{"id":37140,"date":"2022-10-15T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=37140"},"modified":"2023-01-03T08:43:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T16:43:39","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-its-a-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/15\/roll-of-the-dice-its-a-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: It’s a Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 28, 1977, Bruce Springsteen and former manager Mike Appel settled the mutual litigation that barred Springsteen from a recording studio for almost a year.\u00a0 Only four days later, Bruce and the E Street Band were back in the recording studio, recording eight songs that first night alone for what would eventually become\u00a0Darkness on the Edge of Town<\/em><\/a>. He was overflowing with material, arriving almost every day with new songs for the band to test drive.<\/p>\n

On June 14th, Bruce had the bones of a song he was eager to flesh out, but Max and Garry had yet to arrive. Unwilling to wait, he enlisted Jon Landau on drums and road manager Bob Chirmside on bass and led the E Street-ish Band through what the session log labeled as “Jon’s Jam.”<\/p>\n

It’s unclear whether Bruce had written any lyrics for it at the time; I suspect he hadn’t, or it would likely have had a more descriptive name. We don’t know for sure, because Bruce locked that unusual track away in the vault. More than three decades later, he dusted it off when searching for outtake candidates for The Promise<\/em>, his 2010 alternative album companion to\u00a0Darkness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of the tracks on The Promise<\/em> are vintage, some had some modern elements applied. “Jon’s Jam” arguably had the most work done to it: Bruce layered on a full horn section (featuring Barry Danielian, Stan Harrison, Dan Levine, Ed Manion, and Curt Ramm), supplied brand-new vocals (furthering my suspicion that none had been written back in the day), and renamed the song “It’s a Shame.”<\/p>\n