Sounds like you are judging a restaurant without tasting the food. Sounds like you haven’t seen the E Street Band in person.
correct-- I haven’t seen the E Street Band in person nor would I (and I go to a lot of shows. then and now). I don’t like the music, so why see them in concert? When I was in high school and college (mid 70s/early 80s) I had many friends that would see Bruce and band every night (in a row) when he was in town. They loved him. I don’t.
So many (otherwise sensible) rock fans I know don’t like Bruce, Dylan, Billy Joel that much. They’re like cilantro is to some people.
FWIW, I couldn’t live without any of them.
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Warrior: They all have lots of great songs but no great album, with the exception of Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks. Yes, I know, this is by no means a consensus opinion.
It’s true. Sitting through a Billy Joel or current day Dylan set sounds awful to me. And I wouldn’t want to see Springsteen either, unless he was playing Ghost of Tom Joad in full, as that’s his only stuff I’ve ever connected with. They’re amazing artists and due a lot of credit/respect, but it’s the cilantro effect.
I could see Lodge Bread being a bit like that for some people, although you’ve got to respect the craft and what they’re doing, appreciating it might just not be in line with your particular tastes in bread.
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I can’t do that either (in concert), but I do love listening (even his new) his record(s).
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Hate to say-- but I’d put Billy on the dislike list as well. I never need to hear “The Stranger” album ever again since everybody had that in my high school and it got played into the ground (along with Frampton Comes Alive, Rumors, Born To Run, Tommy, Hotel California, etc). The 70s seem to be still with us for some reason.
I’ll listen to any Dylan album from Blood on the Tracks and earlier. But really, I probably don’t need to listen to Dylan that often any longer either. One of my dearest friends saw Dylan go electric at Newport Folk Festival— he said it was mind blowing.
Bob Dylan . Same as Jerry Garcia. Ho hum .
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Maybe time to request a spin-off thread from this bread thread (itself a spin-off thread): Musical Hot Takes (on the Not About Food Board)? Will flag myself for Mod to decide.
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To get back to food, I once saw Bruce, Patti and their young son at Ivy at the Shore. They seemed to enjoy their time there.
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Hah! I thought east coaster, @LAgirl was joking about Springsteen! I thought we were doing music hot takes - jokingly dissing greats as a response to @BringYourBrunch’s silly “sucks” & “overrated” comments. 
So fa’ real tho’…
I appreciate Springsteen’s music and love Tunnel of Love but that’s about it which makes me not much of a fan. But I totally get why others love him and the E Street Band.
Billy Joel’s music makes me extremely happy.
I like Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and love Sweetheart Like You. But in general I kinda don’t get him. 
Don’t get me started on my love of 70s R&B bands… We’ll be here all day. I’m a 70s baby! 
lol— nope, really don’t like Springsteen. I find him to be completely irritating.
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Lol, I do to sometimes but I feel like it’s against the law.
Jerry Garcia on the Grateful Dead:
We’re like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.
I really like licorice!
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Not a deadhead but love Ripple and Truckin’.
I saw them perform in Vegas. It was like an acid trip just watching tie-dyed deadheads hanging out on the Strip.
Lucky me I was heavily into Rock throughout the 60s, 70s and early 80s and saw live performances of groups like Fleetwood Mac (twice), Bruce Springsteen (twice), Neil Diamond, John Cougar (Mellencamp), etc, etc… in their prime. (Not in the first five rows, though.) I don’t much care for most of them now that they’re “geezers” like me. Just ain’t the same.
It makes me angry that I spent my late tween-early teen years liking him, not realizing how desperately schticky his ‘working class hero’ thing was.
“Still Rock 'n Roll to Me”
It was never rock 'n roll to him. It was a broadway version of rock, without Meatloaf’s middle finger or Jim Steinman’s sense of camp. It was ‘regular guy’ music for folks that thought Springsteen or Bob Seger were too bombastic.
In the dad-rock pantheon, I am Stones over Doors, Beatles (mostly) over Stones, Zepplin (mostly) over Beatles. Lots of play in those last two.
Seger over Joel. Springsteen over Seger. Petty over Springsteen.
Eagles over Credence. I know this is a bad take. I don’t care. Credence is too twangy for me.
Rush = Genesis, in more or less each stage of their career (i.e. their later stuff is all… less than great)
Under the neo-dad-rock category:
Nirvana > Pearl Jam > Soundgarden. I recognize others will rank this very differently. Nirvana wins simply because they never had time to put our anything truly mediocre
I will take early (best) Foo Fighters over most of Soundgarden.
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In that category it’s WILCO for sure all day, every day
Bruce Springsteen’s live concerts in “his day” were power jams of enormous intensity from start to finish. And his performances were very, very long, more than anyone else. Every time you thought he was done for the night, he’d go into another energy burst. The crowds were great and reacted ecstatically, no matter how late it got. If you never saw one of his concerts live, I can understand your impressions. Not reproducible electronically.
Same for Fleetwood Mac. Stunning, gorgeous live performances, if not power jams. Which is why I went to Springsteen and FM concerts twice.
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Oh, I have long heard the tales. Two of my college roomies ('86-'90) were huge Springsteen fans, which, I think, is part of the reason I never got into him. I, like a lot of his fans, radically misinterpreted a lot of his stuff, especially through the 80’s Born in the USA Reagan era. We mistook his big sound and anthemic melodies as patriotic and positive and sunny and maybe even a little jingoistic. And thanks to his famously poor ennunciation (he’s up there with Stipe, Dylan, and Petty in the mush-mouth hall of fame) we could barely register that the songs were anything BUT. Hence, topsider-wearing, sweater-over-the-shoulders types had Bruce’s jean clad ass on their dorm walls, while mopey black-clad types like me sneered at anything in a major key and tried to see if turning up Husker Du any louder made the distortion clear up. It did not.
Now, in my dottage, I appreciate Bruce a lot more. But I excluded it from my personal youthful soundtrack, so it will never hit me quite the same way as someone who was into it back in the day.
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