We continue our stroll down E Street with our hero one day closer to departing for Missouri to witness the E Street Band on back-to-back nights in St. Louis and Kansas City. We've unveiled the 20 songs he most wants to hear that he's not heard in his four previous E Street Band concerts. We've covered the three songs from that list he's guaranteed to get by virtue of Springsteen's announced intention to play Born To Run in St. Louis and Born in the U.S.A. in Kansas City. So, what have we for today? A wing and a prayer, is what.
One of the songs on that list we haven't chatted up yet is "Thundercrack." Many of you won't know it. It's not on an official Springsteen album but was played extensively in the early days of the band and was finally officially released on the archival set Tracks a few years ago.
I listened to all four CDs on Tracks one day last week and was especially drawn to the first disc of the four. For a large segment of Camp Springsteen, his first four records are gold standards and the first two are held in especially high regard. Fans of Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle are going to be predisposed to loving that first disc because these are the songs that could have been, the songs that could have been on either of those records and there were some great ones that didn't make the final cut. If Columbia hadn't been giving Bruce the heebie jeebies he'd be dropped from the label if he didn't start selling some records, many of these might have made up Bruce's third record rather than what we now know as Born to Run. Things worked out okay for him, but it's crazy to think a stack of songs this great could sit in the vaults for 30 years waiting to be heard from again. "Thundercrack" might be the best of that bunch. It's certainly one of my favorites.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
soooo great live. i could hardly believe my ears at that Magic show.
2 - LOOSINSTLOU
There's a great live version of 'Thundercrack' from a 1973 L.A. show in the making of born to run DVD. Not only a show stopper, but somewhat hilarious.
3 - eddie
i've seen thundercrack a couple of times, it is a showstopper and in philly the other night it was a showstarter!