I'm a Rocker - Bruce Springsteen

I'm a Rocker - Bruce Springsteen

3:37

The River, 1980

Written by Bruce Springsteen

A blistering song with a killer riff, this ain't one of the Boss' more serious tales of the overlooked, the lonely, the underemployed, the wild, the restless, the desperate.  Possibly uniquely in Springsteen's catalog, it's a series of pop culture references from the '60s and early '70s, when Springsteen was growing up.  The narrator boasts of his "007 watch," "I-Spy beeper," and Batmobile, all gadgets deigned to make him a hero to a girl in trouble.  If she's in a jam ("If you're hanging from a cliff or you're tied to the tracks, girl / Columbo split and you can't find Kojak"), then he'll be her protector, swooping in like an action hero, "like a mission impossible" he'll get her heart back.  It's all adolescent ramrod energy, pure '50s swagger.

Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street? - Bruce Springsteen

Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street? - Bruce Springsteen
2:04
Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., 1973
Written by Bruce Springsteen

I've never been fully aboard the Springsteen train.  I admire the catalog, I respect the work ethic, and he has some undeniably brilliant songs on each of a long spate of consistently good albums, but... but that salt-of-the-earth gravitas doesn't always light me up.   Here, though, on his first album, he comes out swinging, young and brash and voluble, sounding like Lou Reed and Bob Dylan had a baby who was raised by steelworkers in a small town he couldn't wait to get out of, just as soon as he memorized this rhyming dictionary.  It barrels forward in a breathless tumble of street scenes, stray characters, and neon-soaked Americana.  I mean, come on.  "Where dock wokers' dreams mix with panthers' schemes to someday own the rodeo / Tainted women in VistaVision perform for out-of-state kids at the late show."  It's the sound of a young artist announcing himself: not just talented, but overflowing.