Christmas came a little early in my
life this year. A friend of mine has
been cleaning out his house, and he gave me a treasure of modern art: a box
full of Bruce Springsteen CDs. I’ve been
a Springsteen fan for a while, but I certainly haven’t purchased all of his
albums, mostly because he’s got a prolific catalogue after being a recording
artist for more than 40 years. I was very
excited about this unexpected gift, and so I’ve been listening through the
albums during the last couple of days, marveling at Springsteen’s body of work.
I like listening to an entire album
– even if I know which single is catchy or fun – just to try to get a sense of
the depth of what the artist is trying to communicate. Sometimes, the exercise of listening through
an entire album doesn’t reveal much beyond the catchy single, but in the case
of Bruce Springsteen, you can be assured that his albums are never about just
one song.
One album in particular has really
resonated with me as I’ve listened to it a few times through. Back in 1999, Springsteen had separated
himself from his E Street Band-mates and taken a journey on a solo career. Some of the albums he made were good, but
mostly, I think his fans were hoping for a reunion with the entire E Street
Band once Bruce’s solo passion had run it’s course. Springsteen released an album in 1999 – maybe
listening to his fans’ requests, maybe not – simply called 18 Tracks. Here’s an exerpt
from the liner notes, written by Bruce himself.
My albums [are] a series of choices – what
to include, what to leave out? One of
the results of working like this was that a lot of music, including some of my
favorite things, remained unreleased.
This collection…is the alternate route to some of the destinations I
travelled to on my records, an invitation into the studio on the many nights we
spent making music in search of the records we presented to you. I’m glad to finally be able to share this
music;
here are some of the ones that got away.
Usually, when an artist releases a
record of “the ones that got away” or “previously unreleased material,” only
the most full-throttle fans truly appreciate the offering. These albums are often esoteric, rambling,
and at the end of listening to them, I’ve usually felt like there was a good
reason those tracks had littered the cutting room floor.
Not so with 18 Tracks. Beginning with
recordings all the way back from 1972, the songs on this remarkable album chart
a course through Springsteen’s evolution as a musician, and his depth as a
songwriter. Even songs which are
unabashedly fun like “Lions Den”
(1982) and “Part Man, Part Monkey” (1990) carry weighty messages of love and
redemption, and in the case of “Lions Den,” reflect the story of the
Bible. I was struck by the idea that
Springsteen’s “ones that got away,” combined together in this album, are even
greater than some of the best work being made by modern artists today.
Springsteen’s 18 Tracks never feels disjointed or poorly put-together, even
though the musical styles and instrumentation vary widely across the decades. I think this is possible because
Springsteen’s own artistic vision is front-and-center in every song, the
messages of his music coming through in stereo, spanning the decades.
Shalom,
Travis
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