DU Album of the Day: Bruce Springsteen's "Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ"

[LynneSin]

Not sure what I was going to make for album of the day so once again I googled 'this day in music history' and discovered that 39 years ago today an up-and-coming singer from New Jersey released is debut album. That album was "Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ" by the great Bruce Springsteen.

It's funny but for years, I always thought that "Blinded by the Light" was a song created by Manfred Mann's Earth Band only because I heard that song first way before the Bruce version of it. But "Blinded by the Light" is one of those crazy, legendary side one, song one debut album songs that really defined exactly what we could expect for the next 40 years of Bruce Springsteen music - alot of heart & soul, alot of craziness, alot of guts and the occassional lyric that makes you wonder 'wtf was he just singing?' ("wrapped up like a douche" was a very common misheard lyric).

Probably my favorite song off the album is "Spirit of the Night", which I was excited to see Bruce play in concert a few years back when we saw Bruce at the Meadowlands in NJ. Seriously, for all you huge Bruce fans - to truly be a fan you must once in your lifetime make the pilgramage to New Jersey to see Bruce play. It was a great concert and I was glad that I got to see it with all the E-Street Band because it was only a few years later that Clarence Clemons, the larger than life saxophonist with the E-Street Band, had passed away.

BTW Bruce Springsteen Trivia - Bruce just needs to win a Tony award in order for him to do a EGOT. EGOT, made famous on 30 Rock by Tracy Morgan, is when you manage to win An Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. So far Bruce has managed to win an Emmy (for a show he did with HBO), many many Grammys and an Oscar for the song he did for the movie "Philadelphia" - "The Streets of Philadelphia". So I guess Bruce needs to start working on his Broadway Musical in hopes to get a Tony!

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. I remember when this first came out.

I thought it was a rip off of this;

so I didn't listen to Springsteen for a while........... it's hard to read. Tim Buckley- Greetings from LA released about a year earlier than Asbury Park

[monmouth]

2. Bruce and family lived a couple of blocks from us in Freehold, and I can still see him

zooming around on his bike. His Aunt Dora gave him a guitar and the rest is history. Always ready to toot the horn if he sees you and always the big wave and smile. The charitable things he has done for Jersey, anonymously of course, are in large numbers...

[Brigid]

3. Ah yes . . . The Boss . . .

I think I'll dig that one out. It's been a while.

[Doc Holliday]

4. Re: Spirits In The Night

Didn't Manfred Mann cover that one, too? As with BBTL, I seem to recall hearing that version of it before Springsteen's. (Confession: I liked their versions better than Bruce's.)

That 'commonly misheard lyric' used to crack me up...my neighbor-across-the-hall used to sing that song while she was doing housework or whatever, and it was not uncommon to hear her bellowing out "wrapped up like a douche, sha-na-na runner in the night" while she was vacuuming or doing windows.

Of course, this was a gal who thought that Hendrix was saying, "'scuse me, while I kiss this guy."

Come to think of it, Favorite Misheard Lyrics could be a thread all its own.

[geardaddy]

5. So, Bruce has an EGO

I love the Boss.

plus, I didn't know that he wrote "Because the Night" sung by Patti Smith.

[gratuitous]

6. I roomed with a guy from Brooklyn for a year or so

Funny guy, total transplant to the West Coast. Had to go back East. Said he saw Springsteen in concert in the early 1970s before he became The Boss. Said the running joke in his circle was that the "1, 2, 3, 4" intro to the finale of "Born to Run" was dubbed, because there was no way Springsteen was smart enough to count that high.

I laughed.

[LynneSin]

7. At one point I refused to listen to Bruce - sometime in the mid-80s

I was in college and there were a ton of folks from NJ that were all like "BRRRRRRUUUUUUUCCCCCEEEE". It was so annoying that I pretty much became anti-Bruce.

Now that I don't have to live amongst the annoying NJers everyday ( ) I've learn to love Bruce again.