Feeling Americana? Maybe a little Jason Heath & The Greedy Souls is just what you need. The Los Angeles band's newest long-player, Packed for Exile , is a heapin' helpin' of rocking roots, sure to find favor with fans of biggies (Tom Petty) and littlies (I See Hawks In L.A.) of kosmic American music, and features somewhat surprising cameos from big rawk heavyweights Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) and Brother Wayne Kramer (MC5). Packed for Exile doesn't drop [...]
Check out this timely cover by folk/rock band, Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls from Los Angeles. The band includes Jason Federici, son of Danny Federici of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band fame. The band just finished recording their second full length album, "Packed for Exile." You can hear the album in its entirety by visiting their offical website . MP3: 4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)
"Win or lose, you know that you've been here before. Keep your eyes fixed up high on the blood above your door. It's a promise to you that will always be true, the sun is gonna rise. So don't be afraid of the place where you lay, just close your eyes." When I first heard this song by the Los Angeles based, Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls I knew they were [...]
by Mark Saleski Every true music fan has in their pocket a short list: the artists who hold special meaning. Our relationships to those artists are different from the rest. Each release means something. They're not just records, they're events, they're signposts ... repositories of all related memories: past, present and future. Shortly after I initially cracked open Bruce Springsteen's
"Win or lose, you know that you've been here before. Keep your eyes fixed up high on the blood above your door. It's a promise to you that will always be true, the sun is gonna rise. So don't be afraid of the place where you lay, just close your eyes." When I first heard this song by the Los Angeles [...]
The Ragamuffin Gunner. Jimmy The Saint. Bronx’s best apostle. Upon a glance at these names, you might expect one of Springsteen’s ramshackle, benevolent tales of harmless spirits in the night. Instead, in “Lost In The Flood,” you get Bruce’s version of “Desolation Row,” a place from which few escape and ever fewer emerge unscathed.
Marriage and children have always been a big part of the American Dream, but Bruce Springsteen subverts that with the title track to his 1980 double album. In “The River,” the interlinked momentous occasions of having child and getting married are boiled down to one terse line that doesn’t even pretend to be romantic: “Then I got married, and man that was all she wrote.”
“The screen door slams/Mary’s dress sways.” It doesn’t get much more iconic than that, does it? Actually you can close your eyes, put your finger down on the lyric sheet of “Thunder Road,” and you’d probably land on a line that has resonated through rock and roll history.
Imagine a song with words by The Left Banke and lyrics by Warren Zevon and you’ll get an idea of the sensibility behind this brilliant Magic track. Has there ever been a production quite so lush that’s been employed in the service of such a psychologically dark song?
In “No Surrender”, the dreams and promises of which Springsteen had been suspect of for so long are welcome friends once again.
In an unabashed throwback to his own glory days, Bruce went all-out on this firecracker track which kicked off Side 2 of Born In The U.S.A. He was actually ambivalent about including it on the album for its fearlessly big-hearted attitude, but, ever the silent contributor, Steve Van Zandt insisted that it belonged.
The emotional centerpiece of The Ghost Of Tom Joad , “The Line” is a stunning tale of what happens when the call of duty conflicts with the necessities of the heart.
It’s become such a party song over the years that it’s easy to miss just how much Bruce Springsteen gets right in “Glory Days.” As the resident of a small town for just about all of my 37 years on this earth, I know the people in this song. The characterizations are so spot-on that I recognize the faded athlete who still commands respect (and free drinks) even after he’s long since lost his mojo.
No instrument conjures nostalgia quite like a saxophone, so it’s fitting that this Born In The U.S.A. outtake, which in many ways concerns the way the past has a way of sneaking up on you, is bookended by Clarence Clemons mirroring the main melody and imbuing the notes with just the right touch of grandeur and heartbreak.
Would you believe that this was recorded in 1977, right around the time that Bruce was putting together Darkness On The Edge Of Town ? Could you imagine this happy-go-lucky tune nestling cozily in between say, “Adam Raised A Cain” and “Streets Of Fire”? People would have thought that The Boss had developed multiple personalities.
For all of Bruce Springsteen’s love for obscure pop chestnuts that had little on their mind other than to get people’s heads bobbing and backsides swaying, he often couldn’t see the value in similar songs that he wrote himself. Hence, he very nearly gave this top 10 smash away to Donna Summer, only to hold onto it at the last minute at the persistent urging of Jon Landau.
Anyone who thinks that Springsteen’s songwriting skills have softened somehow as the years have passed should check out this stunner from Devils & Dust , which was released in 2005. It’s as unflinching a character sketch as Bruce has ever provided, a look at a hard man that still manages to elicit, if not sympathy for him, than at least some understanding.
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 [...]
While punk rock was bubbling up like some sort of primordial beast on both sides of the pond, Bruce Springsteen fired right back in 1978 on this track from Darkness On The Edge Of Town with some of the fiercest music he’d ever recorded. He plays the guitar as if he’s trying to choke the life from his strings, and he sings with the primal howl once used by John Lennon for his landmark Plastic Ono Band album.
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