The Wild, the Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle

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ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 7   Total Length: 46:34

eMusic Review

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Glenn Kenny

eMusic Contributor

06.30.09
Bruce Springsteen, The Wild, the Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle
1984 | Label: Columbia

"Sparks fly on E Street where the boy prophets walk it handsome and hot." Indeed. The sonic palette here almost reminds one of action painting, with funk guitars (the spirit of Curtis Mayfield looms larger here than it ever has on any Springsteen record) splattering up against wild synth sounds. And Springsteen's tossing off great lines with wild abandon—-"my machine she's a dud, I'm stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey" is an immortal image. That line's from the simultaneously supercharged and playful "Rosalita," still a live Springsteen highlight. The other side of that song is "Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" a lament for a dying town and prayer for a kind of rebirth.

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Classic

Latch

this is one of those albums that was made to be played in order, start to finish . . . a classic album from the Boss . . . & you gotta love that tuba on Wild Billy

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Expressive Brilliance

bluechair

This is a once in a lifetime album which tells stories with characters so rich that it almost plays like a movie of shorts. Every one of the seven songs is epic. Springsteen's opus is one of the greatest rock records ever made.

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Classic Bruce

savioramongus

Listen to this and there's simply no doubting Bruce's talent. He can write honest, earthy lyrics that are conveyed within rollicking good music. We should all feel compelled to occasionally take ourselves back to early Springsteen. The trip's well worth it.

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Just for "Incident on 57th Stree"

lancem

Okay, the whole album is fantastic, but "Incident on 57th Street" is just a great rock anthem.

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get the funk out

SubmarineSeasickHoedown

one can hear strains of superfly running underneath this - more experimental and interesting arrangements than most of what he's done since.

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wherein Springsteen becomes The Boss

EMUSIC-0086C7D6

Born To Run is always considered to be Bruce's make-or-break album -- and from a commericial standpoint, it was. But this is where the Boss persona emerged full-blown. Unlike the thesaurus-caressing, faux early Dylanisms of the first album, TWTIATESS has all the ingredients we associate with classic Springsteen: the beautiful loser characters inarticulately striving for a better life, the nearly (but not quite) overblown arrangements, and the majestic ambition and sweep of number like â??Kittyâ??s Backâ? and â??Rosalita.â? IMHO, this is the crucial Springsteen album â?? itâ??s here where he made the greatest artistic leap from what he was to what he would become. Born To Run merely completed the process.

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Stretching Out

MadDogM13

Bruce's first Columbia album, "Greetings from Asbury Park," sounded like a really gifted songwriter under the spell of Dylan and Van Morrison (among many others). This one stretches out to longer songs, more elaborate, quasi-Broadway arrangements, and wider-screen songs. I won't say every song is great, but every one is more ambitious than he'd attempted before, and a few ("Sandy," "Kitty's Back," "Rosalita") are some of the best in Bruce's catalog.

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great production

ferrocarriles

i'm not too hot on the songs themselves, (track one is amazing although), but the production on this album is pretty mint. i definitely appreciate the theme he's got going.

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Springsteen's Early Years

downingcr

His first three albums are kind of a trilogy, culminating with Born to Run. There is quite a lot of material that is missing, which ultimately ended up on Tracks. Everything that came after (DARKNESS and beyond) was fundamentally different. There are some absolute classics here (ROSALITA, KITTY'S BACK, INCIDENT ON 57TH) and some clunkers (WILD BILLY). For me, the classics far out-weigh the clunkers. Highly recommended.

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buy it

rocampion

personally, my favourite springsteen record and the one that has dated the least over the years. nyc serenade, kitty's back and incident on 57th st are as good as he got.

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eMusic Features

0fdb823c3e0f9fc973880113c2e6b106

Icon: Bruce Springsteen

By Glenn Kenny

If ever there was a rock 'n 'roll icon who needed no introduction, Bruce Springsteen - who got his nickname "The Boss" because, from very early on, he was the guy who made sure the band got paid - is surely that guy. As for that band, the current lineup of his longtime crew the E Street Band is Nils Lofgren on guitar, Miami Steve Van Zandt on guitar and sundries, Clarence "the Big Man"… more »

They Say All Media Guide

Bruce Springsteen expanded the folk-rock approach of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., to strains of jazz, among other styles, on its ambitious follow-up, released only eight months later. His chief musical lieutenant was keyboard player David Sancious, who lived on the E Street that gave the album and Springsteen’s backup group its name. With his help, Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison’s romanticization of Belfast in Astral Weeks. Though Springsteen expressed endless affection and much nostalgia, his message was clear: this was a goodbye-to-all-that from a man who was moving on. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle represented an astonishing advance even from the remarkable promise of Greetings; the unbanded three-song second side in particular was a flawless piece of music. Musically and lyrically, Springsteen had brought an unruly muse under control and used it to make a mature statement that synthesized popular musical styles into complicated, well-executed arrangements and absorbing suites; it evoked a world precisely even as that world seemed to disappear. Following the personnel changes in the E Street Band in 1974, there is a conventional wisdom that this album is marred by production lapses and performance problems, specifically the drumming of Vini Lopez. None of that is true. Lopez’s busy Keith Moon style is appropriate to the arrangements in a way his replacement, Max Weinberg, never could have been. The production is fine. And the album’s songs contain the best realization of Springsteen’s poetic vision, which soon enough would be tarnished by disillusionment. He would later make different albums, but he never made a better one. The truth is, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll. – William Ruhlmann

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