Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band- Live 1975/85

It's really pretty crazy that I haven't listened to this box set more often. At least in the last 20+ years. I'm not sure I played it once in that time.

The first official live album from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Live 1975/85 is a three cassette box set of live performances that was released shortly after the last single from Born In The USA had dropped off the charts. For me it was an introduction to his music before that commercial breakthrough.

I remember reading about the album and how it was going to be a comprehensive live album that documented Springsteen's career and included 40 songs. I was sold on it right away. I'd save up my money from my fast food job and buy the album soon after it was released.

From the first note I knew that Springsteen was much more than the hits machine and ass model he had become with Born In The USA. I liked that album, but I much preferred the quieter, less anthemic songs like "I'm On Fire" and "My Hometown." I'd dubbed Born To Run off of a friend shortly after digesting Born In The USA, but it didn't resonate with me the way the live record did. It would take "Adam Raised A Cane" to do that.

"Thunder Road" warmed me up. I absolutely love the live version that is featured here. I remember sitting in the dark and listening to this on my stereo and being fascinated by it. Maybe most intriguing was why he would choose to say to a woman "you ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright." You could never accuse Bruce of being anything less than honest.

It was that next song that cemented my relationship with Springsteen. "Adam Raised A Cane" is angry and powerful and rocking with all the fury of punk rock, and I couldn't wait to hear what was next.

Listening to the box set again all of these years later it's clear to me that I was interested in Springsteen as a storyteller, and often the monologues between songs were as powerful as the songs. He clearly had issues with his dad, and his story about his dad chopping off his hair while he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed after a motorcycle accident is powerful stuff. Springsteen finds peace with his father through this story though, merging it with another one where he's taking a physical for Vietnam and fails it. His dad had always told him that the army would make a man out of him, but once Springsteen returned home after being gone for three days and taking the physical, when his dad asked him how it went, Springsteen said he failed. His dad's response, "Good. That's good."

In the liner notes Springsteen says that there's a story running through these songs. Besides being an overview of an incredible career, it really focuses on his father issues and expectations about who and what he sound be, and how he eventually finds peace with it. By the time we're hearing the Born In The USA material he is incredibly comfortable (maybe too so) with being a musician and a public figure. The insecurities are gone.

I've always been a fan of the stripped down Springsteen albums. Nebraska is my favorite album of his, and one of my favorite albums of all time. So it was a real treat to listen to the four song acoustic run at the end of the second cassette. In my mind he had E Street versions of the Nebraska songs. Instead we're treated to a heartfelt version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," followed by "Nebraska," "Johnny 99," and "Reason To Believe." It's powerful stuff.

"Hungry Heart" sounds great to me. I remember hearing that song on the radio around the time the box set came out. That song and The River in general always reminded me of winter. After checking the release date of Live 1975/85 and finding out in came out in November it's clear why.

Listening to this album in the confines of my bedroom in 1986 I discovered an artist who would continue to resonate with me my whole life. The blueprint was there for Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River. But what was most surprising to me when I eventually got those records was the absence of songs like "Fire" and "Because The Night." The guy was so good he gave away some of his best songs.

I've never been a big fan of Born In The USA or the whole "Boss" thing (apparently neither is Springsteen. When I saw him in 1996 on a solo tour he started the set by saying "there'll be none of that Born in the USA bullshit here tonight..."). So I was pretty curious to listen to all of the Born In The USA material again and see how it sounded. Most of it sounded about how I'd expect it to, but I was pleasantly surprised by the live version of "Cover Me." It was much more organic sounding than the album version, and made me like a song I previously thought of as just another hit off the album. "Bobby Jean" sounds great here too.

Listening to this album again is really a great argument for finding a digital copy. At 3 1/2 hours long it really would work better small doses. I'd love to have the flexibility to go right to the live Nebraska tracks or the closing Tom Waits song, "Jersey Girl." But part of the thrill of listening to it again is reliving that act of discovery and being blown away again by what a true artist can offer you. And after the one-two punch of "Thunder Road" and "Adam Raised A Cane" it can be tough to shut off anyway.

Aerosmith- Get Your Wings

Get Your Wings is probably the most overlooked of Aerosmith's early albums. "Same Old Song and Dance" made the original Greatest Hits collection, and "Train Kept A Rollin'" has always been regarded as one of their classics, even if they didn't write it. But for me it's always been "Seasons Of Wither" that got my attention.

I remember fast forwarding to that song while driving home from a friend's house when I was 17 years old. It was this time of year too. Fall. There was a chill in the air. The skies were gray. But I found sublime pleasure in driving down those rural highways when driving was pure joy, smoking cigarettes and listening to "Seasons Of Wither."

My cassette tape sounds awful. I'll blame it on the stereo of my first car. It was known to chew up tapes on occasion, and probably didn't help with the preservation of this album. Much of the record lives in the memory banks, especially "Seasons," and it still sounds great to this day. A mellow song, but not of the sappy variety that Aerosmith would churn out in the late 80's and 90's, the song has a longing feel, and I must have felt similar as I was driving down towards town on that cloudy Fall day.

Get Your Wings is an appropriate title for Aerosmith's second record. The logo is fitting too. Not quite the grandiose Aerosmith logo we'd see on albums starting with the next one. This one is primitive. The ghoulish wings look like something from an early horror film.

Tyler finds his inner sleaze on a handful of songs, most notably "Lord Of The Thighs" and "Pandora's Box." His voice is lower and bluesier than it would be on later records. "Woman of the World" is a nice surprise, and a song I didn't really remember.

This album never got the plays from me that Toys In The Attic and Rocks did, and I can see why. It's largely the sound of Aerosmith in flight, still in ascent for the double whammy that was to follow. Still, I'll always defend Aerosmith's first four albums and this one is no exception.

I just wish my cassette tape hadn't been so degraded. I was tempted to download an MP3 album of this to really listen to it, but that would be breaking my rules. Maybe I'll find my way to that format in another 20 years when it too has been relegated to the past.

Bryan Adams- Cuts Like A Knife

Confession time. I once owned a black t-shirt with hot pink lettering that read "Reckless" from the Bryan Adams tour and album of the same name. It was my first concert. I might feel a little embarrassed admitting this if it wasn't for the fact that the show was pretty damn good. At a time when mainstream rock and roll was incredibly overproduced with big hair and even bigger stage productions ruling the day, here was a guy who got up on stage in jeans and a t-shirt and did his best to rock out with a simple band behind him.

Punk rock it was not, but it had its virtues. Reckless was everywhere at the time, and it was a treat to hear "Run To You," "Heaven," and "Summer Of 69" back when they were new. Along with the string of hits from Reckless, which also included "Somebody" and "It's Only Love," were all the songs from its predecessor, 1983's Cuts Like A Knife.

Sequencing is not Cuts Like A Knife's strong suite. The record kicks off with "The Only One," but doesn't really start to get going until "This Time," which I'm pretty sure was a minor hit for him. It's infectious and immediately gets stuck in my head. It's the type of song Adams could write in his sleep around the time of Reckless.

"Straight From The Heart," still sounds good. I was always a sucker for this song, and listening to it 20 years later is no different. It's a direct love song, and sounds like something you'd hear on AM radio in the 70's and covered by a female singer instead of being released in the 80's. There's nothing hidden in it. It's pure and simple, and it works.

"Cuts Like A Knife" earned the right to be the title song for this album. And I'll be damned if the thing doesn't sound amazing to these ears. The song rocks. It was songs like this that turned my on to Bryan Adams and had me defending him for years. It "feels so right" even today.

Instead of having an "A" side and a "B" side or Side 1 and Side 2 or adventurous names for sides like R.E.M. used to do, the sides of this tape are unimaginatively referred to as "program 1" and "program 2." It's like we're stuck in the 8-track years.

Other than the first song, "I'm Ready," I don't remember much of anything about the songs that make up program 2. "I'm Ready" is clearly the most dated sounding song on the record. Keyboards dominate things, and it sounds like it could come straight out of an action sequence from a second rate John Hughes film.

It's not surprising that I can't remember much about the second side of this tape. "Don't Leave Me Lonely" rocks in a b-side kind of way. Nothing special or memorable. "What's It Gonna Be" sounds about as dated as "I'm Ready."

"The Best Was Yet To Come" isn't half bad, but it's not that great either, especially compared to a ballad like "Straight From The Heart" on the first side.

The best was yet to come indeed, as Reckless would break things wide open. But Cuts Like A Knife is a nice prelude, even if it fits with the stereotype of being mostly a collection of a few singles and a bunch of throwaways.

I only wore the t-shirt once by the way, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't out of the house. I may have liked Bryan Adams, but even then I knew when fandom crossed the line.

Deep Purple- Deepest Purple, The Very Best Of Deep Purple

I was pretty stoked when I pulled this one out of my trunk of tapes. Deep Purple is one of those bands I keep meaning to revisit. What better way than through a dubbed tape from 1987.

I've always been pretty detail oriented when it comes to music. My CDs are still alphabetized, and I'll often edit the meta information on MP3s to make sure they're as accurate as possible. Back around the time I borrowed this Deep Purple tape from a friend I had decided that my handwriting wasn't enough for labeling purposes, and got out my Dad's manual type writer so I could properly label my cassettes.

The fidelity on my second generation copy of Deepest Purple: The Very Best Of Deep Purple is very lo-fi. It's hard to tell whether this is due to some aging, or whether the tape always sounded like this. Still, it's appropriate. 70's rock discovered by a kid in the mid-80's and then rediscovered twenty years later shouldn't sound all that pristine anyway.

"Strange Kind Of Woman" jumps out at me right away. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm not sure if it's because I knew the song or whether it's because I was better acquainted with Deep Purple's mid-80's reunion albums like Perfect Strangers and The House Of Blue Light, which could have featured a slight rewrite of this.

I like the organ on "Child In Time." Ian Gillian's vocals shine over the simple backdrop. I'm reminded that Mr. Gillian played Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ Superstar. Of course, just a year or two later he was fronting Black Sabbath. Quite the diverse singer and set of ethics.

"Woman From Tokyo," "Highway Star," "Space Truckin'" and "Smoke On The Water" are the most memorable songs for me. Listening to this after all of these years, my main challenge is to try to spot the David Coverdale-fronted songs. I think "Stormbringer" is one of them.

What a strange career David Coverdale has had. Deep Purple where he replaced Ian Gillian for a few records. Whitesnake. And then those projects where he blatantly pretended to be Robert Plant alongside Jimmy Page.

"Woman From Tokyo" sounds great, well, except for the humorous Spinal Tap stonehenge moment in the middle of it.

Side B begins with "Highway Star," and what a bad ass song that is. Nobody is going to take his car, his girl or his...head? "Nobody going to steal my head/I'm on the road again." Good to know. I'm guessing this song is on Machine Head. Just a hunch.

The David Coverdale songs sounded good. Better than I might have thought. But at the same time I'm not going to run out and get the expanded remasters of Burn or Stormbringer anytime soon.

"Smoke On The Water" ends the compilation. And we all know that one. Even the kids. A new generation is probably learning it on Rock Band as we speak. But I rather enjoyed hearing Deep Purple on my lo-fi cassette tape (this was no Maxell XL 90) I dubbed off a friend all those years ago. It gave it some authenticity. Made it feel like it came from its time, which I think was part of the allure in the first place.

Prince and the Revolution- Purple Rain

My tape is obviously damaged in some way, but the effect is appropriate. Bass heavy with all treble removed, it gives the effect of standing outside a club waiting to get in and hearing the pulse of the club through thick concrete walls. It's like I've been magically transformed to First Avenue in 1983 and am listening to Prince and the Revolution play a legendary pre-Purple Rain show but I can't get in. Of course it would be sold out. I'd be too young. I wouldn't know about it in the first place. And I lived three states away at the time.

You couldn't deny Prince. At least not in 1985. I tried, but eventually I heard "Let's Go Crazy" or maybe even "Darling Nikki" one to many times and gave in. I either traded or bought a used copy off of my neighbor and it became my lawn mowing soundtrack for the rest of the summer.

I can hear my Sony Walkman in the sound. I'd play the album once or twice before the batteries would start to go and the songs would start to slow down as the tape could no longer provide enough juice to turn the wheels at full speed. At that point mowing the lawn would become a real chore and I'd rush through the job so I could get back to my home stereo and its stable power source.

Prince albums were always fascinating to look at. Maybe that's what made me finally cave and get into him. I'd venture over to the music section of pre-Target discount stores (anybody remember Venture?) and obsess over the details found in the vinyl album covers of 1999 and Purple Rain, both of which seemed to be display with an equal amount of promotion at the time.

I still like Prince, but I've given up on the idea of an artistic comeback that could match the output he was steadily cranking out around the time of Purple Rain. Those days are long gone, and are about as likely as my old copy of Purple Rain suddenly sounding like an overly compressed mp3.

"Darling Nikki" still sounds as sleazy as it ever did, and I can't help but think of the PMRC and Tipper Gore when I listen to it. The newly acquired Prince fans that weren't won over by the radio and the film most certainly were intrigued by her lurid descriptions of what happened in Prince songs. I know I was.

I'm walking away from the club as "When Doves Cry" plays and kicks off the second side of the tape. The sound is growing more distant, the bass heavier, which is notable because there isn't a bass line in the song. That's how damaged the tape is. But I'll take this over warping. It's like memory itself. It's there but pieces are missing.

Purple Rain is tainted by memories of the movie now, which really is a different animal. But it's nice to hear this album again in fidelity that approximates what I was listening to then. I can almost see my Sony Walkman and cheap fuzzy yellow headphones as I carve lines into the back yard grass, trying to make out the lyrics to Purple Rain over the engine roar and hoping the batteries will make it until the end.

Triumph- Stages

Remember the gatefold double album? It was a work of beauty with its numerous inserts and photos and was often a staple for live records. Well, other than the decreased sound quality, packaging is the biggest detriment to the cassette format. And never is this more obvious than when it comes to squeezing a double live album on to a single cassette.

I don't even know how long Triumph's Stages album is. My cassette deck won't rewind the thing all the way because the tape is so heavy. It reminds me of Iron Maiden's Live After Death, but unlike that record I didn't seek Stages out on vinyl. So few clues are given as to what this album is other than a live record that came out in 1985 and which includes two new studio tracks. Beyond the song titles we get a list of shout outs to people who assisted them on the road and some product endorsements, along with an exclusive merchandise offer. I'm so tempted to send away from my white crewneck Triumph Stages sweatshirt, but it requires that I sacrifice the one photo that comes with the insert so I can fill out the order form.

The tape has been rewound, largely by hand. The crowd is cheering. You can hear the opening keyboard riffs. And now it's clear the band has taken the stage. The crowd erupts. "San Diego please welcome from Toronto...(something inaudible) TRIUMPH!"

There's a lot of warpage going on here and it's doubtful that the tape will play all the way through. I must admit, part of me hopes it doesn't.

I don't know if I ever got through this whole tape. When I found it the tape had been played about halfway through. Something tells me that's about where I left it the first time I listened to it. I'm pretty sure I never made it to those two bonus cuts at the end of side two.

It's all pretty generic rock. "When the lights go down...it's time to light the fuse." You can almost hear the band writing this song and self-congratulating themselves for writing the perfect concert opener.

Ugh oh. There are pauses between the songs. That's always been a big no-no for me, even back in 1985. If I'm listening to a live album, give me the illusion of hearing a real show. Especially if you're going to make a double album that runs the length of a entire show out of it.

Why did I buy this album? I'm pretty sure it had to do with the song "Magic Power" and how passionately a girl in my theater class felt about it. I always liked the song too. It was a curiousity thing, and if a greatest hits album wasn't available, the next best way to really check out a band was the live album. Or so I thought. This album might have changed my mind about that approach.

Another Triumph memory happened after I got this live album. I was working at my first fast food job and one of my coworkers had just purchased Triumph's new album at the time, , and discovered that a previous Triumph album had been recorded on to the tape instead of the new one. I can't say I've ever heard of that happening since. I remember getting a kick out of it because I was pretty sure Triumph sucked by then, and I got sick of hearing the guy preach the virtues of Journey, whose Raised On Radio album came out around the same time.

"Here's a little folk song you might remember..." Nope. Sorry. Don't remember a song called "Hold On."

"Magic Power," now this is more like it, even it's slightly more warbled than I remember it. "I'm young, wild and I'm free, got the magic power of the music in me." Yeah, what kid wouldn't like that.

This has to be one of the crappiest sounding cassettes I've heard. I'm sure a lot of it can be attributed to 25 years of aging, but I also suspect it was never that good of a recording anyway.

Triumph. They still play second fiddle to their Canadian brethren Rush, or so I discovered on a recent trip to Winnipeg. I had no idea they were around at all, but they were all over the airwaves and apparently touring as well.

Just when I was starting to wonder how this thing could fill up so much tape we get to a song called "Rock And Roll Machine" which is filled with endless guitar wankery. Song lengths aren't printed, so I have no idea how long this has been going on, but it's hell. This must be where I shut if off after buying and playing it for the first time. I kind of remember buying it to listen to on a family vacation. And that's really saying something if you shut something off when traveling with your family.

I don't know why I torture myself like this. But then again, there's a lot of crap being produced today too. I can't say this is all that different. Genres change, crap persists.

"Druh Mer Selbo." I guess that's Canadian for drum solo. Zzzzzz.

"Spellbound." I remember this one. Although it sounded better in the memory banks.

I can't really comment on the bonus tracks. They were mindless rock, and after a not so blistering set from Triumph, my thoughts were drifting considerably.

Van Halen- 5150

Hello Baby. It's the opening few seconds to 5150, and with it we are introduced to a new scream. Sammy Hagar in Van Halen 2.0. Van Hagar if you will.

Van Halen will always mean Diamond David Lee Roth for me. I was never into comic books, but David Lee Roth was always a superhero of sorts. He was larger than larger than life. King of cock rock. Lord of adolescent rock star dreams.

I still regret not seeing Van Halen in their prime with David Lee Roth. I begged and pleaded to see them on the 1984 tour, but my Mom said I was too young and could see them next time. She was true to her promise, but little would I know that they would soon be fronted by the "I Can't Drive 55" guy who was so fond of wearing a headset microphone.

I bought 5150 the day it came out, and I had the single of "Why Can't This Be Love?" before that. I remember liking the album better than the single, which remains true today. The keyboards annoy me in the song, but nowhere near as much as that mouth soloing thing Sammy Hagar does during the instrumental break.

The tape played fine, so maybe those early problems were isolated incidents. I played the hell out of this album too. Even though it didn't compare to those David Lee Roth-led albums, I still was quite obsessed with it. So much so that I almost didn't feel like I had to listen to it again for this project, even though I've only played it two or three times in the last 20 years.

The difference between the two eras of the band is even more apparent to me now than it was at the time. 1984 and 5150 sound almost nothing alike. I used to try to imagine David Lee Roth singing "Summer Nights" and it almost works. But beyond that things sound either way too poppy with Eddie Van Halen's interest in synths pushed to the front, or else they rock out in a forced way ("Get Up," "Good Enough"). Still, it's not a bad album. And it was way more successful than anybody probably would have imagined.

Will I reach for this one in the next twenty years? Probably not. But I really don't have to. Whether I like it or not, these songs are burned into my brain.