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  1. Saw that – want the audio content, no longer have the need for a dvd player so don’t need the DVD. Hope they have an audio only release because it is one of my favourites of his albums.

  3. For me, those years recording songs for Darkness At The Edge Of Town and The River were Springsteen at his peak. It’s a pity that so little of it was actually released at the time. All the Brooce I need is there. Pity I’ve had to buy, rebuy and now buy again just to get all of it!

  4. When compared to the Darkness \ The Promise sets I find it a little wanting. It would have been a shoe in to include the complete River performance from 2010 from Madison Square Garden as they did with Darkness on the previous set. And taking up 2 discs of a rarities set with an album re-master that is already available separately is a bit of a swizz.

    I guess they felt what with the NYE 1980 show being out as a Vault release so recently it would be doubling up to release audio of the Tempe set. AS it is this is not enough for the nutters and too mch for the casuals

  5. “Little”/”Miami” Steven/Stevie/Steve van Zandt (so many names, so little hair) tweeted a link to a track yesterday, saying words to the effect that the E Street Band’s discards would have been enough for other bands to build a whole career on.

    I clicked on the link and it was, inevitably, horrible.

  6. The River was the point where many of the original fans (hem-hem) got off the boat. The magic had definitely gone by then, and except for Hungry Heart and the title track, there’s really nothing fantastic on it anywhere. Also, the concerts at that point (I was there, somewhere) had become vast and anonymous. He’s done some good work since then – well, on Nebraska, anyway – but nothing to touch the first four, and I do include the first.

    • It’s also a double album in more than one sense: there are two discrete albums on there, wrestling for attention: the one with what I call the “funny hat songs” on it – “Sherry Darling”, “You Can Look…”, “Cadillac Ranch”, “Ramrod”, “Two Hearts” – and the one the crowd goes “Shoosh” for during the intro: the title track, “Drive All Night”, “Point Blank” and so on.

      It’s all rather mess. An almost glorious mess, but a mess all the same.

  7. I agree with H.P.Saucecraft that it is not a great album. I’d add Point Blank to the essential tracks, but really I could never understand why it was so revered. Rarely have I ever bought an album with so much anticipation and felt so badly let down.
    Far from being a double album, it could have been distilled to an EP.

      • ok that ‘s one

        Arch, HP ?

        Now I haven’t put it on for quite sometime not even after the Brucathon following the last tour. So on the one hand it says hmmm maybe doesn’t cut it OR just forgot about esp being a double an all so need to dust the discs again.

        • I did more than listen to it recently. When the remaster came out, I kicked it into a different running order, because it had never seemed to flow (oh ha) and I wondered if that was why the album never worked for me.

          http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t642/burtkocain/River_zpsxflrzicn.jpg

          The River disappointed me on release. First off, that dreadful cover. Springsteen has had more than his fair share of stinkers in his long career, but The River is the nadir. Stupid-looking portrait, vaguely prissy-looking pout, horrible eighties typography. A kind of ugly, degraded version of the Darkness cover (same photographer).

          And there was something unsatisfactory about the sequencing that had me, for the first time, dropping the tone-arm on my favourite cuts rather than playing it all the way through. And I found myself playing sides three and four less and less, finally not at all. Over the years, I’ve gone back to it, coming away with the same feeling. Recently I wondered if it was the track order, and so, with the wonderful magic of iTunes at my disposal, started shuffling the tracks around.

          And I discovered there’s a story, a narrative, in there. Not of a single character, but a set of scenes and moods that fits a roughly chronological order.

          Independence Day/Hungry Heart
          Leaving home and family. The boy leaves his father because he can’t bear to become what his father has become. It’s a desperate, sad, but strong move./The man leaves his family because – why the hell not? There’s a sense of jubilation in the freedom, even if he’s stuck in a bar.

          Out in the Street/I’m a Rocker/You Can Look/Ramrod/Cadillac Ranch
          The boy is free and on the streets, living it up. Watch out girls!

          Crush On You/Sherry Darling/Two Hearts/I Wanna Marry You
          He meets his Special One, falls in love, and commits to marriage. Life is good.

          Drive All Night
          One of Springsteen’s longest songs, and one of his worst. “I’d drive all night just to buy you some shoes” would be a great chat-up line in a sleazy bar, but as a declaration of romantic love it descends into bathos in a song. But it’s the only song on the entire album where he attempts romance. There’s no hint of stuff falling apart, this is it, this is what love is like. Except that it doesn’t ring true. Maybe this is intentional, maybe it’s an unselfconscious expression of the way Springsteen felt – a kind of desperation to be in love. Forcing himself. This can’t last, right?

          The Ties That Bind/Jackson Cage/The Price You Pay
          Everything put together falls apart. The love can’t last.

          Fade Away/Point Blank/Stolen Car/Wreck On the Highway
          It’s over. That Cadillac, long n’ dark, shiny n’ black, is the wreck of a stolen car.

          The River
          The only song (I think) that presents the narrator looking back over his life. He’s telling the story of the album. Full of regret and sadness but somehow holding together.

          Has it made it a more cohesive and enjoyable listening experience? I dunno. I still don’t listen to it.

          • “First off, that dreadful cover. Springsteen has had more than his fair share of stinkers in his long career, ”

            Yes, I agree. But I really like Annie Leibovitz’s photographs on the front and back covers of “Tunnel of Love”.

    • I have Junior and I still love it as much as I did when I bought the original in 1980.

      I was in from the start (1973?) and Springsteen was playing to larger crowds as his popularity grew but W.T,F is he supposed to do? All these who proclaim they got off the bus after `Darkness`, good for them, but so what, “Hey Bruce, you can stop now, I`m not bothered any more”. Give `em a medal.

      With regard to the `River` box, as DFB says “There`s not enough for the nutters”, but I suppose I fit into that category so I will still be getting it.

      • I’m pleased to accept your medal, Harkers, but I’m just telling it like it was for me, and I wasn’t alone. If you weren’t disappointed with The River after those first four, then I humbly return my medal to you. You deserve it more.

        • I love ‘Darkness’, It’s the album by BS love the most but I didn’t expect Darkness 2 as a follow up. ‘The River’ is a sprawling bombastic mess that was something not to be unexpected by someone who had produced those 5 previous albums. In fact it was to be expected.

          Opinions are just that, my view/your view, we can’t all be right Crafty nor can we all be wrong.

          The medal? Keep it, I have enough.

          • I thought we’d had that IMHO business sorted? Opinions are neither right nor wrong, it’s the way they’re expressed that gives them value and interest. This isn’t a right-wrong debate we’re having.

            Incidentally, my hat is duly doffed if you really were into Springsteen in ’73. That first album only sold a handful. Everyone I knew back then backtracked to it after hearing The Wild The Etcetera. Born To Run was problematic, too, sounding so unlike the first two, and a lot of people bailed right there. The River was less of a jump to make, but I remember trying to defend it at the time and not really being convinced by my own argument. But it was that, and the River Tour, that broke him in the UK, not Born To Run, which suffered an anti-hype backlash it’s hard to imagine these days.

            • The River broke Springsteen in the UK?Is that really true (he asks, out of interest, rather than to dispute the notion)?

              I was barely born when The River was released, but it had always been my understanding that the 1975 Hammersmith Apollo shows broke Springsteen in the UK.

              • The first Hammersmith Odeon show got luke-warm reviews, Springsteen knew he could do better, so got himself a return gig a week later, and the blew the house down. I was there, but the HO was a relatively small venue, so the number of people wandering into the night, their eyes bright with the spirit of rock n’roll future,, was limited. This show hardly got reviewed at all. The general UK reaction to Born To Run was “we’re not having this overhyped US crap rammed down our throats”. It was only when the album started to sell that everyone realised the hype was true, but there was no UK tour for Darkness. The UK was ready for The River, and greeted Springsteen like a hero. By then he was lost in the enormodromes, and that band of broadwalk brothers never did the E Street Shuffle exactly right again.

                He’d already made at least two of the greatest rock records ever, so we can forgive him for not making another. But life is short, and when I want some Bruce, it’s always the first four I listen to. with exactly the same rush as always.

                • In answer to your “if I was Really into Springsteen in `73” the answer is yes. I have always looked, to quote Shakey, `in the ditch` for new music, so I didn`t have to `backtrack`, I had to get `GFAPNJ` on import.

                  Of course you are entirely correct about the London shows and the reaction to BTR, I was at the 2nd show myself, although the only thing I remember was nearly being fired for taking two days off work.

                  I appreciate what you say about opinions Crafty, the problem is they often come across as criticism, which is not the problem of the opinionator but those who interpret the opinion. Stay cool.

                  • I remember reading a review of “Greetings From Asbury Park” by Richard Williams in Melody Maker (the internet tells me it was the 31 March 1973 issue) and being impressed by his unbridled enthusiasm for this new LP by an unknown singer songwriter. In those days I used to buy albums, unheard, based on favourable reviews by my favourite writers.

                    I would have probably been reading the MM on a Thursday; the following Saturday I was browsing through the records in Boots the Chemist in the small Welsh border town where I lived and there it was, with its bright, postcard cover (a foldout cardboard flap) waiting for me to buy it. It’s still on my shelf with the Boots the Chemist sticker on the back, and I still like it, although it’s a very different Bruce to the one he became.

                • Interesting.

                  Funnily enough, my dad was there the same night as you. Very nearly skipped it after hearing about the first night, but now never tires of reminding me that he was there, and I was not, the swine.

                  He never got to see Idlewild live though, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

              • My recollection of the time is that Darkness On The Edge Of Town had broken Bruce in the UK.
                It was certainly the one that did it for me and the people I knew. I went back to Born To Run, which I’d previously dismissed, and wholeheartedly embraced it.

                • The OGWT clip certainly broke Bruce for everyone who saw it, like the HO gig did for everyone who saw that. Darkness convinced those who’d had doubts about BTR, but in terms of sheer mass, it was The River, tour and album, which put him at the top – nobody was bigger then.

                  Chart positions are more reliable than sales for judging contemporary success: the first five albums charted like this in the UK: 41, 33, 17, 16 (Darkness just pipping BTR), and 2 – that crucial leap. After that, it’s mostly 1’s all the way in the UK.

                    • … and there’s nothing like mainstream success for alienating the original fanbase. Except we weren’t, of course. Springsteen was a local hero long before that first album (which was in itself a disappointment to them – where was the guitar?)

  9. Funny that the link states Odessey and Oracle!

    Way more than an EP, but I agree not quite up there with his best work. There is a magnificent single album waiting to burst out of there (as usual with doubles), some poor stuff like Crush on You, but also career peaks like Ties that Bind, The River, Point Blank and The Price You Pay (amongst others).

    Shame the concert footage is incomplete, the show I saw in 1981 was the single greatest rock show I have ever seen. I am sure it will still be pretty amazing.

    Bonus audio looks a bit underwhelming (much released already) and my coffee table requires no more books.

    Will probably pick it up nevertheless, but in a year or so when they are selling them off for considerably lower prices.

  11. I agree like most double albums you could make a brilliant single one…but that said, I like it all, even if some of the funny hat tracks have worn a bit thin. for every “Cadillac Ranch” there’s a “Wreck on the highway”, so that’s fine. “Ties that bind” is as fine an opening track as you’ll ever find. My CD sounds a bit thin so a remastered set would be nice to find in the Christmas stocking.

  12. 3.
    It was the first Springsteen I bought, not counting Born to Run, the single. Love it, and immediately went back to the shop, in Sidcup, I recall, buying Darkness on the edge of Town.
    Personally I am not so keen on his 50/60s pastiches like Hungry Heart, preferring the slow ballads like the title and Wreck, Drive All Night, Point Black.
    As to killer vs. filler, hell, most records were padded out in the olden days, weren’t they? Now they’re padded out with live and alternate versions…..

  13. Too much filler for Bargepole’s taste, but certainly a core of good material in there. Loved much of The Promise cd from the other year though so may well put this one on the Xmas list .

  14. Four

    It’s far from my favourite Bruce record, but I am quite interested in this release, not least to hear how it works as a single album. Does anyone have any idea if the single disc is the same recordings that made it on to the double in a different order, or if they are different version? Also be interested to see what songs made the cut for one disc.

  16. Back in the day (late ’70s), my mate and I were watching a late-night music show on BBC2. They showed a clip of Bruce singing The River. First time we’d ever seen him and we thought it was magnificent. That clip was followed by a live gig from The Police. They sounded laughably weedy by comparison.
    Bought the album and, months later, I ran into Frank from The Searchers at the bar after they’d played a storming gig at Dingwalls. We got on extremely well, possibly because of my youth and beauty. I told him that Springsteen had written a song that was tailor-made for them, namely, The Ties that Bind. He promised to give it a listen, but, as far as I know, they never followed my recommendation.
    Pooterirsh stories are my speciality.

      • It was after the release of the great “Hearts in her Eyes’ single on Sire that they played that hugely successful gig at Dingwalls. That single was really very close to cracking the Top 30 and giving them a fillip, but, unfortunately, it didn’t quite make it. Sire were rather poor at pushing their artists onto UK TV. The Searchers were also supposed to support B52s at Camden, but, for whatever reason, couldn’t do it and were replaced by The Troggs.
        Frank was definitely intrigued by my description of the song and how it would be perfect for them and promised to seek it out. ‘Two Hearts’ would also have suited them. Presume they just went back to the, fairly lucrative, chicken in a basket circuit when the single didn’t chart.

  17. Blimey, that’s struck a chord. I remember that, Seymour Stein signing the Searchers and noo-waving ’em up a treat. Quick rummage and here we go, not a Bruce song but a BigStar,?Chilton one, and another influence on him:

    • Yep a lot of The Promise tracks had new overdubs – vocals, guitar n horns etc. I could get really animated about it but I can see both sides of the argument too clearly to really damn him for it

  21. I really like The River. Think Tunnel Of Love might be my fave thanks to the title track, which is my favourite Bruce song. But The River rocks and rolls and sounds like a great live album. Was he listening to The Clash London Calling for this? Because I have that in my head that he was.

    And there are a lot of similarities: the double album thing, the retro rockers, the sound even. It’s a lot more basic than the previous albums. It also reminds me a bit of Get Happy, a lot of the songs sound like quick knock offs, written and recorded at speed. I think it’s great, it sounds more basic and humble. Some of the stuff either side seems to think it’s important. This album is a bar band at volume.

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