Customer Reviews

The Promise

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Oh the agonies of being Bruce Springsteen. You have recorded what many consider to be one of the best ever rock albums in 1975's high adrenaline anthem laden "Born to Run", you have been proclaimed the "future of rock n roll" and expectations are running at a fever pitch that after a three year lay off compounded by legal disputes you are about to release "Born to Run - part 2". So what do you do? Answer - like all great artists you confound expectations and by doing so release the brooding and primal masterpiece 1978's "Darkness on the edge of town". On it Springsteen combined songs like "Adam raised a Cain" that contained so much raw fury it could have started a war with the sheer unadulterated beauty of other songs like the towering "Racing in the street". In addition with his well known prolificness he recorded enough material to literally swamp the 16 track equipment of New York's legendary Record Plant.

The Darkness sessions are now captured in all their glory on a huge box set release and hopefully Santa's elves have already packed it in a parcel marked "Cardiff". But in the meantime we have the music that got left behind from those sessions captured on this essentially "new" double album "The Promise" and frankly your humble reviewer has died and gone to heaven. This album represents a completely essential addition to the Springsteen canon and must be viewed as one of his great seventies albums albeit over thirty years late. "The Promise" very much prefigures "The River" and is packed full of so many styles from joyous jukebox rock n roll such as the Buddy Holly like thumping "Outside looking in" and the wonderful soulful Graham Parker sounding "Talk to me". Then we have huge slow Roy Orbison infused poignant ballads such as "The Brokenhearted", the songs which must have been on the reserve list for "Darkness" such "Come on (lets go tonight)" marking Elvis's death and the brilliant title track previously included on "18 tracks".

What other artists other than Dylan have given away brilliant songs as cavalierly as Springsteen? Thus finally we get to hear his studio versions of the two uber hits "Because the Night" (Patti Smith) and "Fire" (Pointer Sisters). Smith's version of "Because" probably has the edge but then it is one of the most viscerally powerful cover versions ever and Springsteen's does come close (and anyway he wrote the bloody song). "Fire" is a sheer delight stripped of the "pop" of the Pointer Sisters it becomes a sexy rock song full of dirty Clemons sax solos and a brilliant vocal by the Boss. Throughout the E Street Band are tighter than a shark with lock jaw and when it all clicks together on songs like the Roy Bittan piano driven "Spanish eyes" or the redemptive roar of "Gotta get a feeling" it is the musical equivalent of Category 5 hurricane and destroys everything in its wake. It is guaranteed that the sing-along "Ain't good enough for you" will have your smile fixed like the Joker and believing in the redemptive power of rock n roll.

And then there is "Racing in the Street (`78)" and "Someday (we will be together)". The first is a version of the moody ballad filled with latent regret on Darkness which is transformed into a huge piano and a high lonesome harmonica driven "River" style anthem which absolutely laid to me waste when I first played it and it has been on repeat since. It contains one of Springsteen's greatest vocals and shows that the man is touched by the angels. Similarly "Someday" shows that when it comes to doomed romanticism Springsteen has an all encompassing monopoly and hearing this superb song it was like being transported back to those heady days in the seventies when I played his music so much that every member of my family would hum his songs around the house and ask "who is that"?

Unlike the patchy mopping up exercise "Tracks" which had variable quality spread over its 4 disc compilation (although "Thundercrack" is one of the seven wonders of the world) "The Promise" feels like a unified whole. In Springsteen's own words it is a "fully realised piece of work" which shows that he knew precisely what he wanted from "Darkness", an album that would stand as a polar opposite to its predecessor. In doing so however he had to jettison songs of such verve and quality that you can only gasp at his audacity since many artists would lose a limb to pen songs of this depth and strength.

So there you have it, a "promise" delivered. The Boss and the E Street Band at their absolute peak, 21 peerless songs, a great lost work recovered and easily one of the best albums released in 2010. What more do you really want from life?

Bruce delivers big time! Imagine... The Beatles found extra tracks for Revolver; another side of the moon was discovered by Pink Floyd; U2 planted another Joshua Tree. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Well, the Boss had arguably the best three album run of the seventies (The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town) and now he's just dropped a fourth masterpiece from that peak period thirty-something years later. These twenty one tracks are not b-sides,Darkness cast-offs or novelties. They are the most thrilling and eclectic bunch of songs you'll hear in 2010. It sounds like Bruce's London Calling.

Disc one begins with Racing in the Streets ('78). I'm getting chicken skin just thinking about this track. Bittan's piano marches us into an electric track that sounds as if it could have been recorded for Born to Run. The songs are so strong on this disc that the one track I was really excited about hearing, Because the Night, is not one of the better songs (and it's great!) Candy's Boy brings out a sensitive side to that wild girl that we could have never imagined on Darkness.

Now I was fully prepared to be let down by the second disc. I thought Bruce had obviously front loaded this package. Was I wrong. If anything the second disc is more upbeat and melodic,revealing Springsteen's fifties and sixties influences. By the time the refrain on the second track, Ain't Enough for You kicked in, I felt like clapping right along. Also, the second disc contains the best track on the album, The Promise. It's as good as anything Springsteen has recorded (man, is that saying something!)

Okay, I'll take a breath and let the hurricane of hyperbole die down to a steady rain. Here's the facts: An iconic artist has released twenty two (surprise, there's a hidden track!) songs from his peak period. If you've ever turned up Born to Run when it comes on the radio or witnessed the live miracle of the Boss in concert, you owe it to yourself to buy this gift of an album. Merry (early) Christmas!

I like this collection. I'm excited to have this collection. But I think, after listening to this repeatedly for a few days that this is not all that I hoped it would be. Despite the claims of the Springsteen camp this is not the long lost album between Born To Run and Darkness, not the missing link that will join these 2 masterpieces. Bruce and Stevie and John have been talking about how wonderful these 22 songs are but keep in mind a few things:

These songs were rejected when putting together Darkness.

These songs were rejected when putting together The River (even though the River had multiple songs from the Darkness era and had musical styles all across the spectrum).

These songs were rejected when putting together the Tracks collection (4 discs!)

These songs were rejected when putting together the bonus disc of studio outtakes for The Essential Bruce Springsteen.

It is a tribute to Bruce's talent that his 5th rate songs can still be of pretty solid quality. But to my ears about half of this collection is a little dull; mid tempo rockers with unmemorable lyrics and unremarkable (though somewhat catchy) melodies.

All that being said I can say that there are about 6 or 8 songs that are pretty solid and make this set worth the low price. My general lack of enthusiasm seems to speak to how great Bruce's instincts were when he put together Darkness. In listening to these songs as well as Tracks, etc. I don't think there is a single song on Darkness that I would swap out for another. The original released album is a complete, cohesive whole that works perfectly.

But there is another issue that has been discussed in some of these reviews. Bruce has recorded overdubs and actual vocals onto most of these tracks. The more I think about it the more I think this is quite simply just WRONG. I love Bruce's work throughout all of his career. I will buy the next cd the week it comes out like I have bought all the others. But in my opinion there is no reason for a 2009 Bruce vocal to be on a song from 1977. I don't care if it supposedly makes the song better. I would rather hear an "inferior" version (or no version at all) than hear something that has been doctored and sweetened to make it more palatable to an unknowing audience. Again this is just my opinion, but it seems deceptive and contradictory to the spirit of this release. I think the reason I am not more excited when I hear most of these songs is that my gut instictively knows that I am not hearing music from Bruce Springsteen in his prime as we were lead to believe.

Bruce Springsteen and his amazing E Street Band heard in all of their 70's glory on the best batch of 'throw away' songs ever to be left off of an album! This is an amazing set of songs that stand on their own. It is like walking into the record store on a crisp autumn morning in 1978 and picking up the new double LP from the best band on the planet. The song 'The Promise' is in my opinion one of the Boss' 10 best singles. It is hard to believe that it didn't make the cut back in 78. We get treated to a massive collection of songs that speak to middle to lower class America and embrace us in our shared rollercoaster ride of life. No matter how personally wealthy these guys have gotten from their music careers, they play and sing for everyman. As I listened to these songs, I felt so many variant emotions. One minute my heart is racing and in the next moment my heart is breaking. Bruce has always made me feel as if it wouldn't be weird at all to just meet him down at the pub and talk and laugh and debate and argue and agree just like any two working class stiffs would do. He and the E Street boys are in the business of making magic for the everyman. They make me remember when but at the same time help me to glimpse into the future never quite sure of where and what but baby with these guys by my side, am I ever going to enjoy the ride. Please do yourself a favor today and purchase this 'new' classic from America's greatest rock band! Fall in love with these songs like I have by letting down your guard, putting your problems aside and let them sink into your soul and into your heart. Hail Hail to The Boss and his E Street Band!!!

Back in the `70s, any recording artist worth his or her salt was expected to release an album per year, every two years tops. If there were a lapse in this rote pattern, the record company would put out a "greatest hits," or some type of "best of" compilation to appease hungry fans. Everybody thought Dylan was finished when there was no follow-up to "Blonde on Blonde" in 1967, and after an unheard of three-year lull in Van Morrison's recording career, Van the Man released an LP with the apparently explanatory title "A Period of Transition."

I remember the seemingly endless barren stretch that followed "Born to Run" (was Springsteen not "Rock and Roll Future" after all? my friends and I wondered aloud), and it would be years before I found out Bruce had actually written and recorded several songs in the limbo between his 1975 epic and 1978's "Darkness On the Edge of Town." Now, three decades later, this material is finally, officially, seeing the light of day.

"The Promise" is best appreciated not as a fully realized whole like "Born to Run" or "Darkness," but as a transitional journey between the two, from the wide-eyed optimism of the former, when Bruce believed (and we did right along with him) that Rock and Roll was bigger than life, to the harder-edged latter, forged by the trials and stresses of an increasingly imposing real world. It makes for an engrossing, sometimes downright intoxicating mix, and serves as a welcome, long lost bridge between two masterpieces seemingly half a world apart. It's also, to me, an invigorating reminder of why I became a Bruce fan in the first place.

And it's a tribute to the Boss that he could produce such a vast storehouse of great songs--some of which ("Because the Night," "Fire," "Talk to Me," et al.) provided success for other artists--and withhold them from release simply because they didn't fit the overall concept, the Big Picture, of the LP he was determined to make. Or, in some cases, as he recently mentioned on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, he didn't want to be perceived as a "revivalist" or to put out an album that "wore its influences on its sleeve." This strict adherence to his forward-looking vision was our loss for several decades (save for the resulting "Darkness" album, of course), and has now, finally, been remedied to the benefit of all.

There are some shimmeringly beautiful tracks here that hearken back to "Born to Run," of which Sprinsteen has said he wanted to make "the greatest rock and roll record ever." A number of these lush mini epics bring to mind a line from a review of Neil Young's "Live Rust," written by Tom Carson some 30 years ago: "It's so massively stately that you get the feeling of huge mountains on the move." And we get a feeling of just how important Springsteen's then-recent influences were to him, as well.

As for wearing them "on its sleeve," well, perhaps there was the fear at the time that those influences were too recent and recognizable. Whatever the case, they have since aged gracefully, and to anyone born after, say, 1970, these songs' inspirations are likely to be all but invisible. Nevertheless, the giants on whose shoulders Bruce stood were among the tallest. There's the euphoric, Spectorian wall of sound of "The Little Things (My Baby Does)" and the glorious "Gotta Get That Feeling." Mighty Max channels Jerry Allison in the Buddy Holly inspired "Outside Looking In." "Someday (We'll Be Together)" conjures up the Four Seasons' "Rag Doll." "Breakaway" is steeped in Orbison-like majesty. The rhythmic rawness of Gary "U.S." Bonds permeates "Ain't Good Enough For You." The horn arrangements on "It's a Shame" hearken back to the Stax/Volt Memphis Horns. "One Way Street" brings to mind Percy Sledge's soul classic "True Love Travels On a Gravel Road," which was covered by Elvis, for whom Bruce wrote "Fire." Come to think of it, this is the music that made me fall in love with Rock and Roll in the first place, before Bruce even came on the scene.

On the "Darkness" side of the coin is an alternate take of "Racing In the Street," "Come On (Let's Go Tonight)," which was the forerunner of both "Factory" and "Johnny Bye Bye," "Wrong Side of the Street," "The Promise," and "Candy's Boy," which obviously morphed into "Candy's Room."

It's all good, but two songs, to my ears, stand above the rest. "Rendezvous" actually gave me goose bumps upon hearing it for the first time--something that, at my age, hasn't happened in quite awhile. It simply blows the live "Tracks" version out of the water. "Save My Love," written in 1977 and recorded in 2010 according to the liner notes, brings it all back home. It's what Rock and Roll is all about.

Which brings up the issue of Bruce's tinkering with some of the original material for this package. "Where needed, I worked on them to bring them to fruition," he says in the liner notes. I thought this would bother me, but it ended up not being the case. The end result is what counts, and these songs, some of which were in an unfinished, unreleasable state prior to Bruce's intervention, ultimately deliver.

There aren't too many songwriters around whose unreleased output comes close to matching their well-known works. Bob Dylan is one, as evidenced by his "Bootleg" series, still going strong today. Another is Bruce Springsteen, who left some truly outstanding work on the shelf for years because the songs didn't quite fit into the themes of the albums he was working on at the time.
He gave fans a glimpse into that treasure trove of rarities with the 1998 release of the four-disc box set, Tracks. That set spanned his entire career up until that point, and most of the songs held up extremely well to the ones that were released.
Now comes the much-awaited release of The Promise, a double-disc set of leftovers from 1978's classic release Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Darkness was an extremely important album for the Boss, the follow-up to his first megasmash album, 1975's Born to Run.
The follow-up took three years to generate, mostly due to contractual problems and difficulties with his former manager. That three-year wait between albums allowed Springsteen to record four albums worth of material. He eventually pared things down to 10 songs for the album's release, leaving behind a plethora of worthy leftovers.
Some of these were given to other artists to record, such as "Fire" (a huge hit for the Pointer Sisters) and "Because the Night" (a big hit for Patti Smith). Others finally saw the light of day on Tracks, and finally we get to hear 22 more on The Promise.
Let's just say, it's well worth the wait for any Springsteen fan. Included on the set are Bruce and the E Street Band's versions of "Fire" and "Because the Night," as well as an alternate version of the Darkness standout "Racing in the Street."
The other 19 tracks are completely new to me (although diehard fans have heard them on bootlegs through the years), and most of them are first-rate.
Overall, I prefer the first disc over the second, as more of the upbeat tracks are on Disc 1, including "Gotta Get That Feeling," "Outside Looking In," and "Rendezvous". Overall, the second disc has more of the slower, brooding numbers, but they are all very well done, and many of these are growing on me. I especially like the album's closer "City of Night," an honest interpretation of what life must be like for the cab drivers and ladies of the night in major cities.
While The Promise might not be as good as classic discs like Born to Run, Born in the USA, Darkness on the Edge of Town or The River, it shows Springsteen in peak songwriting form. Several of these could have been hit singles, but they just didn't fit thematically for Darkness. I'm glad we get to hear them now, as The Promise takes its place in the Boss' canon as the great lost Springsteen album.

Does it matter really if some of the tunes found here were "recently finished" or not? Well yeah it kind of does. It takes away from the historical significance of the collection, at least I think so. Yet I don't find that to be a deal breaker. Most of the music found here really is remarkable in the sense that none of it saw the light of day for three decades (the songs covered by other artists aside).

Somewhere between the reviews here calling this "Darkness 2" and others expressing dismay at the "finishing" of various demo tracks lies the reality of this release. There really are some fine tunes on this collection (newly "finished" or otherwise) but with very few exceptions I can see why none of them made it onto DoeEoT and to be honest, maybe it was for the best that there was no album in between Born To Run and Darkness....

Still, this is a very very good collection of songs and as I said, it's amazing none of them have been officially released until now. Thanks to The Boss for allowing this to be issued on its' own and not forcing everyone interested to shell out the huge money for the deluxe package. The price for what's found here is certainly a bargain. Listening to "just missed" Springsteen tunes from thirty years ago beats any of the crap that comprises "modern rock music" today anyway.

Love love love this CD. Thank you Boss! I remember when I was a kid I was a bootleg album junkie. Got my hands on the Hammersmith Odeon record (with Tamborine playing Monkey cover) and the Winterland concert. Scratchy bad quality but I played the heck out of those records. Years later I finally get what I was searching for all those years ago. Some red-hot pre-Born-In-The_USA Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Ain't Good Enough for You for me is just what the Doctor Ordered. Gave me that concert feeling, and of course Talk to Me and Fire. Southside I love your version buddy but the Bruce version kicks some major tail. And Fire puts the Pointer Sisters rendition to shame.

All I can say is I'm glad I own it, and it will be a while before I switch CD's in the car.

As any Springsteen fan knows, this CD consists of 22 tracks that Bruce did not include on Darkness On The Edge Of Town because they didn't fit the mood that he was trying to create. He was right that most of these would be out of place there, but what he might have considered was releasing a two or even three record set back in 1978...with each one reflecting a different theme or mood. Of course one disk would be called 'Darkness', another disk could have been called 'Brightness' or something to that effect, and it would have consisted of the more upbeat positive songs such as "Ain't Good Enough For You" which is a good old fashioned party song that probably could have been a hit for Southside Johnny if Bruce had given it to him. It even name drops Jimmy Iovine. "Talk To Me" would have been another standout cut on the 'Brightness' disk...which ended up being a hit for Southside. Same goes for "It's A Shame". The soulful "One Way Street" with two gorgeous sax solos from Clarence Clemons would have also been a nice fit.

Bruce could have been extra ambitious by including a third LP consisting of 'Love' songs. Springsteen is not known for his love songs, but he did have a slew of them in the can...the obvious ones being "Because The Night" and "Fire" which is a much different version than the one released by the Pointer Sisters. Bruce's performance is much closer to how Elvis Presley might have recorded it if he had the opportunity. Other candidates for the 'Love' disc would have been "Someday (We'll Be Together)", "The Brokenhearted" (which sounds a bit like Roy Orbison), "Spanish Eyes" and "Save My Love". There are also a couple of Phil Spector influenced track to complete the 'Love' collection in "The Little Things My Baby Does" and "Gotta Get The Feeling".

"Breakaway" and "The Promise" would have sounded perfect on the original Darkness album, but I'm sure Springsteen would not want to have compromised the quality of the audio by including the extra grooves that would have been necessary.

The Promise is an amazing release of rejections. Every song but two ("Outside Looking In" and "Rendezvous") made my iPod. I still give it a perfect five stars due to the very high quality of the majority of the songs, not to mention the wonderful hidden bonus track, "The Way".

The Promise is a notepad containing the ideas and hard work that went into making Darkness. The laid back Racing in the Street doesn't compare to the Darkness version and even takes a moment to realize that's the same song. An enjoyable couple of hours listening to the artist polishing his style and building an album. Maybe it wasn't intended to be released but what better history lesson than hearing the roots of Sprinsteen? You have to start somewhere.