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Greetings From Asbury Park NJ doesn't sound like anything Bruce Springsteen ever released afterward. The most obvious example being the excessive word count, it's as if the Boss was getting paid by the word and he needed extra cash. From the starting gate the listener is hit with a barrage of metaphorical indicators as "Blinded by the Light" dares him to absorb it in one hearing, an impossibility, mind you. Who would think, looking back at the context of the man's styellar career, that the first words he would record for the world to hear of him would be "Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat". Hell, this is too much like a Dylan nut, hard to crack but the meat makes it all worth it. If you can get to that meat, of course. It's not the only song that will send you screaming for a copy of Roget's thesaurus; "Growin' Up", "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City", "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?" and "For You" all alternately benefit and/or suffer from this technique of almost Dickensian descriptive songcraft. But it's when he settles in with intimate ballads that you really start to get a feel for his capability. Songs like "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" and "The Angel" are haunting, finding beauty in places where one might not think it could be found. "Spirit in the Night" introduces us to some of the earliest inhabitants of Springsteen's fictional Asbury Park crew. Crazy Janey, Wild Billy and his friend G-Man. Hazy Davy and Killer Joe take a trip to the beach with a bottle of red and countless raging hormones. Then there is the record's masterpiece, the intense and epic "Lost in the Flood". A sobering examination of Justice, it follows the experience of a veteran freshly returned from the war and his eventual downfall in a shootout in the streets. There is a jazz tint to the swing in most of these songs and whether or not he ever wanted to do that again, for some reason he never really did. As soon as his next album the musical template had changed and grown by leaps and bound. By the time the fourth album came around he had almost completely changed his narrative voice to utilize a more Midwestern approach as opposed to the New Jersey cliches. Greetings demands more of the listener, much in the same way as Dylan's more complex poetic songs do. But it delivers to those who choose to look deeper (and thumb through those Webster's dictionaries).

In 1970 when this album came out I was only eight years old and my journey into the world of music as escapism had only just begun. Old enough to recognize the genius of the Beatles yet young enough to believe that a family of six, all of whom just happen to be musicians, would put together a soft-rock band, buy an old school bus, paint it with a modern motif of colorful squares with their band's name emblazoned across the sides and tour the country, one assumes, during the summer months. It was the Partridge Family and perhaps it's a sign of the times that when they hit the airwaves I was powerless to resist the attractions of Susan Dey...nowadays it's Shirley Jones who is looking good to me. Seriously, she is one hell of a good looking woman. Yes, I watched the Partridge Family every week. I though Keith was cool but Danny got on my nerves. I liked the original drummer, Jeremy, better than his early-run replacement Chris and mainly because Jeremy had better hair. Susan Dey was a teen angel if ever I saw one (as alluded to above). Then there was the little bashful Shirley Temple-esque figure, the youngest Partridge, Tracy, holding down the fort in the songs for which a tambourine is required.

I repeat, I was only 8 years old so I can be forgiven for thinking that the actors who played the roles were also responsible for the songs they were playing and singing. In reality, and as everyone who cares already knows, only David Cassidy and Shirley Jones appeared on the record they released as "The Partridge Family Album". I guess I was the perfect age to buy into the whole thing to the greatest extent possible without coming out the other end looking like a fool.

As for "The Partridge Family Album"...look at all the other stuff I've just written about as useless backstory. Hearing the first Partridges album is every bit the revelatory sugary-sweet soft pop/rock offering as you will likely find from the Grass Roots, the Osmonds, the Lovin' Spoonful, Bread or any other purveyor of bubble gum flavored popular music. The hit "I Think I Love You", like the rest of the album, has aged very well but the highlight for me has always been "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat". I'm sure I loved every one of these songs when they were brand new, especially "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque" and the lush "group vocal" showcase "I Really Want to Know You". Subsequent albums contained their fare share of gems but none were as consistently entertaining as this first one.