Bruce Springsteen

This is just a wee post to encourage all of you to stay strong during finals. Hopefully Bruce and I can keep you strong fellow students, as exams and paper weigh down on your minds. Just remember that “Every rung just makes us stronger.” Good luck during finals week! Read More »

“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” has been a staple of Bruce Springsteen’s live shows in November and December for years. Currently it his the second to last song in his show, a nice send off for the holidays (as if seeing Bruce was not enough of a gift already).

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★★★★

The idea of something “handwritten” seems almost foreign in this day and age. What with the spread of e-communications, computers, and the advancement of technology in general, the commonality of handwriting something is rare, but adds to its significance. The significance of handwriting is one of two things that The Gaslight Anthem seem to want to harken back to on their fourth studio album, Handwritten, released July 24^th on Mercury Records. Radio also plays a significant part in the romance that frontman Brian Fallon conjures on the album, as he sings in “Mulholland Drive,” “And who came to drive you around this town/Like I used to drive you all around, with the radio on?” Read More »

★★★★★

There have been very few times in my life where I have been happy to be wrong; Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball might stand out as the greatest instance. After finding lead single “We Take Care Of Our Own,” to be somewhat mediocre, and fearing the same thing for all of the album, having my expectations blown away is a wonderful feeling. With Wrecking Ball, Springsteen makes one of his most personal and expressive albums of his career, one that outshines 2009’s Working On A Dream by miles. If I had to described the album in to people more familiar with Springsteen’s work, I would say that it is a mix of We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006) and Magic (2007). Read More »

This is a companion piece to the Thursday September 15th episode of Footnotes that streams on WGTB from 11m-midnight.

During much of this summer, I was out of the country with little access to the internet or news; thus, upon my return to the U.S. in August, I ended up sitting around for a while catching on things like the AV Club. Suddenly, sitting at my kitchen table I was overtaken by a wave of sadness, almost as hauntingly powerful as the saxophone solo in “Jungleland.” I had read the headline “R.I.P. Clarence Clemons.” It told me that the saxophonist had died of a stroke on July 18. Read More »

The Boss is revered by so many Georgetown students (read: the 90% that hail from New Jersey), but few know his connection to the University and to WGTB itself.  Read More »

Before I listened to Eux Autres’ album, Broken Bow, not only did I know nothing about the band or their style of music, I also had no clue as to how to even pronounce their name, let alone what it meant. Upon investigating the band’s website, I found out that the French phrase, “Eux Autres” is pronounced “ooz-oh-tra” and that it translates to, “Them Others.” Although I don’t have a (major) problem with the French, it seems odd that an American band from San Francisco would use a French name to describe itself, but pas important! I put that confusion aside and listened to the album. Read More »

Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 Born to Run catapulted him to fame with its tales of youthful hope; it also sent him into a nearly 3 year legal battle, which prevented him from releasing another album until 1978’s classic Darkness on the Edge of Town. During the interim, he wrote and recorded over 70 songs, only 10 of which would ultimately make it onto Darkness on the Edge of Town.   It therefore comes as no surprise that he still had unreleased material to release over 30 years later, even after using some of these songs on 1980’s The River and multiple outtakes collections. His new release, The Promise, is a product of those sessions. Far from a set of tracks that feels like the bottom of the barrel, the release features two discs of songs that display the depth of Springsteen’s songwriting abilities from his 1970s heyday.

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