Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You (October 23, 2020) Album • Page 6

Janey and the 4-song power house run of Rainmaker-Song for Orphans are my standouts - i wish i loved to closer more than i do, Moonlight Motel really set the bar high lol

 

Lyrically and thematically, the closer hits me like a hammer.

 

Sort of a weird "album" for me. I like the album in two distinct blocks.
Not a huge fan of any of the first three songs much at all. Janey through Power of Prayer is great.
House of a Thousand Guitars falls extremely flat and then their is the Rainmaker-Songs for Orphans run that is just tremendous. Don't love the closer.

On one hand I love having 7 more Bruce songs that I adore, on the other I wish it felt more like a cohesive album for me.
The three 1970's redone songs are so so great.

 

How can you not like "Burnin' Train"?!

 

Yeah, I got to listen to “Dreams” by myself on a ride last night. Chills.

 

Or 'I'll See You in my Dreams'?!

Especially after seeing Landau's reaction to it

 

Yeah, "Dreams" is the perfect capper for this album.

 

Got my vinyl today and wow the etched D side is fucking cool

 

Haven’t watched the video.

 

Something isn’t clicking. Hard to say.

 

Good lord, If I Was The Priest is something special

 

This has become one of those “I don’t want to listen to anything else” albums for me.

 

The last 4 songs are the best 4, in my opinion

Hard to believe Bruce had 3 songs as good as Janey, Priest, and Orphans just hanging around for 50 years. Dude must have thousands of songs never recorded/released.

 

I always knew Max Weinberg was a fan of Michael McBride of The Raspberries and cites him as an influence, but he does like 5 "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)" fills on Letter to You and I am all about it.

 

Have only really been a fan of his for a few years and I’ve never done a whole lot of watching the live shows. What are some definitive full live sets I can check out?

 

Okay so all the ones I'm gonna list exist out there somewhere in full. Might be on youtube, although the Bruce official tends to split things up track-by-track which is annoying. Gonna try to give you the "one" from each era (or at least the "one" that we have video of)

Hammersmith Odeon 1975 for Born to Run tour and commonly thought of as the Bruce show overall
Houston 1978 for Darkness (Bruce practically has an aneurysm during the first song and it only gets more intense from there haha)
For The River era it's kinda annoying because there's Tempe 1980 which rules, but the DVD they released is just most of the show, not all of it and then there's a separate CD that has audio but not video of the tracks left off the DVD
Not sure there is a good readily available one from the mid-80s surprisingly...someone correct me if I'm wrong
MTV Plugged 1991 (don't sleep on this era of Bruce, the band isn't E Street quality but this set is a lot of fun and "Light of Day" kicks ass)
Live in NYC 2000 which is again not actually a full show but highlights culled from two nights. Despite that, this is probably my personal favorite live Bruce recording, bar none. Annoyingly some of the best tracks from the live album didn't make the DVD but oh well.
Barcelona 2003
And then there's a few from the last fifteen years I think. Can't speak to all of them but I can tell you that Live in Hyde Park from about ten years ago is absolutely killer. And it features Clarence not long before he died.

edit: a quick youtube search reveals that people have made playlists for the ones of these that the bruce official account has up track-by-track, shouldn't be too hard to find

 

Odeon 1975 is required viewing

Barcelona 2003 is on DVD and therefore should be able to be streamed somewhere online

the London Calling (Hyde Park) 2009 performance is on DVD too and is an exceptional show - includes 'No Surrender' with Brian Fallon, as well as a great performance of Jungleland.

 

the Barcelona performance of 'Incident on 57th Street' is absolute chefs kiss

 

I threw on Houston 1978 after I found the playlist and I'm sorry but I like this more than Odeon haha. Darkness is also my favorite Bruce record these days tho so maybe that's why. Looks like this playlist is 100% complete too, including the covers in the encore

But seriously you're gonna be hard-pressed to find a better documentation of Springsteen the guitarist

 

man this performance of 'Promised Land' is excellent hah

 

Oh yeah there's also the Seeger Sessions live show, Live in Dublin I think? That's pretty cool too and I think there's video

 

any performance of Jungleland without the strings intro

 

Live in NYC is what took me from a fan of Born to Run and Born into the U.S.A. to an absolute fanatic for Bruce.

 

the harmonica flip when they go up a key is fucking god-tier

it's so good. my dad took little kid me to a show on that tour that was a couple months before they filmed the dvd, so that live record is pretty foundational for me. that recording of "Youngstown" gives me chills even just thinking about it and all the classic songs have equal or greater energy compared to the 70s/80s performances.

 

in case anyone's never seen it