Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska & The Del Fuegos - Boston, Mass.
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska & The Del Fuegos - Boston, Mass.
Now seems like a good time to add to the deluge of attention on Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska. There's no need to go over the backstory on this one -- it's well documented -- more on that shortly. Instead we'll share some fragments of thoughts on this absolute Digs favorite.
This is a scary collection of songs. Not horror movie scary, but real life scary. Springsteen whispers and howls to deliver his bleak picture of Reagan's America. The working-class characters lack the romanticism of his earlier work. These souls live in isolation and desperation. There is violence, often absent of remorse. And, The Boss never let's you off the hook.
If you can, go for drive at night -- alone or with a passenger that is complicit -- preferably out in the sticks and don't say a word, just listen.
Brothers Dan and Warren Zanes put out a few albums in the mid to late 1980s with their band The Del Fuegos. Their sound was straight ahead Rock and Roll via the Garage. They could be thought of as the East Coast's version of The Replacements and that might be accurate.
Boston, Mass. came out in 1985 and it's filled with songs about broken hearts, cars and blue-collar blues. And broken hearts. The songs are earnest and memorable with lines like:
The car we bought together just started to rust
The world we made came between the two of us
And I
still
want
you
Forty years on and it still holds up. We hope you give it a listen.
But what happened after The Del Fuegos ended in '89 is just as important.
Brother Dan went on to make popular and Grammy award-winning albums of children's music.
Brother Warren went on to get a Ph. D. in Visual and Cultural studies. He became Vice President of Education and Public Programs for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
And he became an author. After acclaimed books on Dusty Springfield, Tom Petty and Warner Brothers Records, in 2023, Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska came out. Written with cooperation from Springsteen, Zanes examines, in great detail, the personal and professional events that led to Nebraska, the recording and aftermath. You can, right now, see an adaptation of Zanes' book in a theater near you, starring Jeremy Allen White. Yes, Chef.
Both Nebraska and Boston, Mass. are available in the Daily Digs Vintage Vinyl Department at Umbrella Vintage until they are not.