Episode 99: I’m Bruce Springsteen and I Approve This Message

Matt and Ryan continue their historical march along the roots of indie pop music with a look at Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/tft099/tft099.mp3]

→ Download TFT Episode 99 (MP3)

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Syllabus

• On Overthinking It
  • Mark Lee on Jungleland and on Clarence Clemons’s sax solo
  • Mark’s textual analysis of the album (along with NWA and Taylor Swift)
  • John Perich’s Born In the USA: Our Most Misappropriated Patriotic Song

• Born To Run on Wikipedia

• Lyrics on Rock Genius

• Pitchfork’s Perfect 10 Review of the album’s reissue

• Robert Christgau’s Original Review

• Points of reference:
  • “Be My Baby” (produced by Phil Spector)
  • "I Think We’re Alone Now
  • “Runaway”

• Christgau on the 30th Anniversary Reissue

• Christgau on Springsteen’s relationship with the 70s Rock-Critic establishment

• Greil Marcus’s Rolling Stone Review
  • “And then He Kissed Me”

• “Only the Lonely”, The Roy Orbison song name-checked on “Thunder Road,” on YouTube and on Wikipedia (see the bit near the bottom that talks about the song’s influnence on “Born to Run”)

• A Slate piece on the making of Born to Run and its early reception

  By fusing the pop sounds of the 1950s and 1960s to the generational desires of the 1970s, it defined its time and transcended it.

• Steven Van Zandt on Wikipedia

• Jane Mansbridge discusses Democratic Theory on YouTube