As measured by cultural impact and mass popularity, Bruce Springsteen’s 1984-85 World Tour was the apex. Considering its stunning scale, playing multi-night stadium stands, it’s easy to forget that 1984 was a rebirth of sorts, the start of a new era as much as a continuation of what came before it. On the biggest tour of his career, Springsteen was rebuilding the engine while the plane was flying.
This eight-disc box set includes the first seven albums by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, from 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. through 1984's Born in the U.S.A. (The River, having been a double album, is on two of the discs here)…
There are few periods in the post-Reunion era as busy as 2005-2009, a five-year stretch that saw the release of four studio albums each with accompanying tours, surely none more fun for Bruce Springsteen himself than 2006’s sojourn in support of The Seeger Sessions.
Bruce Springsteen has always been steeped in mainstream pop/rock music, using it as a vocabulary for what he wanted to say about weightier matters. And he has always written generic pop as well, though he's usually given the results away to performers like Southside Johnny and Gary "U.S." Bonds. Sometimes, those songs have been hits - think of the Pointer Sisters' "Fire" or Bonds' "This Little Girl Is Mine." Occasionally, Springsteen has used such material here and there on his own albums; some of it can be found on The River, for example. But Human Touch was the first Bruce Springsteen album to consist entirely of this kind of minor genre material, material he seems capable of turning out endlessly and effortlessly - the point of "I Wish I Were Blind" is that the singer doesn't want to see, now that his baby has left him; "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" is about TV…
Today, Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings released Bruce Springsteen: The Album Collection Vol. 1 1973-1984, a boxed set comprised of remastered editions of the first seven albums recorded and released by Bruce Springsteen for Columbia Records between 1973 and 1984. All of the albums are newly remastered (five for the first time ever on CD) and all seven are making their remastered debut on vinyl. The seven albums are recreations of their original packaging and the set is accompanied by a 60-page book featuring rarely-seen photos, memorabilia and original press clippings from Springsteen’s first decade as a recording artist. Acclaimed engineer Bob Ludwig, working with Springsteen and longtime engineer Toby Scott, has remastered these albums, all newly transferred from the original analogue masters using the Plangent Process playback system.