You're browsing all posts tagged Bruce Springsteen

R42 Mailbag: Meiert Avis

Now and then, this website attracts correspondence or comments from the people that I write about: the cowriter of Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69,” the bassist from Information Society, the actor who starred in Poison’s video for “Nothin’ But a Good Time.” I was delighted the other day to get email from Meiert Avis, who […]

posted 15 October 2014 in 1988. 1 comment

Top Five Looks in Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” Video

1. Springsteen, with sideburns, in blue jeans, a thick black belt, and a white short-sleeve shirt half-unbuttoned. 2. Clarence Clemons, with sunglasses and a high-top fade. 3. Max Weinberg, in a paisley shirt and vest, with a puffy haircut that looks like it’s trying to escape from his scalp. 4. Roy Bittan, with a pre-grunge […]

posted 22 April 2013 in Buy My Stuff. 1 comment

Mondegreen Update

I’m basically out of the mondegreen business these days, but I still file away misheard lyrics, and recently had two that you may find interesting. The first was from Jay-Z on his “Empire State of Mind” single with Alicia Keys. I thought he was rapping “Long live the World Trade / Long live the Kingdome,” […]

posted 2 December 2010 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Darkness on the Edge of Town

I finally watched The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town on HBO, and was reminded anew how much I love Bruce Springsteen’s fourth album. This is a discovery I seem to make periodically: the last time was in 2003, when I reviewed the record in Rolling Stone (as part of the […]

posted 20 October 2010 in Reviews. 8 comments

Spanish Johnny Proves Slow on the Uptake

From Bruce Springsteen’s “Incident on 57th Street”: Puerto Rican Jane, oh, won’t you tell me, what’s your name? Dude, you know her name. It’s “Puerto Rican Jane.”

posted 27 September 2010 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

1988 Countdown #55: Bruce Springsteen, “One Step Up”

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) Kevin Seal returns! Over the past four-plus hours, he customarily introduces videos only when returning from a commercial break. But coming out of the Poison video, he has a Bruce Springsteen interview clip to set up. Seal notes that Tunnel of Love was Springsteen’s first studio album in […]

posted 3 June 2010 in 1988. 5 comments

Top Five Bruce Springsteen Songs Without a Chorus

1. “Meeting Across the River” 2. “Nebraska” 3. “Seeds” 4. “Cautious Man” 5. “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” More than I expected, but I’m sure there’s others I didn’t think of. Some of them would work better as talking blues than others. “Seeds” seems the most anomalous, by virtue of being an uptempo rocker.

posted 7 December 2009 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment

The Springsteen Files

I deeply regret that Springsteen did not conclude his Super Bowl performance by playing a verse of “Outlaw Pete” (the first song on his new album, Working on a Dream) and then segueing into a barn-burning cover of Kiss’s “I Was Made for Loving You” (which hit #11 in 1979). If you’ve missed it, the […]

posted 2 February 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Single-Disc River

Wow, The River has a lot of filler. How much? If you pare away all the generic rockers (e.g. “I’m a Rocker”) and other dross on Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 double album, you have plenty of room left over for “Roulette,” a thundering track about a nuclear accident. (It was recorded during the River sessions but […]

posted 29 August 2008 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

1988 Countdown #90: Natalie Cole, “Pink Cadillac”

Top of the hour: MTV does a 30-second station ID. The network had retired the classic astronaut footage by 1988, but kept the theme song. This spot is a nifty piece of animation featuring the MTV logo in a gyroscope, with close-ups on doors and windows opening up all over the logo, revealing naked bicycle […]

posted 8 July 2008 in 1988. 4 comments