Sometimes you start with a title, and it leads you to a shoulda-been new wave classic.<\/p>\n
After the Darkness Tour ended, Bruce spent much of the first half of 1979 in his home studio writing and working out new material that would eventually lead to\u00a0The River<\/em>. Bruce would often record himself at work using an ordinary cassette recorder, and some of those early cassettes somehow escaped into the wild. (One can but wonder how.)<\/p>\n One of those early escapees reveals Bruce working on a song called “Take ’em as They Come,” but it’s not the song we know from\u00a0Tracks<\/em>. In fact, it’s not even a song at all–there are barely any lyrics. (Don’t try to strain yourself understanding what Bruce is singing–when he’s working on a melody, he often just “bluffs” the lyrics, mumbling, scatting, or just throwing out lines in a stream of consciousness.)<\/p>\n But it’s clear that Bruce was enamored by the phrase “take ’em as they come”–it’s pretty much the only thing we can make out clearly and repeatedly.<\/p>\n