Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ - Springsteen, Bruce (CD 1984)

Maybe it's the Jersey thing.

Like most artists worth their salt, Bruce Springsteen is as maligned as he is revered. Like Pearl Jam, Springsteen and his E Street Band put on an absolutely religious live show, and he's got the grapes to put his political stances out there pretty plainly (not coincidentally, Pearl Jam and Springsteen shared a few dates on the anti-Bush Vote For Change tour, a valiantly-minded set of concerts that should have been enough catalyst for youngin's to get out and push a pro-Kerry ticket, not to mention all the political reasons); like Aerosmith, another of my favorites, Springsteen was initially derided as a poor 70's imitation of a 60's legend (Dylan) before proving himself to have not only the longevity to sustain a respectable recording career outside of the legendary Zim's influence, but to flourish through the past couple decades when his oft-cited influence has floundered at best. And, like Aerosmith, it's taken an entire career for Springsteen to have a number-one single (Aerosmith had "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" in 1998; Springsteen, astonishingly, is still waiting).

Compound these overt comparisons to two of my favorite rock bands with the fact that Springsteen is, indeed, a hometown homeboy, names his albums after places in my state, references places i've been in his lyrics, it seems kind of natural that I'd find a sort of magic in a Bruce Springsteen album. It makes sense.

It doesn't explain my lack of fierce devotion to Jon Bon Jovi, of course. But it makes sense.

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And so why would I want to, as I've previously done with Pearl Jam albums, take all my dearly loyal fans for a nostalgic drive down Springsteen lane? Well, to draw more attention to myself after a considerable creative dry spell, naturally; but secondary to my own agenda is my desire to simply draw as much attention as possible to one of my favorite-ever artists (if not my personal favorite solo artist, somewhere up there next to Elvis Costello). Often left in the dust in favor of more famous masterpieces like the Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, Born To Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and the like, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ was Springsteen's debut salvo, a brief (EP-length by today's standards) explosion of teenage naivete and adolescent lust. The kind of hunger Springsteen would later exhibit on an aching album like Born To Run was, in its 1973 incarnation, just a kind of lifestyle celebration, deeper than, say, the Beach Boys, but not quite as deep as latter-day incarnations of Springsteen himself (the Springsteen of Darkness, for example).

So as a big-time Springsteen fan, I wish I could tell you that Greetings From Asbury Park is his forgotten masterpiece; I can't, sadly, although I'll totally give it "unfairly slighted." But there's a reason we remember all the other albums over this one: namely, 'cuz they're better. The album's biggest claim to fame is, probably, spawning "Blinded By the Light," which Manfred Mann's Earth Band later turned into a number one hit (along with inadvertently morphing Bruce's "cut loose like a deuce" line into "wrapped up like a douche," which might be funnier but doesn't make much sense); either that or being the album that houses "Mary, Queen of Arkansas," which most Springsteen fans seem to find boring (I actually kind of like it; another Greetings track, "The Angel," is a total snoozer though). Springsteen's recording of "Blinded" is the better of the two; it just suffers from wordiness (which is actually kind of endearing, although the fact that it's so overtly wordy and smacks so much of Dylan hero worship is something that i totally realize), while Manfred Mann's version suffers from sucking.

madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
in the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
with a boulder on my shoulder feelin' kind of older i tripped the merry-go-round
with this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground..

It's not that there's anything _wrong_ with Bruce's words - it's just that it's a total show-off gig, stringing together a bunch of words that don't mean anything but sound good rhythmically (which kind of makes it an embryonic version of avant-garde hip-hop). Which begs the question: is there anything wrong with that? It's your call, but I say, if it sounds cool, keep it.

Other tunes on Greetings From Asbury Park show the Springsteen promise without delivering the Springsteen punch: the oft-reviled "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" is stark and Nebraska-like, with pretty words aplenty but no musical gut-punch to drive it home; "Lost in the Flood" predates later epics like "Jungleland" and "Incident on 57th Street" without ever really arriving at any hook or crescendo good enough to stack up next to those later songs; and you could listen to "The Angel" dozens of times before it begins to leave an impression.

What makes Greetings From Asbury Park worth the price of admission are those songs that show that Springsteen is, indeed, different. "Growin' Up" and "For You" are the kind of rock song made to be rocked with near-religious ferocity in concert (the version of "Growin' Up" on Live 1975-1985 is the song's essential recording, complete with sweaty rock n' roll sermon breakdown), while the joyous "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street" bursts at the seams of its scant 2-minute runtime:

wizard imps and sweat-sock pimps, interstellar mongrel nymphs
rex said that lady left him limp
love's like that (sure it is)
queen of diamonds, ace of spades, newly discovered lovers of the everglades
they take out a full-page ad in the trades to announce their arrival...

Again: words for the sake of words, but awesome ones at that.

Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey is Springsteen's forgotten album because what came after was simply too monumental to bother with the patchy build-up. The production is thin, the musical workouts not delivered with nearly the dexterity of his following albums, and the words rarely deeper than the pursuit of cool imagery; later albums would use that cool imagery to further a narrative or a political salvo. Still, Asbury Park uses Springsteen's words and inimitable rock n' roll spirit to breathe life into what amounts to a transitional album; it's the gap-bridger between Springsteen the New Jersey barroom yowler and Springsteen the poet, prophet and storyteller.

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GROWIN' UP SPRINGSTEEN REVIEWS:
- Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ
- The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
- Born to Run
- Darkness on the Edge of Town
- The River
- Nebraska
- Born in the U.S.A.
- Tunnel of Love
- Human Touch