Graham Reid | | 4 min read
Blind Spot
When Bob Dylan released the 1985 Biograph box set where he mixed alternative versions, rarities, unreleased songs and live material, he stuck a marker in the ground which dared others to do the same.
Most artists, even of his age at the time, wouldn't have quite that much material available, and not of that quality.
Six years later he changed the game again with his Bootleg Series Vol 1-3, 58 songs and most previously unheard. That the Bootleg Series is now up to Volume 17 is a testament to just how uniquely prolific – and profligate with his genius – Dylan is.
Few artists could claim to have that much material – let alone of such consistent quality and of interest to fans – and only a few have tried.
The Beatles and the Stones didn't leave that much finished material (or even unfinished) lying around, even the extensive Beatles' Anthology sets leans heavily on alternate versions and include very few complete but unreleased songs.
Van Morrison released the double CD set The Philosopher's Stone in '98 which had previously unreleased material and outtakes. But nothing more since then.
These days of course Neil Young is frequently opening that vast vault, releasing some of the albums, rejigging others and doing Lord knows what . . . but they just keep coming. And they aren't all good.
The only one to come close to Dylan – and still a long way behind – has been Bruce Springsteen.
His Tracks box set – 66 songs released in 1998 – was an impressive collection of unreleased, demos or rare material.
It was a roadblock for the casual listener, but manageable for his loyalists.
Now however comes Tracks II: The Lost Albums and even fans would have to concede it's a big ask: 83 songs commanding nearly five hours of Bossman listening.
But unlike the Dylan and other attempts at collating an alternate career out of studio leftovers or live recordings, Tracks II contains fully realised albums which Springsteen lavished attention and and then set aside.
In that regard he's been like Young who has sometimes felt the time wasn't right for an album so put it the vault and moved on to something else.
So Tracks II: The Lost Albums is something unique and the first album/disc are of sessions between the pared down Nebraska and the bombastic blockbuster Born in the USA, some of the songs (Johnny Bye Bye, My Hometown, Don't Back Down, Shut Out The Light) will be familiar but here exist as mostly working drawings.
Other albums in the box are of brackets of songs recorded at the time of the Ghost of Tom Joad and Western Stars albums, and so on.
The most interesting and unexpected is the album which is here as the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.
His moving Streets of Philadelphia song for Jonathan Demme's '94 film was not just enormously successful but had solo Springsteen working with synthesizers and drum loops to create an almost unearthly sound behind his spare vocal.
It must have seemed to him – away from solo work with guitar and the punch of the E Street Band – that here was a new and profitable way of creating and delivering his songs.
And so he created a whole album's worth along those lines. These 10 songs appear as the second album in the Tracks II collection.
You can speculate as to why he would have withdrawn the album. Not that it was too much of a departure – there are still Springsteen themes and his distinctive vocal – but that the frisson of awe which set Streets of Philadelphia apart doesn't sustain an album.
That said, there are some terrific songs here: the opener Blind Spot with a looped sample in the background and Springsteen's aching vocal on “everyone's got a blind spot that brings them down, everyone's got a blind spot they can't get around” – plus the razor sharp short guitar solo – make for something very special.
But the standout is the broody Maybe I Don't Know You which opens with what, in another context and iteration, would have been a handclap Motown beat. It is the singer seeing his lover dressed up, with a new hairstyle and listening to new music and forced to the realisation that . . maybe . . .
He freights the vocal with defeat and incomprehension although . . . he knows. The Elvis of You Were Always on My Mind would have known how to sing this too.
These two openers really are lost songs, very good to have them now.
Elsewhere we get something closer to Springsteen songs located somewhere between Lucky Town/Human Touch (which preceded this brief synth/loops period) and Streets of Philadelphia: there's the story teller (the haunting Something in the Well, the compelling We Fell Down which reads a companion piece to Maybe I Don't Know You), lesser vehicles (Waiting For The End of the World which relies on the wash of synths and is buried by them) and songs in settings perhaps too close to SOP to invite a comparisons (pity because The Little Things is a sensitive ballad).
And here is Secret Garden too.
Then there's something like the jangle rock of the raging One Beautiful Morning which explores life's mysteries (love and death) which doesn't sit in this context.
The closer Farewell Party may well have been written specifically for the Demme film but – good though it is – it doesn't touch the purity and heartbreak of Streets of Philadelphia.
Streets of Philadelphia
Is there anyone who doesn't weep when he sings “I was unrecognisable to myself . . . ”
Nothing on this lost album touches that astonishingly moving song, but equally nothing diminishes what Springsteen was attempting with this new musical backdrop.
Make sure you hear Blind Spot, Maybe I Don't Know You and The Little Things.
It was Bruce Springsteen feeling his way into a new context but still tapping that sense of loss he can convey so convincingly.
Maybe I Don't Know You
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You can hear all of Tracks II: The Lost Albums at Spotify here This Streets of Philadelphia Sessions album is the second of the seven.
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