Friday, July 4, 2025

Love That Album Bonus Episode - Episode 1 Redux - Bruce Springsteen "Wild Innocent" vs "Darkness"

 


In July 2011 (14 years ago as I write this), I recorded episode 1 of Love That Album podcast. The period wasn't ground zero for podcasts, but it was still early days, and people were still asking, “What's a podcast?” At the time, there seemed to be very little in the way of music discussion shows, so I decided to create one of my own to talk about music in the same way film podcasters of the time that I enjoyed discussed films.

So.....ahh....welcome to episode 1 of Love That Album – Redux.


I asked Melbourne music journalist Jeff Jenkins to join me, and we had a debate over which was the better Bruce Springsteen album: The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle or Darkness On The Edge of Town. Lengthy and poetic songs versus short and concise ones. I thought the conversation was good, but I didn't even use a proper microphone, so the sound quality was awful. I used the laptop mic and we had all the ambient noise of the room. I didn't do any editing to speak of. It's a mess.


BUT I enjoyed the conversation and the process of podcasting. It meant that I had a regular means of speaking to interesting people about music...something I didn't have in my daily life – at least not to the extent I wanted.


So, here we are in the mess of planet Earth in 2025. In recent times, software has been developed to clean up audio in a way we couldn't imagine. It's not just available for the likes of Peter Jackson. I had the idea to see what would happen if I ran episode 1 through the software....and to my amazement, Jeff and I sounded like we were in a proper studio with decent mics. So, following that revelation, I decided to re-edit the retuned show in the same fashion I've been doing over the last few years, and put it out there for you to listen to.


I thought for 5 minutes of going back to all the early episodes whose editing and sound quality grate on my nerves, but my son convinced me otherwise. He said, “don't do a George Lucas....the show evolved, and you don't want to deny its history”. I thought about it and realised he was 100% right. So what you have here is one of two episodes I'm giving the cleaning-up treatment to (the other one will be out sometime later this year).....everything otherwise stays up as it is – even the original episode 1. This is here just as an exercise on what the start could have been in 2011. Podcasting was still the domain of mostly people like me with the passion to present ideas, but without any ideas as to how to present them. I'm proud of how it started and where the show has gone. Tune in if you've never heard the episode before....or even if you have and felt pity for my approach.


If you’ve been enjoying the show, please consider giving us a favourable review on iTunes and let your friends know that our show exists. If you don't enjoy the show, tell your adversaries to tune in. We don't care who listens.....


Love That Album is proudly part of the Pantheon Network of music podcasts. Check out all the other wonderful shows at http://pantheonpodcasts.com


You can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3 voicemail) or join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/lovethatalbum


You can download the show by searching for Love That Album on whatever podcast app you favour (except Spotify).


Download Bonus: Episode 1 Redux from here