Let's talk about something different.
We contend there are no more poetic words in any rock song than these from Thunder Road:
So you're scared and you're thinkingThat maybe we ain't that young anymoreShow a little faith, there's magic in the nightYou ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alrightOh, and that's alright with me
You can hide 'neath your covers and study your painMake crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rainWaste your summer praying in vainFor a savior to rise from these streets
Well now, I'm no hero, that's understoodAll the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hoodWith a chance to make it good somehowHey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the windowAnd let the wind blow back your hairWell, the night's busting openThese two lanes will take us anywhereWe got one last chance to make it realTo trade in these wings on some wheelsClimb in back, heaven's waiting down on the tracks
If it’s gotta be a song about a car :
ReplyDeleteMy uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
Swifty fan here. Hey Rump, now THIS is poetry--
ReplyDelete"All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February
I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary
And I love you, it's ruining my life
(I love you, it's ruining my life)
I touched you for only a fortnight
(I touched you) but I touched you"
Alex Micheals did nothing wrong! SAO corrupted
ReplyDeleteTaylor swift tattooed (temporary ) on her arm “we learned more from a three minute record then we ever learned in school”. That’s from No Retreat No Surrender and I’ll let you google it to figure out who wrote and sings that song
ReplyDeleteSwifty fan here. Hey Rump, I don't have a Taylor Swift tattoo on my arm but I do have a bracelet with the initials "TS". Send me your address and I'll be happy to mail you one.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the bosses best:
ReplyDeleteThe rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane
Well the Maximum Lawman run down Flamingo chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids round here look just like shadows always quiet, holding hands
From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our stand down in Jungleland
The midnight gang’s assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night
They’ll meet ‘neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light
Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike
There’s a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops, Cherry Tops, rips this holy night
The street’s alive as secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock’n’roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street down in Jungleland
In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the D.J. plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on, just a look and a whisper, and they’re gone
Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnels uptown
The Rat’s own dream guns him down as shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light
Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz
Between flesh and what’s fantasy and the poets down here
Don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland
I can’t put Jungleland first. Top five. But not one. Thunderroad and Born to Run are 1-2 in whatever order you like. Now we have jungleland. The River , Rosalita to fit in as well as 50 other great ones. That Jungleland and BTR are on one album along with backstreets shows the utter genius of his song writing circa 1972-76. And now 50 years later he’s still writing amazing pieces. He’s uniquely an American treasure - telling American stories that only he can tell in his unique way that the world loves. Consider the line from Born InThe USA “I had a brother at Ke Sahn fighting North them Vietcong. They’re still there. He’s all gone.” Could anyone else phrase the utter wastefulness of life of the Vietnam war the way he did ? And in a few short lines to boot. I’ve never seen nor heard it. True unique genius.
DeleteWhere would you rank 10th Avenue Freeze Out? Namely an extended live version where religious revival meets rock n roll.
DeleteRump do you like Nebraska? Sometimes my favorite Springsteen album, obviously very different from the rockers but I like that he wrote and recorded it on a a 4 track in his bedroom in NJ (and it sounds like it) and some
ReplyDeleteComment posted before done but some haunting lyrics.
ReplyDeleteNew Jersey Turnoike riding on a wet night
Neath the refineries glow out where the great black rivers flow
License, registration, I ain’t got none
But I got a clear conscience bout the things that I done.
Mister state trooper please don’t stop me…
Like anything else, we have our individual preferences. Rosalia was the character that first blew my mind when I was a camper at a summer camp owned by Max Weinberg’s uncle in 1975. I am only disappointed that we didn’t get to see the band play in Philly when I was there.
ReplyDeleteOh come on. What about Fire, as done by Robin Williams as Elmer Fudd. Top 5 for sure.
ReplyDelete