Massive Music List

For more than 35 years, Bruce Springsteen has set a standard of consistent excellence that few other rock and roll artists could ever hope to match. He has written so many great songs, as both a solo artist and with the E Street Band, that it would seem almost impossible to try and rank those classics one against another. And yet one fan was daring enough, or maybe foolhardy enough, to try. Following up our Beatles and Stones countdowns, JamsBio presents “No Retreat, No Surrender,” a worst-to-first countdown of every album cut in Springsteen history, plus a few choice outtakes, live classics, and soundtrack songs – that’s 200 tunes ranked and defended. Check out JamsBio.com each day as the countdown is gradually revealed, and prepare to hit the message boards to defend your favorites.

The complete list to date.

The Last Five:

155. “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” (from Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.)

154. “When You’re Alone” (from Tunnel of Love)

153. “My Lucky Day” (from Working on a Dream)

152. “Soul Driver” (from Human Touch)

151. “Drive All Night” (from The River)

150. “Open All Night”

From Nebraska

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Rushing by like the highway when you’re going about 80mph, “Open All Night” has Bruce pulling out the electric guitar for the one and only time on Nebraska. The Chuck Berry-riff extends throughout the entire song, spare accompaniment which is fitting because Bruce is all alone on his mystical journey through the New Jersey night.

I’ve always wondered what this recording might have sounded like with a full band behind him. I have a feeling that the E Street Band really could have cranked this one into anthem territory. As it is, it fits with the aesthetic of the album, but on its own it’s a little like a fun B-side, nothing more.

Some of the lyrics are borrowed from other sources, including the Tracks song “Living On The Edge Of The World” and “State Trooper,” also from Nebraska. I prefer the darker vision of the subject matter on “State Trooper,” but this song still has some killer Springsteen lines, foremost among them his comparison of “New Jersey in the mornin’ like a lunar landscape.” The details are perfect as well, including the hilarious image of him and his girl getting chicken grease all over a road map on one of their nightly jaunts.

The narrator never does quite get to his baby by song’s end. He’s left to search for his salvation in the rock and roll songs on the car radio. In much the same way, “Open All Night” never quite reaches its intended destination, but it’s a helluva ride to nowhere.

149. “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?”

From Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.

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Springsteen’s Dad was a bus driver, which may be the impetus for this song off his 1973 debut album. I don’t know that anyone in history has ever taken such a vivid ride on public transportation without the aid of hallucinogenics, as Bruce’s word-association lyrics paint quite the picture. Sample lyric: “Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps/Interstellar mongrel mimps.” It sounds a little like Dewey Cox channeling Dylan in Walk Hard, doesn’t it?

The track, like many on Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., never ignites much excitement, bogged down by a garbled production which makes most instruments inseparable from the main mess of sound. It’s fun to hear Bruce going off with his wordplay though, elevating the characters he witnesses on the trip out of the mundane.

Maybe the most interesting facet of this song to me is its ending. Up until then it’s a good-time, high-speed joyride, but it slows quickly in the final lines into a bluesy dirge, David Sancious’ piano tinkling sadly. Shortly after on the album, “Lost In The Flood” begins with more piano, and it’s clear that Bruce was going for a continuous effect. He also did this once on The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle, but abandoned the technique afterward. Bruce’s albums always had thematic unity, but these two instances are the closest he ever came to something resembling a concept album’s method of a continuous piece of music. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if he ever tried that whole-hog? A Springsteen rock opera? A guy can dream.

148. “Ramrod”

From The River

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Springsteen never wrote openly about sexual situations in his early years. He was the rare rocker to play up the romance and never seemed to have lascivious thoughts, at least overtly. But he could do the innuendo, as Don Henley once sang, as well as anyone else, and “Ramrod” ranks right up there with any car-as-phallic symbol song to ever come down the pike.

It’s isn’t very subtle, either. Even a half-wit could catch the drift of a line like “I wanna ramrod with you honey, till half past dawn.” Elsewhere, he sings of what he might do when he can’t have his baby near to ride with him: “I swear I think of your pretty face when I let her unwind.” Let’s hope he covers the car seat with a towel.

Danny Federici’s organ is the star of the instruments, strutting and preening in the solo after those great staccato blasts early on. Clarence also gets to blast away alongside some hand-clap percussion. There’s nothing new here musically, but the band plays with great verve.

What’s interesting is that even after lusting over his girl throughout the song, Bruce turns his thoughts to marriage in the final verse. Apparently this means they can do their ramroddin’ in the eyes of God. Or something like that.

147. “The Big Muddy”

From Lucky Town

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The Big Muddy is another name for the Mississippi River, but it’s the metaphorical Big Muddy that Bruce is referencing on this moody Lucky Town track. It’s the place you end up when your expectations compromise your ideals, so that “You start out standing but end up crawling.”

Springsteen got an assist on the song from novelist Pete Dexter, whose acclaimed mid-80’s book Paris Trout provided the line “Poison snake bites you and you’re poison too.” It’s a good line, but, for my money, I like Bruce’s couplet in the final verse even better: “How beautiful the river flows and the birds they sing/But you and I we’re messier things.” It’s an honest, if downbeat, assessment of human frailty, which is what the song is all about.

The track itself is all atmosphere, with Roy Bittan’s ominous keyboards providing the bedrock and Springsteen’s delta guitar twang jutting out at unkempt angles. The one negative I have is that the supposed shady dealing could have used a bit more detail. It’s a little too vague to make it as a cohesive tale. But the brooding spell it casts helps outweigh this flaw, making it one of the more salvageable tracks from Bruce’s solo foray in the early 90’s.

146. “Cadillac Ranch”

From The River

LISTEN HERE

I’m going to make an admission that may startle some of you: I love Bruce Springsteen’s music but I am not a car guy. I wouldn’t know a Rolls Royce from a Yugo. I’ve been driving a Ford Escort around for over 10 years now. It has a gazillion miles on it and goes up hills like it’s being sucked down by a giant magnet, but it’s reliable and it gets me from point A to point B.

This does not prevent me from liking Springsteen’s car songs however. As this list progresses, you’ll notice some very high marks for songs with an automobile playing a big part. But those songs are usually only tangentially about the car and use it as a symbol for something, be it freedom, or power, or desperation, or whatever. The songs where the cars are just celebrated for being cars, well, I can’t say that they’re my cup of tea.

All that said, “Cadillac Ranch” is such a fun blur as it goes by that I can’t help but enjoy it, even if the advantages of said model are lost on me. Bruce name-checks some icons who drove Caddys to glory, including James Dean, Junior Johnson (a Nascar star of the 50’s and 60’s and, yes, I had to look that up) and Burt Reynolds. (I personally think Bruce should update the song to include Morty Seinfeld.)

The band is in excellent form here, with Max Weinberg snapping off the fourth-gear beat, Bruce clipping off the riffs in yet another homage to Chuck Berry, and the keyboard duo of Roy Bittan and Danny Federici providing technicolor fills throughout. No, I can’t say that I understand the allure of the Cadillac. But until Bruce sits down to write “The Ballad Of The Silver Escort That Smells Funny And Violently Shakes When It Reaches 63 MPH,” well, “Cadillac Ranch” will have to do.

The complete list to date.

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