Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska

An unplugged album before the term was invented

PROS: Ten dark, depressing songs recorded in a bedroom.
CONS: None.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Worth picking up if you like Springsteen or good music.

this is absolutely his best album of all time bar none.

My copy has Matrix numbers "AL 38358 -1B" and "-P- IT BL 38358-2D"

My copy has a blank red label on the A side so that no tracks are listed: any insight on this?

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2⭐️
Love the sound , love the approach but I’m afraid much of the poetry is pretentious and murky : is he jack kerouac here and bob dylan there and Chuck Berry elsewhere ?

Nebraska is one of those albums listeners either got, or they didn’t. It’s an entirely startling album, often times chilling, direct, dramatic and filled consequences. This is Bruce and his guitar setting out to create his own vision of America with a homespun delivery, with vocalizations that are often flat and to the point without adornment or adulation.

There are some aspiringly great songs here, simply consider the cinematic though real life mob war of “Atlantic City” or “State Trooper,” a song Tom Petty had in mind when he recorded his brilliant number “Don’t Pull Me Over.” Nebraska is an album that’s touched many a soul, paving the way for lo-fi intoxication. The album was brought to light with compassion, the juxtaposition that goodness always outnumbers the bad, yet with the bad somehow always surviving. Absent from this album, though present on others, is the idea that there is a sense of closure, while here Bruce maintains that there is no peace to be found lurking in the darkness, that there are no cleansing rivers in which to purify one’s soul, nor are there confessional booths actually willing to remove the baggage so many endlessly carry. This is not to say that there aren’t some optimistic songs, because there are, just as there are moments of dignity among the down trodden.

Without a doubt, this is perhaps the most single minded album Springsteen has ever recored, and he did so on a four track cassette player, bestowing the record with a weathered sound filled with dust and a bleak landscape, suitable for his visions to be played out on. Often times, the record is unsettling and deep, requiring attention by the listeners. And while fans didn’t gravitate to Human Touch or Lucky Town due to their innate happiness, many shied away from Nebraska due to its matter of factness and sense of desperation, where while very good, never made for an offhanded listen. Nevertheless, while the record never made a splash, it has acquired a sizable weight as the years have passed, divinely inspirational, yet nearly requiring a position in one’s collection under ‘Nebraska’, rather than under Bruce Springsteen.

Knowing this record well, and having seen Bruce preform most of these songs live, I will suggest that these songs come off far better in a live setting, as the record has a very accidental feel to it … though I fully understand that was part of Springsteen’s concept. Springsteen seems so emotionally connected to the characters in these songs, that seeing him bring them to life on stage is akin to hearing someone tell you an engaging tale, where the physical presence of Springsteen breathes more life into them, a compelling blend of fiction and memoir, or perhaps fictitious memoirs. These stories are the stuff of legend that build and survive on their re-telling, where it becomes impossible to discern whether Bruce wrote these songs, or they’re merely revisionist interpretations of things he’s heard while on the backroads, alone in Nebraska.

Bruce was never able to capture the spirit of these songs in the studio with a band, the atmospheric presence was always missing, leaving Bruce walking around with this cassette in his pocket until he realized that this cassette had a rewarding spirit of its own, so he let it take life of its own accord, with the result being that he made a demo and that demo became a glorious essential record.

*** All of this being said, I would dearly love to hear a reissue, one where this album has been remastered, and another with the E Street Band’s transformation, but that will never be.

*** The Fun Facts: Photographer David Michael Kennedy recalls, “The cover shot was taken in the mid-west from the window of an old pick-up truck in the dead of winter back in 1975, just before a whiteout snow storm descended on my girlfriend and I.”

Review by Jenell Kesler

So I have a copy of this with this exact runout groove, but it's marked on the label as QC 38358, not TC 38358. Same barcode as well.

The record where Springsteen cements his reputation as one of the great american short story writers of the 20th century. At least one film has been based on a song from this album (Sean Penn's "The Indian Runner" based on "Highway Patrolman") and i believe that Alexander Payne's film "Nebraska" is partially inspired by the song "Used Cars." One can easily imagine screenplays based on "Atlantic City" and "Johnny 99" as well. How many other records can make this claim? The characters here are all flotsam on the shoulders and off ramps of any number of cold and unfeeling American interstates; some who have lost all purpose in life, some on the run, some hopeful, all of them desperate in Reagan america circa 1982. Springsteen closes the LP's most upbeat song "Open All Night" with the great line, "Hey Mr. DJ, won't you hear my last prayer, hey-ho rock 'n' roll deliver me from nowhere." It's this line that ties the entire record together (and perhaps even Springsteen's entire life) as its so much truer for these characters (and vicariously, ourselves) to believe in the delivering power of song than in most anything else the country had to offer at this time. He closes the album with the hopeful misdirection of "Reason To Believe." Nobody has found that particular "reason" yet, they just hope to find it. Maybe they will and maybe they won't and that's as much optimism this devastating record has to offer.

Album Nebraska was completely taken up by himself on a 4-track recorder and because he was too bad the studio versions, also published on LP and CD