The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle - Springsteen, Bruce (CD 1986)

Retrocrush.com, which bills itself as the "world's finest pop culture site," recently pulled off an idea that I've wanted to run with for some time now. They have compiled, complete with song clips for each entry, a list of "The 50 Coolest Song Parts"; when i stumbled across the list, I thought, "How cool! Somebody who knows what I'm talking about!" A list of the coolest song parts ever could be totally different from a list of the coolest songs ever, because a cool song part can exist in an uncool song (although an uncool song part cannot, conversely, exist in a cool song). Retrocrush's list.

On "The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle" we see realized some of the potential present on Springsteen's first album "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J." Better writing and performances combined with much improved production and engineering to create some powerful rock and roll, though not as strong as the work to follow. In particular, the performances are a little tepid compared to hearing them in the flesh. This album spawned two Springsteen concert traditionals, "Fourth of July (Sandy)", about a boardwalk loser who is finally realizing that is life is getting away from him, and..

With his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen showed the type of talent and raw potential that only comes along once very so often in the world of rock and roll. There was a hopeful thread that ran through the album, even with the dark imagery and tones that permeated most of the songs. Hell, most critics dubbed him a sort of "new Dylan," although to paint Springsteen into the folk corner is unfair to him. And his sophomore effort, The Wild, The Innocent

The day I picked up Born to Run at a Tower Records store in Chicago last summer I barely knew a thing about Bruce Springsteen. Oh sure, he was the guy who wrote Secret garden - the cool song from Jerry Maguire , one of my then favorite movies with Tom Cruise. But last summer I came to where the streets had no name, and I wanted to get a little more insight on who was called the Boss. Now if there s ever going to be as many as 10 genuinely influential albums in my life, whatever happens, Born to run has secured a top 3 place. I was so impressed I went on and bought all Bruce records through...