The Official Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Thread.

Classic...

OK - my take on this 2 CD set from Darkness is that a lot of it has been re-recorded or at least overdubbed. The leaked lost masters just don't sound the same - and I'm not talking about quality. Sure they can clean them up if they have the originals. But there are additional instruments and in some cases very different arrangements. I started with The Promise which is one of those "holy grail" songs. It's very different from the tracks version and also very different from the old lost masters version - my call is some re-recording and/or overdubbing.

On the other hand - listening to Candy's Boy it sounds identical except for the depth and sound quality. And dear god I'm so glad this one stayed in the vault and Candy's Room (the one we know) got released. It's much more gripping and powerful.

I agree, it's fun to hear these vaulted songs but so glad we got the best versions on the album. I'm sure some of these were not quite "complete" and Bruce enjoyed working on them again. It's funny that The Way is a hidden track because Bruce never liked it but a lot of fans likes it a lot.

That's what I thought. The re-recordings just don't have the same passion as the originals. I have few of the Lost Masters CDs as well and for some reason this sounds too polished to me. And the ones he's sang again just don't work. The 70s backgrounds with 2000s Bruce feels wrong.

Ice

Just watched the Jimmy Fallon skit, that was sooo funny!

If you listen to the Sirius radio broadcast Bruce says that he recorded guitar parts and did vocals and added strings over many of the old tracks - last summer. Not to mention that Bob Clearmountain mixed the additional tracks - when they weren't mixed before. If you don't have the broadcast I'll send you the links.

He does say that The promise was the original.

Why would he not want to make the album as polished as he can?

That's what I thought. The difference between the original recordings and the re-recorded pieces is just too big. I don't like it. The original songs are great, but the ones he's messed with are weird. And no, I don't have the Sirius broadcast.

Yeah, I know. I meant The Promise the album, not the song.

Why would he want to? It's like This Left Feels Right, or like KISS rerecording their hits. It just isn't the same if you start messing with stuff you did 30 years ago.

Ice

Except it's not. Both of your examples were obvious cash-ins, trading on fading reputations. The Promise is the first time this music has been released for public consumption.

I'd agree there's often a risk of a trade off between energy and spirit and "polish", but the logical extension of your argument is that every artist should just release their demos and be done with it, which *does* work in some instances (!), but I'm sure you're familiar with the saying that art is never finished it's just taken away from you, whether that be literature, music or visual art.

How many times have you looked back at an old piece of work and seen something in it you wished you could have improved or curse your youthful mistakes?