BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN : TRACKS

 

Disc One (67:41)

  1. Mary Queen of Arkansas
  2. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
  3. Growin' Up
  4. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
  5. Bishop Danced
  6. Santa Ana
  7. Seaside Bar Song
  8. Zero and Blind Terry
  9. Linda Let Me Be the One
  10. Thundercrack
  11. Rendezvous
  12. Give the Girl a Kiss
  13. Iceman
  14. Bring on the Night
  15. So Young and So in Love
  16. Hearts of Stone
  17. Don't Look Back

Disc 2 (62:50)

  1. Restless Nights
  2. A Good Man Is Hard to Find
  3. Roulette
  4. Doll House
  5. Where the Bands Are
  6. Loose Ends
  7. Living on the Edge of the World
  8. Wages of Sin
  9. Take 'Em as They Come
  10. Be True
  11. Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own
  12. I Wanna Be with You
  13. Mary Lou
  14. Stolen Car
  15. Born in the U.S.A.
  16. Johnny Bye Bye
  17. Shut Out the Light

Disc 3 (67:34)

  1. Cynthia
  2. My Love Will Not Let You Down
  3. This Hard Land
  4. Frankie
  5. TV Movie
  6. Stand on It
  7. Lion's Den
  8. Car Wash
  9. Rockaway the Days
  10. Brothers Under the Bridges ('83)
  11. Man at the Top
  12. Pink Cadillac
  13. Two for the Road
  14. Janey, Don't You Lose Heart
  15. When You Need Me
  16. The Wish
  17. The Honeymooners
  18. Lucky Man

Disc 4 (55:18)

  1. Leavin' Train
  2. Seven Angels
  3. Gave It a Name
  4. Sad Eyes
  5. My Lover Man
  6. Over the Rise
  7. When the Lights Go Out
  8. Loose Change
  9. Trouble in Paradise
  10. Happy
  11. Part Man, Part Monkey
  12. Goin' Cali
  13. Back in Your Arms
  14. Brothers Under the Bridge

Label : Columbia

Release Year : 1998

Review (AllMusic) : For years, decades even, Bruce Springteen was legendary for the amount of recordings he did not release. Every time he cut an album, he recorded a surplus of songs and left some out, not always on the basis of quality, but often because they simply didn't suit the mood of the record. It was inevitable that dedicated fans and collectors would bootleg these recordings, and for many years, he was one of the most popular bootlegged artists, rivaling even Bob Dylan. Dylan released a box set of unreleased songs in 1991, paving the way for the long-overdue appearance of a similar Springsteen set, Tracks, in 1998. Spanning four discs, it isn't entirely devoted to unreleased material -- a few B-sides pop up here and there -- nor is it truly definitive, since it misses a number of key outtakes, plus his original version of "Because the Night," the sole hit for Patti Smith. Instead, the compilation is an unassuming sampling of what's in the vaults, from his early acoustic demos to polished outtakes from Human Touch and Lucky Town. Along the way, there are a number of great songs -- "Bishop Danced" is every bit as terrific as its legend, as are "Thundercrack," "Give the Girl a Kiss," "Hearts of Stone," "Roulette," and many others. Tracks merely offers fans an enjoyably sequenced selection of what was left behind. If the end result isn't as revelatory as some may have expected (even the acoustic "Born in the U.S.A.," powerful as it is, doesn't sound different than you may have imagined it), it's because Springsteen is, at heart, a solid craftsman, not a blinding visionary like Dylan. That's why Tracks is for the dedicated fan, where The Bootleg Series or The Basement Tapes were flat-out essential for rock fans.

Review (Wikipedia) : Tracks is a four-disc box set by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1998 containing 66 songs. This box set mostly consists of never-before-released songs recorded during the sessions for his many albums, but also includes a number of heretofore unavailable single B-sides, as well as demos and alternate versions of already-released material. The collection starts with Springsteen's audition for John Hammond, the legendary producer who discovered Bob Dylan, and includes mainly unreleased material as well as rare B-sides. As the sleevenotes mention, Springsteen was in the habit of producing albums that were thematically linked even if they were not strictly concept albums; so some tracks that "didn't fit" the theme of the album ended up orphaned. The four-disc box set was later condensed into an album called 18 Tracks. A few of the unreleased tracks received fairly regular appearances on the 1999-2000 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour. These included "My Love Will Not Let You Down", "I Wanna Be With You" (which had peaked out a #33 appearance on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart), and "Where the Bands Are".