Ironically, in doing so, O'Brien took the E Street Band sound right out of the music. The production was sleek and sterile. The essence of the E Street Band was previously captured through recording that emphasized its organic sound, and it was nowhere to be found on "The Rising." "The Rising" was a mixture of lifeless, modernized, loud production and uneven songs that tried too hard to fit a thematic goal. Springsteen went for a big statement and a contemporary sound, and the end result was an album that sounds unattractively dated and uneven 15 years later.
40th Anniversary of the Agora show. Nice article in the local news: 40 facts about Bruce Springsteen's famous 1978 Agora concert
I have to say, although not a huge fan of his solo stuff, I love what Little Steven did with 57 Channels! It's one of the highlights of the 1993 Meadowlands release. Bruce had enough decent songs in '92 to release a very good album. If anything Human Touch suffers from poor song choices as much as anything else. Lucky Town is a very under rated album in my opinion, and deserves higher praise than it usually gets.
I don't disagree with you, but I do think that the record captured the sound that Bruce was going for at the time.
Given the 30 or so tracks that we have from the Human Touch session, I do wish that he would have continued on with the 'bass' driven album that he had the thought of compiling at some point during the sessions. Some of these ended up on Tracks. It would have made for a much more low key album, and certainly less commercial (which is what won out in the end), but it would have lived up to the 'not an E Street' project that he was trying to do after the break-up. Since HT ended up being an E Street-lite album, this type of low key album (perhaps still drive by the title track as the lead single) might have been more easily digested by the fan base than the album that was released. I think Bruce Inc. envisioned a big run of singles from the album and the changing musical landscape put in end to that rather quickly -- the choice of "57 Channels" as the second single didn't help of course.
I just finished listening to the Bruce series on Steven Hyden's Celebration Rock Podcast last night and it brought home something that I'd never really thought of, but should have been obvious and that was the shift in how Bruce "recorded" albums, starting with TOL. Up until then, with the exception of Nebraska, all of the records had mostly been recorded "live" by the entire E Street Band, together in the studio. Starting with TOL, Bruce recorded most everything himself and brought the band in, individually to record individual pieces of songs (according to Hyden's podcast, band members referred to this as "beat the demo," because their parts would only be used if they were better than what Springsteen had recorded himself). I don't know enough about HT/LT to know how they were recorded, but I remember when The Rising was being recorded, there were a lot of posts on the old Stone Pony London site about individual band members coming in for days at a time to record their particular parts and then leaving - I think there were a couple of "sources" who actually scoped out BOB's studio in Atlanta to post this news. I think all of his subsequent E Street Band records have been recorded that way. But to my ears The Rising really suffers from this process. It just does not sound like an E Street Band record at all.
The Rising is one of my favorite albums, but I don't disagree with this. It's why I'm still hoping for a good early Rising tour show to come out soon. (Or even a less-sucktastic remix of the Barcelona show). Sort of like compiling a complete River playlist from the live download series, I hope to be able to do the same with The Rising and Magic, eventually.
That's accurate. And I think it's just how Bruce has liked to work post-BITUSA, unfortunately. But I think it's also down to band members living in different places and having very different lives than they did 20 years earlier. Max had Conan, Roy was producing, Garry was living in Nashville (or Montana, depending on the year), SVZ was acting and whatnot, Nils had his solo stuff... Of course, we'd all love to see them just go into the studio and bash out a record in a couple weeks, but Bruce has never been one to work quickly, and I don't think most of the ESB in their 50's would've been able or willing to spend months away from their lives and families while Bruce agonizes over a record like they did in the 70's. I think the best thing we have is all these live shows, which hopefully over time will end up encompassing more or less every song the band ever played live, and perhaps getting as close as we'll get to what the songs probably should've sounded like in the first place.
My understanding is that only 2 albums (The River and BITUSA) were primarily recorded "live" in an ensemble setting in the studio (mostly in Studio A at the Power Station in NYC). Portions of Darkness were as well (title track and a couple others). Other than that, for most of his career, Springsteen seems to gravitate more to recording in layers, bringing the players in one by one.
The doc included in The Promise seems to say otherwise, since they're all shown recording the album together at the studio, don't they? That was a great movie, BTW. J
Darkness was recorded across 2 studios (Atlantic Studios and The Record Plant). From what I remember reading in the studio logs, a lot of the songs were initially recorded with the basic rhythm tracks (bass and drums), then layers added on top. Darkness (title track) was cut full band live. The story goes that they were renovating one of the studios at the Record Plant, and all that was left were bare cinder block walls, which gave a real hot, "live" sound. Bruce brought the band in there, liked the sound, and they recorded that particular track live, full band. Something In The Night might have been cut live as well.
You play bass on 53 identical takes of every song and you'll probably opt for living in Montana, too.
I don't necessarily think that The Rising sounds great -- just that BO'B accomplished what Bruce asked him to do...which was to move the sound of the band into the 21st Century. He may or may not have accomplished that in your view, but in Bruce's mind I think he definitely did. And I love the songs on D&D, just not the overdubs that BO'B added to fill out the tracks and make them a bit less acoustic. I created my own acoustic mix of the album using the stems from the 5.1 channels on the DVD side of the release and that's my go to version of the album. I love it. It's sparse and is just Bruce on guitar with some added vocal backing, keyboards, and percussion. I like to think it's close to the version that Bruce handed over to BO'B to work his 'magic' on.
Am I the only one who clicks on this thread solely in the hope of an announcement for another download sale?
Back on topic. Recently picked up the Dylan "trouble no more" collection. Stil not a huge fan of Bob's gospel period, but boy, does Columbia Legacy does a great job with the booklet and packaging. All Nugs provides is a generic package, a vintage picture on the front, and an essay by some guy named Erik Flannigan. Any thoughts on why Springsteen, an A-list artist under contract with Columbia, would not release this stuff through Columbia Legacy and get the same treatment? (My guess is the answer has something to do with money, but would appreciate any enlightenment)
Total assumption - he sees what Pearl Jam is doing, talks to Eddie Vedder, mulls it over for a few years. Talks to Landau, asks how many shows they have in the vault. A high number, like many hundred. Asks how many will be used for a proper physical release. Is told a low number, like three. Tells Jon to nugs them, but as is, warts and all, mostly. Because the number of people who really care about the packaging and having physical product is dwindling rapidly, so why not just put them out there with no fuss.
Wouldn't be a surprise that Dylan unloads his multitude of live shows post 1980's through nugs.net in the next few years.
FWIW, the more I listen to this series, there is an ocean of difference between the sound on the Bob Clearmountain stuff and everything else. Tempe and Passaic sound fantastic. Everything else ranges from good to poor. I realize I'm stating the obvious to many folks here, but still...
Well, I don't like "Outlaw Pete" much, but I would far rather hear Nils sing than Steve. I know that Steve's vocals are inseparable from the E-Street sound, but he doesn't have much of a voice. He just yells at the top of his lungs in the places that Bruce carves out for him. Nils, on the other hand, is a fantastic singer. One of my favourite E-Street moments was "If I Should Fall Behind" on the Reunion tour. The trading of vocals at the end was fantastic. In particular, Nils' contribution was beautiful. But Steve; Steve should have kept his mouth shut. On at least two occasions I thought I saw Bruce give him the evil eye because he was so corny and over the top.
Look at the archival releases from The Stones, Neil Young, Dylan as previously mentioned. All artists operating in the same ball park as Bruce and all with a demographic that largely still values physical product. When you compare what Bruce is doing via Nugs it is a very poor second in terms of quality; both sound wise and in the way they are packaged. I would agree that only Passaic and Tempe would stand up to the quality of these releases, I would also add in Stockholm '88, although I find most of the shows (with the exception of Rome 2013 which is absolutely terrible) that have been released for tours after 2000 are also very good quality, as is Meadowlands 1993. The London '81 release is only average sound in my opinion. Yes, better than an audience recording, but still a million miles away from something like Tempe.
It may change but Jeff Roses, the guy who overseas Dylan's archival releases, has specifically stated that they had looked at Nugs and doesn't like their mode of operation, that they don't want a lot of shows out there.
I can't believe how much people complains about the 90 seconds AUD patch at the end of Detroit Medley. They don't understand how they could chose this show etc. Really, 90 seconds and the show is useless!? I guess those people are not Deadheads Sure, they could have patched it with another version of Detroit Medley, or just edited it out completely. But I'm glad that they gave us what the band performed that night.
