Thanks to Pete at Blogness and the fine folks at the Riverfront Times for the heads up on this interesting Springsteen tidbit.

Bruce fans are known for interesting ideas and ways to continually examine The Boss’s legacy over and over, particularly when The Man Himself is on tour.

Bruce fan JBev (who I think I recognize from my adventures over on the Stone Pony London message board,) currently is in the midst of dissecting 200 of his favorite Bruce songs for JamsBio, a project dubbed No Retreat, No Surrender.  Now, this ain’t no simple rundown of songs from top to bottom, oh no – JBev offers notes on each song on the list, something that will potentially further stoke the flames of debate regarding the songs that have been chosen.

Debate?  Hell yes, debate!  Apparently you haven’t spent much time with Springsteen fans if you’re surprised by this.

The inclusion of tracks from Working On A Dream might raise some eyebrows, and tracks by the “other band” from Human Touch/Lucky Town, will for sure generate more than a little discussion.

Negatives first: There’s no room on any list for a Springsteen song that has supermarket sounds and a corny title like “Queen of the Supermarket.”  Actually, that’s the song title exactly, and it’s crap.  Okay, without digging much deeper, I think I’m done with the negatives.

Positives: This list is a great road map for a young Springsteen fan, of some of the lesser traveled roads that one can take when veering away from the traditional stack of well-known Bruce hits.  And I like that JBev has the balls to put one of my absolute favorite Bruce tracks, “I Wish I Were Blind,” from Human Touch, all the way up at #37 on the list.

A snippet of JBev’s thoughts regarding “I Wish I Were Blind”:

The narrator can see all of the world’s beauty at his fingertips, but wishes his sight were stripped away when he sees his girl with someone new. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

I’m in the 1% of the Bruce fan population that liked the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.  A lot.  I attempted to put those feelings into a post about a year ago, that sat vacationing in draft status for quite a while, before I finally just deleted it.

As a young Springsteen fiend, I was beyond thrilled to hear that my hero would be putting out not one, but two new albums on the same day.  Some of Springsteen’s finest tracks are on the two albums, and each album paints a distinctly different story.  The title track for Lucky Town has been my song in times both good and bad, and it meant something different to me at each point.  Looking past the obvious tracks, some of my other favorite standouts are “The Long Goodbye,” “Cross My Heart,” and “All Or Nothin’ At All,” from Human Touch, and (randomly) the last three tracks – “Book of Dreams,” “Souls of the Departed,” and “My Beautiful Reward,” on Lucky Town.  These are tracks that I’ll put up against anything else in Bruce’s catalog.

Of the many Bruce-related lists and discussions that I’ve seen, JBev’s is one of the finest yet.  Head over to peruse the list, and listen to each track as well via streaming audio links for each tune!

The press caught up with Bruce and E. Street Band member Roy Bittan, to get their reaction to the list, and judging by the attached picture, I’d say they approve as well.