Springsteen Nashville Countdown Day 15: “Gypsy Biker”
You know things have gone seriously off the tracks when you have to ask for songs from the current album, but that’s where we sit at this point in the Magic World Tour. For reasons that surpass all understanding, Bruce has swapped his tour bus for a DeLorean and taken us back to fucking 1984.
On any given night, fans are likely to hear more songs from Born in the U.S.A. than they are Magic. I may be the only person in America who is unhappy about that but conveniently Confessions of a Fanboy is a dictatorship, not a democracy. 50,000 people can be wrong and I have this great web site to tell them exactly that (trust me when I say there are web sites that amplify the mindset of the majority).
“Gypsy Biker” is neither the title track nor was it a single (as if singles mean anything in the US anymore), but it is crucial to the themes at work on the album. The anguished vocal is engulfed in the flames of the E Street Band’s triple guitar attack – Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, and Nils Lofgren — and punctuated with blasts of despairing protest in the form of Dan Federici’s organ and Springsteen’s harmonica.
Anguish, despair, and blinding rage make this song an incredible album track and I can’t imagine that the passion and intensity on record won’t explode into something exponentially more powerful from the stage. “Gypsy Biker” has been consistently played throughout the tour but somehow gets periodically shelved when Bruce forgets this is 2008, not 1984. Please don’t let that happen in Nashville.
- The Countdown Begins
- Day 20: My City of Ruins
- Day 19: Born in the USA
- Day 18: Pink Cadillac
- Day 17: Glory Days
- Day 16: Human Touch
Filed under: Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Nashville Coundown
I’d rather hear ‘Magic’ than ‘BITUSA.’
I’d rather hear the original, acoustic “Born In The U.S.A..”
I’d like to hear that, Chico, but preferably on one of Bruce’s solo acoustic tours.