Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Album: Magic

Reviewer: Theon Weber

Stylus, 2007

Writing Disorders: Purple Hemorrhage

Most Emo Phrase: “But magic tricks are so thin and fragile-let the light touch them the wrong way and the audience won’t even understand what they were meant to be.”

Dollar Words: métier, tropes, eschews, unuttered

Theon, you don’t start well. I suppose thirty or so dudes who wear women’s jeans won’t count themselves among the snubbed, but you don’t exactly reel in the readers with your intro.

“Cliché is Bruce Springsteen’s métier.”

Ok, I understand that the common cretin can’t pierce the nuances of music like you can, but can you at least START your review with something that doesn’t require a French dictionary to decipher?

“The Boss has always understood the diners and motorcycles and dotted yellow lines that others who cram them into verse have heads stuffed too full of tarot, dharma, and Zarathustra to really touch.”

This is your second sentence. You managed to appeal to the Springsteen-wise psychic, Hindu, and Nietzsche-reading audience. Way to go. The rest of us have no clue what the hell you’re getting at.

And onward came the scorn. Here’s my favorite:

“but a second later the song’s just words and fuzz and 4/4″

Dude, most rock music is 4/4 or 3/4. Deal with it. When a band writes a song in 7/4, that doesn’t automatically make it vastly superior to a song in 4 bar blues. It’s just that some bands say “I don’t want to sound like Dream Theater.” I understand you like to tout your knowledge of time signatures. In other reviews maybe you mention modes. But it’s a dumb argument to say that anything in old fashioned blues or country is SOoooOOOoooOOO passe. You use a dumb argument.

Yet, Theon, all of this is really small in comparison to something I discovered about your writing. Here’s an example I yanked from your review to illustrate.

“Other tracks sound like piles of debris, gathered-up mounds of roadside weeds, this from Route 61 and this from the 405 and this from Bruce’s driveway, and if those have nothing in common save asphalt that’s the only thing these songs manage to describe.”

Let’s keep what you wrote and just alter the formatting, shall we?

“Other tracks

Sound like piles of debris,

Gathered up mounds of roadside weeds;

This from Route 61,

And this from the 405,

And this from Bruce’s driveway.

And if those have nothing in common -

Save asphalt -

That’s the only thing

These songs manage to describe.”

See what happened there? I turned your metaphor-heavy, long-ass sentence into verse simply by changing the formatting and punctuation. You write in verse. Whether or not you want to admit it, you’re a poet at your core. Bard. Funny that you give another dude’s verse a rating of decent (C). Really, it’s funny. Because yours is TEE HEE.

You should send the Boss your writing. Bard.

Tags: Purple Hemorrhage