BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
The Rising
CD/LP,
Columbia/Sony
As
a teenager I was a big big fan of “The Boss” and I guess that is
something that nobody counts as juvenile misbehaviour (my short-lived
fascination with Italian disco-music is something completely different,
ehrm..) and as I am growing older I find that I still am. During my
hardcore/punk-years I missed out on some records, but there were some really
bad ones in between as well. Nowadays I would name “Darkness on the Edge
of town”, “Nebraska”
and maybe even “Greetings from Asbury Park” as my favourite
Springsteen-albums. Yeah, I am a strange character. “the rising” falls
into the first quarter I guess, because there are some tunes that won’t
leave my head for weeks.
One
of those is “Waitin’ on a sunny day”, which has accompanied me for
some time now and really helped me a lot. Maybe you know this feeling: life
is fucked up and your only chance to survive mentally sound is to keep a
tune in your head to keep you from thinking. Years ago I was working in a
stupid 10hours-a-days-job that was really exhausting, around me were only
working-class-assholes but I needed to haul through the summer to make some
money. I kept on revolving “Losing my religion” by REM in my head to
keep me going. For hours and hours. Like in a trance. And that helped me.
Last week was also really bad at my current job. I clocked in at 60 hours
(not counting evening events) and it was “Waitin’ on a sunny day” in
my head all day. (Another trick to help me, if work pisses me off for real,
is to remind me that “It is a fun job, but it is still a job” (see Cypress
Hill).) I guess, what I need is a truly pessimistic song with an
uplifting melody and “Waitin’ on a sunny day” really has that,
complete with a shuffling groove that comes straight from the last record by
Willy DeVille (another grand old wise man).
It
is still true that not a lot rockstars in this league have put the
depression of everyday life as well into music as Bruce Springsteen. Even if
the “edge of town” has changed into “further on up the road” or
“Candy’s Room” into “Mary’s Place”, a song like “The Nothing
Man” is still pure melancholia and sadness. Of course, playing with full
band there is a lot tighter arrangement than for instance on Bob Dylans
records. There are some especially well produced drum-sounds on here.
Overall there is a whole variety of styles and arrangements on here.
SAE-students will eat this one up. And then there are some Americana-Rockers
(“Countin’ on a miracle”, “Lonesome Day”) as you would expect.
Still the way Springsteen puts problems, heartaches and frustration into
music translates through the whole western world (which is the key to his
success). There are songs on “The rising” which will work well in
stadiums while others will work really good in small clubs transcripted to
one acoustic guitar but somehow this record makes me melancholic the whole
way through. See, I dropped into bed yesterday smashed from a good dose of
my favourite drink (“Gin South” of course) and the I woke up around
seven am the next day. Now it is an hour later and the drawn out, sad tune
of “Empty Sky” really fits the grey clouds that hang over Vienna
outside.
I
started thinking about the fireworkers fighting the floodings in some
federal districts in Austria (the worst since ever they say) and wondered
how they would spend the morning. Then I pondered if I should sample the
oriental intro of “world’s apart” for some electronic music. I could
turn that into something like Muslimgauze. Then I realised that I could be
sitting here writing something about really interesting and modern music;
about the new albums by Akufen, Flaming Lips, the Fight Club-compilation or
Oxbow, which are all waiting on my shelf, but I find myself drawn to this
record here much more. (See, I listen to records and if I find some thoughts
creeping into my head that are good enough to be written down, to form a
review and the time is right, then I sit down to write a review. This is the
only way it should work, I am not getting paid to do this.) Is it just the
time of day? Am I getting old? Is it the fact, that Bruce Springsteen is 60
years old now and still lives the live everybody wants to somehow? Or is it
depression after an more than regularly exhausting week of work? I can’t
say. But I will keep “The rising” close to my CD-player.
