The funniest part about this whole hard rock band thing, was that it all started out on acoustic. We would sit in the living room (and later in the back room with the studio) with acoustics, and trade chords and ideas back and forth until something clicked. It usually did, and it was almost always based around the weirdest chord we could find. Because, if you could take some off the wall sounding chord and make a progression out of it, then subconsciously it would be cool. I like to think I've got a pretty good ear for radio, and while a lot of our old demos were extremely rough around the edges, they had some potential. In a real studio, with drums and bass behind them, they could've made a pretty good record. I thought that then, I think it now. It's why I sat down with the acoustic today, and tried to find a way to flesh out the progression I got the other night. I made a little progress, but I think what needs to happen first is a going through of the old demos, just to see where anything new might fit in. Should be interesting.
So, the new Springsteen disc is amazing. There's enough of a mixture of his upbeat rockers, his ballads, and his message songs to make this his best record since The Rising . And speaking of that record... Buying The Boss the day it comes out always takes me back to a specific moment in life. It was July 30th, 2002, the year after 9/11, the year after someone on the streets of New York told Springsteen "we need you now." I had driven to Oshkosh, WI to visit some friends, when I remembered that Springsteen's disc was scheduled to come out that day. I drove downtown to The Exclusive Company, but had to park a few blocks back. At the time, there wasn't much going on downtown, but when I got out of the car, I could hear this music coming from up the block somewhere. The closer I got to Exclusive, the more it began to dawn on me, they had set up a giant set of speakers in their upstairs windows, and were blasting the new album out into the streets....
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