A little Magic - addendum

It seems my last blog entry got noticed at Harp Magazine. Which means a couple things:
  1. Traffic went up; more than 100 visitors found the way via that magazine
  2. I get to see how other writers interpret what I had to say.
The piece starts like this: Springsteen’s New Magic Album Leaked In Its Entirety Online Fred Mills September 7, 2007 Despite stringent security precautions on the part of Columbia Records to keep Bruce Springsteen’s new album Magic under wraps until its official Oct. 2 release date, as of this morning MP3s of the entire album were flying around the Internet faster than you could say “Rosie, come out tonight!” Twelve songs in all had been posted to various websites or file-sharing services—one of them, “Terry’s Song,” about Springsteen’s late friend Terry Magovern, is reportedly a track that isn’t on the album and will presumably turn up as a bonus or a B-side. In short order, the bloggers ground into action: At the Matt Orel “Orel Family” blog a fairly in-depth, and somewhat critical, review of the album was posted. ok, "fairly in-depth," I like that. And I guess it was "somewhat critical," though overall I do like what I've heard on the first 4-5 listens. Mostly, I was relating the nearly... ahem... magical timing of this material becoming available, to where I was personally in the immediate aftermath of my father's passing. Of course, Bruce has dealt with death throughout his career, whether directly (e.g., recent songs "Silver Palomino" and "Terry's Song") or more generally (e.g., at least 2-3 songs probably on every album). And there's always an aspect to carrying on, despite that darkness: Gonna be a twister to blow everything down that ain't got the strength/faith to stand its ground. That's what this week is for, in my tradition, and I can relate to that. Even if the new album wasn't quite all I hoped it would be on first listen. I should note one more item about my first listens to Magic: Listening to mp3s on poor speakers is always a risky proposition. I transferred over to a more respectable system yesterday, and noticed that the compression on the mp3s was very noticeable. I expect it will sound much, much better on the official release.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Please accept my condolences on your fathers passing. One line which seems to put loss in perspective is the following: "Cause in the darkness there'll be hidden worlds that shine"
Anonymous said…
Beautiful review. I've been reading a lot about jazz music lately and trying to understand it better, something I've never really done before. Benny Goodman broke through a lot of barriers and I don't think that's ever been fully appreciated. That can be said about Springsteen too.

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