Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

New Music Monday: Bruce Springsteen

TTB artBorn to Run may have celebrated the 40th anniversary of its release this year, but it was a different Bruce Springsteen record that saw a box set released in its honor in 2015: The River. Titled The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, the set contains a wealth of content, including (deep breath): a remastered version of the original double album, the collection of songs that comprised Springsteen’s scrapped initial version of the album, outtakes from the recording of The River, songs that were dropped from the final tracklist, a documentary about the making of the album, two and half hours of concert footage from the 1980 tour, and footage of Springsteen and the E-Street Band rehearsing for that tour. All in all, The Ties That Bind has 52 tracks and four hours of video, not to mention a hefty coffee table book. Suffice to say, it’s quite the package.

Originally released in 1980, The River was Springsteen’s followup to Darkness on the Edge of Town, and in many ways the record came out of its predecessor. After finishing Darkness, Springsteen found that he had more to say about the themes he had addressed on the album. There were tracks that did not fit on Darkness for one reason or another, but which still needed to see the light of day. Those songs would eventually become part of the The Ties That Bind, Springsteen’s initial (but unreleased) take on The RiverThe Ties That Behind, however, was not what Springsteen wanted for his followup to Darkness. As the artist himself noted, “Originally [The River] was a single record. I handed it in with just one record, and I took it back because I didn’t feel it was big enough. I wanted to capture the themes I had been writing about on Darkness. I wanted to keep those characters with me and at the same time added music that made our live shows so much fun and joy for our audience.”

Bruce Springsteen - Out In the Street (The River Tour, Tempe 1980)

Springsteen spent another year writing and recording The River, adding that music to make his live show exciting. The decision proved a wise one; the record cleverly moves from barn-burning anthems to darker songs dealing with the realities of life in the working class. The combination, which in less skilled hands might have simply been jarring, instead sets a deliberately ambivalent tone that complements The River‘s themes.

Bruce Springsteen - The River (The River Tour, Tempe 1980)

Given its sheer volume of content, The River Collection presents itself as one for diehards only, but casual fans should not be intimidated by its length. The addition of The Ties That Bind provides something of an introduction to the themes and songs on The River, and the outtakes are excellent tracks in their own right, rather than leftovers dished out for hardcore fans. The River Collection gathers just about all it can from the years Springsteen worked on The River not for its own sake, but because the material from that time period is worth collecting.

Bruce Springsteen - Party Lights (The River: Outtakes) [Lyric]

Bruce Springsteen’s The Ties That Bind: The River Collection is out now on Columbia Records and available on Amazon and iTunes.

Terence Praet
Terence Praet contributes to The Manual’s New Music Monday column. He studied Philosophy and History at Skidmore College…
Tony Soprano vs. Walter White: Who is the ultimate antihero?
TV's biggest heavyweights duke it out for the antihero crown
Breaking bad season 4 screen shot

Sports fans often debate between two heavyweight legends. For basketball, it's LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Switching to tennis, you have Roger Federer fans and Rafael Nadal diehards. Debates like these are ingrained in the culture of athletics, but TV fans have their own version of this sparring match.

Tony Soprano from The Sopranos and Walter White from Breaking Bad are the two characters who still send shockwaves through every drama in the 21st century. These men were the perfect mix of good and evil. They navigated family life and the criminal underworld with cunning intelligence and ruthless risk-taking. Every show with morally gray characters at the center owes its storyboard to Walter and Tony, but which character deserves the antihero crown? This is Tony Soprano vs. Walter White for all the marbles.
Who was the more complex character?

Read more
Learn how to smoke a pipe the proper way with our guide for beginners
Let us show you the classy way to smoke a pipe
Packing a pipe

Pipe smoking is the most aesthetically distinguished way to enjoy tobacco, but you lose the classy effect if you don’t know how to smoke a pipe properly. Smoking a pipe has become a lost art, and these days, most people who engage in pipe smoking do so to achieve a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps your grandfather enjoyed a puff now and again paired with a good stiff whiskey, or maybe your goal is to emulate a pipe-smoking artist.

I know that I enjoy a good puff on a pipe now and then, and knowing the right way to enjoy a pipe has made the experience much more pleasurable for for me. Whatever the case, if you intend to take up the time-honored tradition of unwinding with a pipe like me, you should learn how to smoke a pipe the right way. And smoking a pipe is very different than smoking a cigar (except you shouldn't be inhaling either).

Read more
Don’t ruin your cigars: here’s how to properly season a new humidor
Seasoning secrets every cigar lover could use
faceless man presenting a cigar humidor with cigars inside with gloved hands

If you're a newcomer to the world of cigars or just bought a brand-new humidor, you'll need to season it. And no, I'm not saying to add salt and pepper to it. If you've never heard of it, you might ask, "What is seasoning for a humidor?"

Don't think you need to flavor the box or anything — seasoning is really about getting the wood inside your humidor so as not to rob your cigars of precious moisture. Easy to understand, and getting it done is relatively straightforward as well. The trick is figuring out the "why," and we'll get into that in a bit. But let's first discuss seasoning a humidor.

Read more