What Are You Listening To?

[CRAZY-HORSE]

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN  "greetings from asbury park n.j" cd 1973

his debut of twenty...
a solid album, and to think the first track on the first Springsteen album was "blinded by the light", a song later brilliantly covered by the equally brilliant Manfred Mann's Earth Band, the Boss' original sounds stifled and slightly messy to me but still pretty good and i say that from the point of view from someone who loved the Earth Band version three or four decades prior to hearing this one...
elsewhere, the songs have a bit of a Gaslight Anthem feel, so it is obvious where they got their Jersey rock sounds from....
not a great album by the standards he later set for himself but a great debut album nonetheless...
I LIKE THIS ALBUM

1:   blinded by the light  **
2:   growin' up  ***
3:   mary, queen of arkansas  ***
4:   lost in the flood  **
5:   the angel  **
6:   for you  **
7:   spirit in the night  **
8:   its hard to be a saint in the city  ***

3s -  3
2s -  5
1s -  0

rating:  2.3






the dude was writing masterful, thoughtful lyrics at even this early stage of his majestic career:

Mary, Queen of Arkansas, it's not too early for dreamin'
The sky is grown with cloud seed sown and a bastard's love can be redeeming
Mary, my queen, your soft hulk is reviving
No, you're not too late to desecrate, the servants are just rising

Well, I'm just a lonely acrobat, the live wire is my trade
I've been a shine boy for your acid brat and a wharf rat of your state
Mary, my queen, your blows for freedom are missing
You're not man enough for me to hate or woman enough for kissing
The big top is for dreamers, we can take the circus all the way to the border
And the gallows wait for martyrs whose papers are in order
But I was not born to live to die, and you were not born for queenin'
It's not too late to infiltrate, the servants are just leavin'

Mary, Queen of Arkansas, your white skin is deceivin'
You wake and wait to lie in bait and you almost got me believin'
But on your bed, Mary, I can see the shadow of a noose
I don't understand how you can hold me so tight and love me so damn loose

But I know a place where we can go, Mary
Where I can get a good job and start out all over again clean
I got contacts deep in Mexico where the servants have been seen