Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run - Music & Performance - CD

There is such a strange feeling to be writing this, listening intently to the remastered version of Bruce Springsteen's breakthrough 1975 recording Born to Run, as if it hadn't happened at all but was happening in this moment. To look back at pop history as something of an oracle through the glass on its reverse side is always tricky. There was a lot at stake in rock & roll in those days. David Bowie was about to move into his next incarnation after the death of Ziggy Stardust and into his Berlin period; Queen was moving away from hard rock and into its own identity as well; Roxy Music was about to crack it; the J. Geils Band was shattering houses everywhere with its brand of roots blues and barroom rock; T. Rex was almost absent on American shores, and Kiss had stepped in mightily and faultily to cash in on it all. Meanwhile, the Faces were history, and the New York Dolls were disintegrating; Aerosmith were fighting each other, Led Zep were the power and glory of hard rock; Iggy was lost to addiction; Marvin Gaye and Motown were turning into something else, as was the Philly soul sound, mutating into the next phase of funk, and eventually disco. P-Funk were tearing it up musically and on the road, but not to many white audiences; Marvin Gaye was working on I Want You; Leroy Hutson was releasing the best albums of his career but to little notice of rock audiences; Miles was in retirement, and only Grover Washington was carrying the soul-jazz banner into the future with Mister Magic and Feels So Good. The Rolling Stones were doing their thing, but they were the Rolling Stones. And then the dread Yes and Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were ruining rock for another five years. The time was right for something to happen, and happen it did. Springsteen and his E Street Band, armed with a slew of session players, came ambling out of the New Jersey shadows, having no idea what they were doing with a brand of guttersnipe, gritty rock infused with soul, R&B, garage band aesthetics, and a stage show that challenged even Mott the Hoople's, to conquer the world whether they wanted to or not. In its present incarnation, finally remastered to full satisfaction of fans in the post-LP era, Born to Run sounds as startling, dynamic, and desperate as it did in 1975. The songs roar once more with all the drama of the young, where everything is at stake. Back porches, ramshackle motorcycles, the hidden intimacy of back streets, the violent danger of street gangs vying for turf, and the story of their life and death struggles told and retold with apocryphal detail from a group of observers to those who would retell and embellish them. There's the boredom of summer days and working nine to five just to break out into who knows what, and that desire -- the one that covers everything -- the one that knows that just beyond the confines of front yards and downtowns lies America, and some dream that would materialize if only one had the courage to run toward it. Springsteen's voice is full, raging, howling, crooning, and above all simply full of the magic of his own words as given life by a band who knows nothing except for putting it all on the line. In its present incarnation Born to Run once again proves its place among the greatest rock & roll albums ever recorded. This is it -- life, death, love, betrayal, and the dynamics of big-screen portrayals of the mysteries of everyday -- ordinary life boiled down to an explosive essence that carries within