Customer Rating:  
Summary: Does it suck?
Comment: This has been his lowest selling album of all his studio albums. It didnt even make it on to the top 10. It barely sold over 500,000 copies. It even has been nicknamed Nebraska 2. It also have been critized because on Nebraska, he did the recordings all by himself at his home on a 4-track recorder with his voice, a acoustic guitar and harmonica. On The GHost Of Tom Joad. He works in a nice studio with a backing band. It is mainly backed by acoustic guitars. The lyrics to many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in america and mexico.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The highway is alive tonight
Comment: I wonder if the reviewer XraySpex had listened to this CD? To write such a pathetic review...
This CD along with the GREAT "Nebraska" and the also magnific "Devils & Dust" completes a trilogy of great Springsteen records. My favourite tracks are: "The Ghost Of Tome Joad", "Straight Time", "Highway 29", "Sinaloa Cowboys", "Across The Border", "My Best Was Never Good Enough" and, especially, "Youngstown", with Soosie Tyrell on violin and Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar. I really do believe that "Youngstown" is one of the BEST Bruce's songs.
This proves - once again, once and for all - that Bruce Springsteen is one of the great American Ambassadors.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not his best, but good
Comment: Except for "Dry Lightning" and "My Best Wasn't Good Enough", I believe the songs on Springsteen's second acoustic record are very good.
The reason I give this four stars, however, is the production. If I was the producer, I would have turned up the mike for Bruce's vocals and I would have drastically cut down on the keyboard instrumentation. If he had only cut down - or, even better, cut out - the keyboards, we might understand his words better. Also, if you listen closely to the acoustic guitar work Bruce does, it is wonderful... only problem is... you guessed it: keyboard overkill.
Looking beyond the keyboard instrumentation and the two aformentioned songs, though, I still recommend this album as Bruce portrays a portion of the United States that we either do not see or choose not to see.
Like I said in the title of this review, this record is not his best, but it is good nonetheless.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Strong tales of America's new outcasts.
Comment: Tom Joad followed a short E-Street reunion for the greatest hits album. It is rumored that both Tom Joad and Youngstown were written with the E-Street in mind. These two songs are coincidentally the only two songs on the album that feature a strong melodic structure. This is immediately the biggest weakness of the album. Tom Joad was a small step up from Human Touch and Lucky Town for Springsteen, but still lacked the compelling quality of his earlier albums. Where Nebraska and Tunnel of Love, his first two "solo acoustic" outings, were characterized by strong R&R rhythms or lively melodies, the songs on Joad are more declamations.
The strength of this album lies not in the songs but in the lyrics and the issues they address. Once again Springsteen confronts us with a darker side of the American dream. The tales on Joad are the tales of those left behind. The title song refers to the Steinbeck Dustbowl novel Grapes of Wrath, even though Springsteen admits his source is more the Ford movie than the book. In the lyrics we find Springsteen paraphrasing the climax of the novel in which Tom Joad plans to go out and organize workers movements.
"Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me.""
This paraphrase sets the tone for the record. Over all the songs the Ghost of Tom Joad lurks. Be it either with the ex-convict unable to escape his past in Straight Time or the factory worker who feels more at home in "the blast furnaces of hell" in Youngstown, Tom Joad is there. Be it with the Mexican immigrants who get killed in an accident while chemically making cocaine or the New Timer leaving his family in a search for work, Joad watches over them like a patron saint. The album closes with a man's somber reminiscences of childhood rhymes and sayings.
"Remember, "A quitter never wins and a winner never quits"
"The sun don't shine on a sleepin' dog's ass"
And all the rest of that stuff
But for you my best was never good enough"
And that about sums it up for some of us.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 2nd Best from The Boss
Comment: I believe 'Nebraska' is Bruce Springsteen's best work, but this came close for me. It's just beautiful. I got to see him live in an accoustic set during this period and I was blown away by it.
I think you should buy this and 'Nebraska' and you'll be very pleased that you did!
Peace :o)
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