Notes
Thirty-five years as a justifiable rock musician allows Bruce Springsteen an opinion on the state of over-the-air radio, and he takes it--and takes the medium to the woodshed on the ruthless "Radio Nowhere." The opening smash sets the tone, with the ageless Boss wondering, "Is there anybody out there?" before imploring, "I just want to hear some rhythm." Then, with E Street Band in tow, Springsteen goes on to retrace every step between here and Greetings from Asbury Park, hand-delivering more could-be, would-be hits than anything he's done since Born in the USA. Credit producer Brendan O'Brien for the wall of sound that backs "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," which sets the atmosphere for one of the great vocal performances by Springsteen, who plays the misfit "in the cool of the evening light" watching the girls "pass me by." With piano, glockenspiel, and infinite guitars, the rocker "I'll Work for Your Love" recalls The River, with Springsteen even settling for blue-collar hero in matters of the heart. "Livin' in the Future" could be an out-take from Darkness on the Edge of Town, with shades of Election Day blasting away with the boastful sax of Clarence Clemons and Little Steven's relentless backing vocals. There's even a hint of Nebraska on "Terry's Song," an earnest (and mostly solo) accolade with Springsteen acknowledging the death of a friend: "When they built you, brother/They broke the mold." The hidden track closes this unforeseen comeback, and for 48 minutes the nearly 60-year-old Bruce Springsteen sounds 35 again. --Scott Holter
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
