Don't Back Down: Bruce Springsteen's OTHER DIY record!

Well, I'll be damned if the Boss himself beats me to this. I just read this week about the release of the Tracks II: The Lost Albums box set that is set for the end of June. Judging from the track list there is definitely some unheard material on there that was never bootlegged and will be new to Springsteen fans. The one thing that definitely isn't new to devote followers of the Boss is the first disc, dubbed somewhat prosaically L.A. Garage Sessions '83. Considering that this was one of the most heavily bootlegged era of the Boss, almost everything on there looks like it was already out on boots before. I'm not sure about the track called "Black Mountain Ballad", but everything else definitely has shown up before. And, like any good Springsteenophile (sic?!), I have of course tried to put some of this material into album form. And before the Boss himself drops the motherlode, it's time I get these out before, as a sort of unoffical preview for the official release in a month and a half. 

Don't Back Down is one of the possible albums from the period that I came up with. These tracks are Springsteen toiling away in his home studio Thrill Hill West, somewhat still in the thrall of the downtrodden acoustic tales of Nebraska, while also discovering the joys of a drum machine and a synthesizer. The latter's introduction is especially noteworthy. 

The newly minted title song "Don't Back Down" is amazing, it sounds like Springsteen fronting Depeche Mode! That no doubt sounds like a total nightmare to old school Boss fans, but damn, if it isn't intriguing. The huge, insistant keyboard hook is fantastic, even if Boss fans of old would've probably had a huge amount of trouble accepting him as a synth rocker. Personally, I love it, and I say, bring on the synths, Bruce! (It also isn't clear whether this track will show up on Tracks II, because the Boss wrote an entirely different song - different melody, different lyrics - that is somehow also called "Don't Back Down", so we'll see which "Don't Back Down" won't back down!) "The Klansman", which - as you can imagine from the title -  has some interestig lyrics uses an almost identical synth melody. The other synth rock track is "One Love", again with a chunky keyboard rhythm and drum machine giving the Boss a synth rock makeover.  

The other thing still very much on Bruce's mind is rockabilly. Almost half of Don't Back Down is a rockabilly album, albeit a heavily synthesized one (and, maybe not coincidentally, at a time where ZZ Top were playing their heavily synthesized version of , erm, the Blues). Four tracks, "Betty Jean", "Little Girl Like You", "Sugarland" and "Seven Tears" are clearly influenced by rockabilly, synth-fitted for the 80s. This shows in the running times, with only "Betty Jean" and "Sugarland" (barely) cracking the two minute mark. The Boss was experiencing with rockabilly around the time of The River and had clearly not gotten it out of his system. Speaking of things not quite out of the system: "Richfield Whistle", Don't Back Down's first side album closer sounds like a track that could have fit on Nebraska, thus its placement. In my typical mirror fashion, the second album also ends acoustically and low key, first with the ballad version of "Fugitive's Dream" and then an acoustic reprise of "Don't Back Down". 

You can argue about which Springsteen material (and production choices) will stand the test of time, but I go out on a limb here and say that this DIY stuff - clunky keyboards, drum machine a-go-go et al - comes off better than some of the stuff Springsteen labored over endlessly in the studio. There is a freshness to it that simply can get 'played away' after one too many times in the recording studio. And what sounded rudimentary and garish in 1983 sounds almost charming when sets against the ultraprocessed sound that has crept into theBoss' albums in the last deaced and a half. 

Again, almost all of these tracks will be available officially and no doubt in better sounding versions than what I have here, but Don't Back Down might still have its tiny place at the table. L.A. Garage Sessions '83 with its 17 tracks doesn't sound like a real 'lost album' - and certainly not an album from 1983 - more like a rarities clearing house. The idea of Don't Back Down was to program these demos into something that would have the flow and feel of a real album. Which I hope I suceeded at, but let the public (yes, that's YOU!) be the judge of that. So, don't back down and bravely face Bruce, the one man band!