Quote:
Originally Posted by RadioMaster
if anyone wants to know what all the fuss is about... the whole paramount show is now up on youtube! Just search for springsteen paramount 2009
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I've spent so much time watching and listening to that thing, that I just finally listened to the remastered album today; it sounds great, I think. I noticed a few things that I hadn't noticed before. But the Paramount performance just blows me away! Bruce said he wouldn't change a thing about it, and I honestly agree with him. Interestingly, two songs that weren't exactly standouts to me before, "Adam Raised a Cain" and "Something in the Night" are particularly great to me on here. Especially Adam.
Anyway, as I was listening to everything (including the outtakes) today, I've decided that Darkness has moved firmly into first place ahead of "The Wild & Innocent" as my favorite Springsteen album. I mean, I still love WIESS, and I think it has one of the greatest second sides ever, but it hit me how Darkness is so much more cohesive as an
album. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's a concept album,
but there's definitely a story, and the songs do "talk to each other". For one (and I've thought this for a long time), I think the characters in Racing are the same people in Darkness (the song), and the main character is also the narrator in "The Promise". You might even extend that and say that they are the narrator and Mary from "Thunder Road", with "The Promise" being the bridge. Of the "new" songs, I think "Breakaway" would have fit the sound and the theme; also, there's the line:
Now the promises and the lies they demand it
Let the hearts that have been broken stand as the price you pay
To breakaway
Which harkens to "Badlands":
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you have to pay
Not to mention the character of "Sonny" is present again.
I was also struck by the line about about Janie and how "in a parking lot, she gave her soul away, to breakaway". It reminds me of how it's said that Bruce signed his record contract on the hood of a car, and I heard him say recently that he would have done anything, he just wanted to make a record.
Anyway, that was my afternoon, FWIW
