Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

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Music reviews of The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Music Review: Worthwhile Collection
Rating: 3 Stars

The first two discs sound pretty good. Not as big an improvement as some remastering jobs I've heard, but better than the original CD releases. No major complaints there.

Regarding the song selection- Bruce addresses that himself in the introduction, acknowledging that you'll never please everyone and that there are always valid arguments for what to leave in and what to leave out. I think that he went overboard with 5 selections from the first two albums, and I think it was a mistake to leave off several well-known hits like "I'm On Fire", "Pink Cadillac" and "Secret Garden". If you're going to appeal to newcomers and so-called "casual" fans, then you need to have as much accessible and recognizable material as possible. For instance, "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is an essential song, but in its studio version it's not quite as listenable as it is live or in the context of the original album. "Prove It All Night" is a much more instantly accessible song and probably better known. And the two live songs at the end- I would have either used shorter studio versions or left off one to make room for other stuff. Both are again "essential", but not necessarily listenable on a collection of hits. Maybe they wanted to avoid a predictable hits collection. If so, I guess that's a good thing. Overall, all of these songs are "essential", and they did as good a job as possible compiling a decent sampling of Springsteen's work from the early days to the present. Unlike some Essential collections, at least they maximize the disc space to include as much music as possible.

Now we come to the bonus disc- the incentive for all of the fans who have owned the rest of this material for years. My initial complaint still stands- there's at least 30 minutes of unused space on this 3rd disc. Springsteen has so much unreleased studio and live material that it's a huge waste to not ultilize this disc to the fullest. Unless Bruce has another "Tracks" or "Live" collection coming out sometime soon, this would have been a great opportunity to make available some elusive unreleased cuts that his fans have long clamored for. I'm not going to get into the issue of whether or not this was a rip-off aimed at exploiting the dedication of his "hardcore" fans (after all, their obsessiveness is THEIR problem, not Bruce's), but lots of people are going to be spending $15-$20 for basically this third disc that consists of barely 45 minutes of material.

That was my complaint before even hearing the album. After my first listen in my car, I didn't pay much attention to the sound quality. At home on my stereo, though, it's evident that much of this material was either in poor shape or that little attention was paid to mastering it. I've heard bootlegs that sound better than "Held Up Without A Gun" and "County Fair". I realize that some of these are demos, but so was the Nebraska material, and it sounds much better. That might explain the spareseness of the renditions, but it shouldn't account for the outright poor quality. "County Fair" sounds like an old, slightly warped tape that's been sitting in your car for too long. Maybe the sound quality was intentional (clearly the acoustic "Countin' on a Miracle" was meant to sound like an amateur recording, and in that case I think the effect works quite well), but I doubt it. I think the spotty quality and brief running time of this third CD is pretty inexcusable, and not typical of the usual sonic quality of releases that expect from Bruce Springsteen over recent years.

The liner notes at least include the lyrics, but there are so many mistakes and omissions that anyone who knows or follows along can't help but notice them. The listing of musicians is pretty confusing too, although overall I'll give this one credit for having better documentation than most Essential or greatest hits CDs.

Overall, the music is great- the songs are indeed essential, and good introduction to Springsteen's music for the uninitiated or for those whose interest doesn't extend much beyond what you hear on the radio. It provides a look at all aspects of Springsteens- singer, songwriter, musician, storyteller, live performer, poet, hard rocker, etc. I'm not going to look down my nose at people who want no more than this- after all, you can't own every album by every possible artist, even if it's Bruce Springsteen. I own collections like this for plenty of artists, and if I like what I hear well enough, I'm usually motivated to look a little deeper. If not, there's nothing wrong with enjoying a collection of a few hits and a few album tracks. The third disc is OK- nice to have "Trapped" and "Missing" and "Viva Las Vegas" on CD- but overall a disappointment and arguably non-essential even for Bruce's biggest fans. The remastering is a nice improvement, although I don't know that it would be enough of an incentive by itself for those of us who already own this material. Bruce badly needs to remaster his entire catalog, and hopefully this is a project on the near horizon. Let's just hope he does it with a bit more thoroughness and thought than seems to have gone into this project. This clearly seems to have been a rushed project done in order to capitalize on the end of the recent tour and on the upcoming holiday season. Nothing wrong with that if it's done well, but a lot of fans have come to expect more from Springsteen and this release doesn't quite deliver.

Description of The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Classic Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Folk
• Pop
• Rock