From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!rocheste!stevans
Newsgroups: net.records
Title: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
Article-I.D.: rocheste.185
Posted: Sun Nov  7 01:55:56 1982
Received: Sun Nov  7 03:40:30 1982

This is now the number 1 album in the US.  It deserves this position.
Bruce had this entire album recorded at his home on a cassette recorder,
consisting almost entirely of his voice, harmonica, and guitar.  The
recording is of good quality, though not up to industry standards.

    Bruce Springsteen has been accused of owing a slice of royalties
to Bob Dylan, and here he's completed (co-produced by Dylan's recent
co-producer, Chuck Plotkin) his counterpart to Bob's 1967 masterwork
"John Wesley Harding" -- a return to simple, basic musical values
after the flood of brilliant excess that culminated in a double album
for each man: "Blonde on Blonde" for Bob, "The River" for Bruce.

     Bruce has long had an obsession with death and cars, and here he
further explores these and other relevant topics from the bleak out-of-work
middle-American perspective introduced on "The River", calling the
listener "sir" about once per song, and beginning many lines with "Well,".

     Highlights include "Open All Night", the only electric guitar song,
a trek along the lonely New Jersey Turnpike; the titular song, a gripping
and unavoidably depressing first person narrative of a shooting rampage;
and "Highway Patrolman", a homespun tale of the American family values
exemplified by the saying "blood is thicker than water".

    The album does have a few weak spots.  "My Father's House" is a
somewhat verbose follow-up to "The River"'s "Independence Day", saved only
by the fascinating internal rhyming pattern used in the first verse
(reminiscent of Dylan's "I dreamed I saw Saint Augustine" on "Harding"),
a pattern which is not upheld during the rest of the song.  I'm sure this
stuff is cathartic for Bruce, but I must admit that I don't care quite two
songs worth how Bruce feels about his father.  The last song on the album,
"Reason to Believe," contains somewhat contrived references to "The River,"
as though Bruce felt he must, as on that album, continue to make backwards
references to his earlier material.

     This is the first cassette I have ever seen with lyrics inside -- no
doubt so that, well, you can play this on your car stereo and read along
while outrunning the State Police without a license, with a sawed-off
shotgun, sir, and my pretty baby right by my side.

     All things considered, "Nebraska" is an tuneful and moving chunk
of lower-middle-class America -- one that every red-blooded American
rock-and-roller will love.