGOM Videos. It is one of 752 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.

41 comments to Bruce Springsteen — Point Blank

  • SBG
    March 3rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Are we bored with Boss Week already????

  • brianS
    March 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    the vocals are a bit ragged on this one (shaddup, Boss). But I contend that this is a great song and another bit of evidence that Bruce is in the handful of best songwriters of the past 50 years.

    • E-6
      March 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm

      I'm with you, doc. And Craig Finn's with us, too.

    • SBG
      March 3rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      Handful... is that top 5? Top five songwriters of the last 50 years? Is that what you are saying?

      • E-6
        March 3rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm

        The screen door slams
        Mary's dress sways
        Like a vision she dances across the porch
        As the radio plays
        Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
        Hey that's me and I want you only
        Don't turn me home again
        I just can't face myself alone again
        Don't run back inside
        Darling you know just what I'm here for
        So you're scared and you're thinking
        That maybe we ain't that young anymore
        Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
        You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
        Oh and that's alright with me

        You can hide `neath your covers
        And study your pain
        Make crosses from your lovers
        Throw roses in the rain
        Waste your summer praying in vain
        For a savior to rise from these streets
        Well now I'm no hero
        That's understood
        All the redemption I can offer, girl
        Is beneath this dirty hood
        With a chance to make it good somehow
        Hey what else can we do now?
        Except roll down the window
        And let the wind blow
        Back your hair
        Well the nights busting open
        These two lanes will take us anywhere
        We got one last chance to make it real
        To trade in these wings on some wheels
        Climb in back
        Heavens waiting on down the tracks
        Oh-oh come take my hand
        Riding out tonight to case the promised land
        Oh-oh thunder road, oh thunder road oh thunder road
        Lying out there like a killer in the sun
        Hey I know its late we can make it if we run
        Oh thunder road, sit tight take hold
        Thunder road

        Well I got this guitar
        And I learned how to make it talk
        And my cars out back
        If you're ready to take that long walk
        From your front porch to my front seat
        The doors open but the ride it ain't free
        And I know you're lonely
        For words that I ain't spoken
        But tonight we'll be free
        All the promises'll be broken
        There were ghosts in the eyes
        Of all the boys you sent away
        They haunt this dusty beach road
        In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets

        They scream your name at night in the street
        Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
        And in the lonely cool before dawn
        You hear their engines roaring on
        But when you get to the porch they're gone
        On the wind, so Mary climb in
        Its a town full of losers
        And I'm pulling out of here to win.

        (Pretty damn good, I'd say.)

      • ubelmann
        March 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm

        It's not really out of the question. One list of potential contenders (though they didn't include dead guys/gals.) It's pretty much an impossible list to get any three people to agree on, but I think Springsteen is arguably worthy of top-5 songwriter over the last 50 years or so.

        • davidwatts
          March 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm

          41. Ray Davies (The Kinks)
          ..
          33. Pete Townshend (The Who)

          this list is wrong in so many ways

          • ubelmann
            March 3rd, 2009 at 9:59 pm

            Like I said, you'll never get 3 people to agree on the same list.

          • SBG
            March 3rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm

            Other lists I've seen don't have Springsteen sniffing the top ten.

            Some of the songwriters off the top of my head that are miles in front of Springsteen

            Lennon/McCartney
            Jagger/Richards
            Paul Simon
            Neil Young
            Bob Dylan
            Pete Townshend
            Bono/The Edge
            Joni Mitchell
            Stevie Wonder
            Van Morrison
            James Taylor
            Prince

            I don't know where I'd put Springsteen, but he's not in my top ten or top twenty.

            • E-6
              March 3rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm

              Lennon/McCartney
              Jagger/Richards
              Paul Simon
              Neil Young
              Bob Dylan
              Pete Townshend
              Bono/The Edge
              Joni Mitchell
              Stevie Wonder
              Van Morrison
              James Taylor
              Prince

              Top 10, easy. As a lyricist? Top 5. Maybe higher. Just read the lyrics to the songs on Nebraska sometime. It's literature disguised as folk music. A brilliant disguise.

              • SBG
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 pm

                You crossed off Jagger/Richards pretty easily. Rolling Stone, a Springsteen apologist if there ever was one, lists 13(!) Jagger/Richards offerings in their top 500 songs of all time. Just three for Springsteen.

              • E-6
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm

                You crossed off Jagger/Richards pretty easily.

                Yes. Yes, I did. Felt pretty good, too.

                Rolling Stone, a Springsteen apologist if there ever was one...

                Gee. From here, it looks like they named their publication after the Stones. Rolling Stone mag hasn't been relevant for over 30 years. Oh, wait. Neither have the Stones. Smile

              • SBG
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 pm

                They named their magazine after a Muddy Waters song.

                Here's a thread that's just about right. Springsteen or Seger? You decide.

              • E-6
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 pm

                No. The Stones named themselves after a Muddy Waters song. Rolling Stone magazine didn't start up until 1967. They couldn't really call the magazine Beatles, now could they?

              • E-6
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:27 pm

                Oh, and I've decided. Springsteen in a walk.

              • brianS
                March 4th, 2009 at 12:23 am

                Springsteen or Seger? You decide.

                good gawd. For the record, if Springsteen is Randy Johnson, Seger is Jamie Moyer.

              • SBG
                March 4th, 2009 at 5:31 am

                You dismiss the Stones out of hand, you get to choose between Springsteen and Seger.

      • brianS
        March 3rd, 2009 at 6:47 pm

        this sounds like it needs its own smack-down post.

        Nominees? I would propose confining the discussion to the period after the start of the album-oriented pop/rock era (roughly beginning with Rubber Soul??)

        • SBG
          March 3rd, 2009 at 7:33 pm

          So, you want to lop off ten years and eliminate the Lennon-McCartney duo. Are we going to restrict it to the state of New Jersey, too?

          • brianS
            March 3rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm

            Heh. No, I was ball-parking. I would include Lennon-McCartney. They DID write most of Rubber Soul, did they not? If you want to go back to 1959, I'm cool with that too.

            • CarterHayes
              March 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 pm

              As long as Brian Wilson gets consideration for his writing prior to Pet Sounds (1966), Rubber Soul makes a pretty sensible starting point.

              • SBG
                March 3rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm

                Why would we exclude the first five Beatles albums and Satisfaction from consideration?

              • brianS
                March 3rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm

                You have to draw the cut-off somewhere for any competition. Do you want to include Hank Williams Sr.? Woodie Guthrie? Rogers & Hammerstein? The Gershwins? Robert Johnson? Beethoven?

                I'm cool with drawing the line roughly at the start of the singer-songwriter era. My initial comment was aimed conceptually at the start of "albums" as (allegedly) cohesive works of art. I'm not sure The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan really counts as a cohesive work of art so much as a convenient playlist. But I didn't intend to cut off the works of artists whose output spanned the singles-oriented period in pop music and the start of the "album" period.

                1965 marks the publication of Rubber Soul, Highway 61 Revisited, A Love Supreme, The Angry Young Them, Maiden Voyage, and two Sun Ra albums (The Magic City and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra), among others. A momentous year in rock and jazz, (although one could pretty reasonably argue that the "album" form for jazz emerged quite a bit earlier), so it's a reasonably convenient, rough starting point. I wanted to avoid arguments about Tin Pan Alley hit machines and I didn't really want to do battle with the Holland-Dozier-Holland or Goffin-King type of top-40 writing machines.

              • SBG
                March 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 pm

                Why not start with the beginning of the British invasion. 1964.

              • CarterHayes
                March 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 pm

                Why not start with the beginning of the British invasion. 1964.

                I think this would depend on exactly what the parameters of the list/discussion are. If we accept

                the period after the start of the album-oriented pop/rock era (roughly beginning with Rubber Soul??)

                as the frame for the discussion, I think Rubber Soul is a fair starting point with perhaps a couple of allowances for pre-1965 work (recognized as "pioneering efforts" in album-oriented pop/rock, if you like). However, if this is a discussion of the "Top five songwriters of the last 50 years," period - in any genre - then I think you have to start it in 1959, lest folks like Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson (just to name two extremely talented songwriters) get screwed out of several major pre-1965 hit songs.

              • brianS
                March 4th, 2009 at 12:48 am

                FWIW, the Boss's favorite magazine, Rolling Stone had this to say about the top 500 albums of all time (as of 2003):

                * 11 The Beatles (with 4 in the top 10, including #1) – 10 of their 12 studio albums along with U.S. exclusive "Meet The Beatles!"
                * 10 Bob Dylan (with 2 in the top 10) – 10 of his 31 studio albums (32)
                * 10 The Rolling Stones (with 1 in the top 10) – 10 of their 21 studio albums (22)
                * 8 Bruce Springsteen – 8 of his 12 studio albums (15)
                * 7 The Who – 6 of their 10 studio albums(11); 1 live album
                * 6 Elton John – 5 of his 27 studio albums(29); 1 compilation album
                * 6 David Bowie – 5 of his 22 studio albums(23); 1 compilation album

                That puts a big fat gold star next to Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Jagger/Richards, Springsteen, Townshend, John/Taupin, and Bowie, respectively. You can't very easily take pot shots at the magazine without threatening the whole list.

                Granted, the whole list is pretty narrow, in that it emphasizes album-oriented rock. But there it is.

  • zooomx
    March 3rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    Ok... this time I will agree with SBG. I can respect some of Bruce's efforts, but this is not one. I would have traded the triangle for more cowbell. Oh, I don't know, in terms of story tellers, I would rank Bruce Springsteen right up there with John Cougar Mellencamp, John Cougar, John Mellencamp... aww wtf is his name again? Which is to say that he doesn't rate in my top 50 that I can think of off hand.

    However, I do respect Bruce for the kick @ss introduction he gave U2 at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. His description of the band and the individual players was spot on and entertaining.

  • SBG
    March 3rd, 2009 at 4:25 pm

    BTW, I have not yet listened to this track. I will take a listen tonight and add my rating then.