Woke up this morning feeling absolutely awful and haven't got much better as the days gone on, but it turned out to be a good day to take a sick day because today my copy of the brand new Bruce Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town boxset arrived in the mail.
Except when I got around to firing it up, it turned out my blu ray player decided it didn't want to work today. After a few hours of facebooking I finally got a friend to bring me over a new HDMI cable. Since that took me all day, I didn't get to start watching the blu rays included in the box set until around 9:30pm, it's now 11:00 pm and I just finished the first blu ray, a documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, which is titled: The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Regardless of the rave reviews I've read of this documentary from Springsteen fans as well as casual movie goers, I was kind of hesitant in getting too excited for this release due partially to the fact I wasn't the biggest fan of the previous Wings For Wheels documentary on Born to Run. Since this documentary had the same director and producer I figured it would be similiar. Also, I had listened to the outtakes album that's also included in this box set, and though it also received rave reviews, I could see why almost every song was an outtake, none of them were really mind blowing. Don't get me wrong, the songs are great, though the entire outtakes album feels like a whole bunch of b-sides strung together, aside from the song The Promise, none of the tracks really seemed like standout tracks. Even the alternate versions of songs that made it to the Darkness album are weaker than the album versions.
I was mistaken though. Now I may be biased since I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and Darkness is one of my favorite albums. But this documentary is really really great, and I can see how the casual movie goer or music fan would enjoy it as well.
First of all, I've gotta say that the entire package the box set comes in is amazing. The box set contains 3 cd's, and 3 dvd's or blu ray's. The first cd is a remastered version of the Darkness on the Edge of Town album, the second 2 cd's are an album of outtakes titled The Promise. The first dvd is the documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the second dvd is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing the entire Darkness on the Edge of Town album live at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park in 2009 without an audience (which I found kind of odd, seeing as they had played the album in its entirety a few times during the Working on a Dream tour, and the audience interaction has always been a big part of Springsteen concerts for me), also on the second dvd is various live and studio footage filmed between 1976 and 1978, the third dvd is an entire concert from the Darkness tour, filmed live in Houston in 1978 (this is the dvd I'm most excited to watch as bootlegs from this tour are my favorite and I've been dying to see a video of it). All 6 discs are layed within the pages of a 80 page coiled note book replicating one of the many note books Springsteen kept through out the time. The note book is filled with copies of actual notes Springsteen took during the Darkness sessions, it includes scribbled lyrics and album sequence lists, set lists, tons of pictures, copies of old posters, and a couple new essays written in the last year by Springsteen on the album.
The movie opens up with vintage black and white footage of Bruce in the studio trying to work out The Promised Land. This opening immediately lays out whats to be expected of this documentary. It captures the struggle and amount of work put into the album.
The movie is full of studio footage, as well as modern day interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Jon Landau, Mike Appel, Patti Scialfa, and more, including Danny Federici which goes to show how long this project has been in the works. Each person adds their own insight to the work spent in the studio at the time, and the creation process of the album, but heaven forbid anyone say one ill word about Springsteen. Even Mike Appel who was in a law suit with Bruce during the years between Born To Run and Darkness, has nothing but praise for the guy.
The thing I liked the most about this movie wasn't getting an inside look at the creation process of the album, though you do get a great idea of how much passion and work was put into the album, but the things I liked the most about this documentary were the vintage footage of not only the studio, but of family, and also when Bruce takes a step back from talking about the album to just talking about where he was in life at the time. There's one scene where he talks about how everyone has a dream of the adult life being a life without limits but as you get into it you realize that you have to make compromises on a nearly daily basis, and there's things you can't compromise without losing who you are. This is something I definitely, and I'm sure just about anyone, can relate to. Also, I love in the bootlegs of concerts from the Darkness tour, Bruce does a lot of personal story telling between songs, and there's plenty of that involved in this documentary.
If you're a Springsteen fan or not I would recommend checking this out, as to me it seems more like a documentary about growing up and putting so much of yourself into something in order to get life out of it than a documentary about the making of an album.
4.5/5
I'll write reviews of the rest of the box set as the week goes on.
No comments:
Post a Comment