BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD - NM/MINT - VINYL LP

	£		82
	$		109

The LP cover is in  NM/MINT condition. no problems, it still has the shrink wrap on, the inner picture/credits/lyric sleeve is also in NM/MINT condition. folded insert NM/MINT, the LP is kept in a brand new poly lined sleeve.

The vinyl itself is in NM/MINT condition. no problems, it has only been played once or twice at the most.

If you need anymore information and pictures please get in touch, thanks.

Sorry if the shipping charges seem a bit high, the reason being i use heavy/strong packaging and the high cost of the Royal Mail price structure

THIS IS AS GOOD EXAMPLE OF WELL LOOKED AFTER OLD SINGLE RECORD

Full track list

Side One

 1."The Ghost of Tom Joad" – 4:23
 2."Straight Time" – 3:25
 3."Highway 29" – 3:39
 4."Youngstown" – 3:52
 5."Sinaloa Cowboys" – 3:51
 6."The Line" – 5:141 .

Side Two

 7."Balboa Park" – 3:19
 8."Dry Lightning" – 3:30
 9."The New Timer" – 5:45
 10."Across the Border" – 5:24
 11."Galveston Bay" – 5:04
 12."My Best Was Never Good Enough" – 2:00 .
 .

All songs were written by Bruce Springsteen.

The Band

 Bruce Springsteen – guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals, producer
 Danny Federici – accordion, keyboards
 Gary Mallaber – drums
 Garry Tallent – bass
 Jim Hanson – bass
 Marty Rifkin - pedal steel guitar
 Soozie Tyrell – violin, background vocals
 Lisa Lowell - background vocals
 Patti Scialfa – background vocals . 

The Ghost of Tom Joad is the eleventh studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1995 (see 1995 in music). The album was recorded and mixed at Thrill Hill during the spring and summer of 1995. Musically and lyrically reminiscent of Springsteen's 1982 critically acclaimed album Nebraska.

Reception and composition
 
The Ghost of Tom Joad received mostly favorable reviews. Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone called it "Springsteen's best album in ten years," and considered it "among the bravest work that anyone has given us this decade." However, it reached only #11 on the Billboard 200, breaking a string of eight consecutive Top 5 studio albums in the U.S for Springsteen.
 
The album is mainly backed by acoustic guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. Tom Joad is the protagonist of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Springsteen has commented that he was first inspired by John Ford's film of the novel.
 
The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995–1997 and consisted of mostly small venues.
 
Album themes
 
"The Ghost of Tom Joad" recalls the minimalist production and instrumentation of "Nebraska (album)" (although it does include a small backing band on several tracks, where "Nebraska" featured only Springsteen). It also recalls the album's dark stories of desperate and sometimes violent characters fighting for survival in America. The title track serves as the album's centerpiece, expressing the search for resilience during hard times ("The highway is alive tonight/But where its headed everybody knows/I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light/searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad," the chorus goes.) "Youngstown (song)" and "Galveston Bay" recall Springsteen's previous work from "Born in the U.S.A." with references to Factory Life and Vietnam War veterans. On tracks like "Across the Border," and "Sinaloa Cowboys," he sings about the plight of Mexican Immigrants and their search for a better life in the U.S. More than any other songs on the album, "The New Timer" recalls the starkness of "Nebraska." It shares melodic similarities with that album's title track and follows a desperate worker during the Great Depression whose partner is killed by "somebody killing just to kill." The song ends with the austere lines "My Jesus your gracious love and mercy/Tonight I'm sorry could not fill my heart/Like one good rifle/And the name of who I ought to kill." The album concludes with "My Best Was Never Good Enough," which bears no explicit link to the themes on the rest of the album. The song includes Springsteen's take on popular sayings such as: "'Now life's like a box of chocolates,/You never know what you're going to get'/'Stupid is as stupid does and all the rest of that shit,'" (an obvious reference to "Forrest Gump.") However, this song can be seen as the desperate characters from the previous tracks on the album expressing their frustration that their "best was never good enough" (as the song's refrain goes).

ROLLING STONE REVIEW
By Mikal Gilmore
December 28, 1995

Bruce Springsteen's best music has always been about the refusal to accept life's meanest fates or most painful limitations. Springsteen charges his audience to remain brave, despite all the disillusion, defeat, injustice and fear that invariably dog the pursuit of ones hopes. For more than twenty years now, Springsteen's music has worked as a cry of courage, an emboldening reassurance that life, no matter how closefisted it many seem, is worth keeping faith in. The Ghost of Tom Joad tells a different story — or at least it looks at the story through different eyes. It's a record about people who do not abide by life's ruins; it's a collection of dark tales about dark men who are cut off from the purposes of their own hearts and the prospects of their own lives. On this album almost none of the characters get out with both their bodies and spirits intact, and the few who do are usually left with only frightful desolate prayers as their solace.

Plaintive, bitter epiphanies, like these are far removed from the sort anthemic cries that once filled Springsteen's music, but then these are not times for anthems. These are times for lamentations, for measuring how much of the American promise has been broken or abandoned and how much of our future is transfigured into a vista of ruin. These are pitiless times.

The Ghost of Tom Joad is Springsteen's response to this state of affairs. Maybe even his return to arms. In any event, this is his first overtly social statement since Born in the U.S.A.. The atmosphere created is as merciless in its own way as the world the lyrics describe, and you will have to meet or reject that atmosphere on your own terms. I'm convinced it's Springsteen's best album in ten years, and I also think it's among the bravest work that anyone has given us this decade. Tom Joad bears an obvious kinship with Spingsteen's 1982 masterwork, Nebraska. The musical backing is largely acoustic, and the sense of language and storytelling owes much to the Depression-era sensibility of Woody Guthrie. The stories are told bluntly and sparsely, and the poetry is broken and colloquial — like the speech of a man telling the stories he feels compelled to tell if only to try to be free of them. On Tom Joad, there are few escapes and almost no musical relief from the numbing circumstances of the characters' lives. You could almost say that the music gets caught in meandering motions or drifts into circles that never break. The effect is brilliant and lovely; there's something almost lulling in the music's blend of acoustic arpeggios and moody keyboard textures, something that lures you into the melodies' dark dreaminess and loose mellifluence. But makes no mistake — what you are being drawn into are scenarios of hell. American hell.

On the title track, a man sits by a campfire under a bridge, not far from the endless railroad tracks. He is waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. But hopes of salvation in the mid-1990s aren't really much more palpable that ghosts, and you understand that the man sitting and praying by the fire will wait a long time before his deliverance comes. On "Straight Times," an ex-con takes a job, marries and tries to live the sanctioned life. But the world's judgements are never far off (even his wife watches him carefully with their children) and he waits for the time when he will slip back into the violent breach that he sees as his destiny and only hope.

The most affecting stories here, though, are the ones that Springsteen tells about a handful of undocumented immigrants and their passage into Southern California's promised land. On "The Line" (an achingly beautiful song with a melody reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit), "Sinaloa Cowboys" and "Balboa Park," Springsteen creates characters who come to their fates quickly without warning or drama. In one moment their "undocumented" lives are over, and the world takes no note of their passing or shot hopes.

By climbing into their hearts and minds, Springsteen has given voice to people who rarely have one in this culture. And giving voice to people who are typically denied expression in our other arts and media has always been one of rock & roll's most important virtues. As we move into the rough times and badlands that lie ahead, such acts will count for more than ever before.

REVIEW
Given the state of the economy it seems appropriate to review The Ghost Of Tom Joad. 

The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes Of Wrath, set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen “The Ballad Of Tom Joad.” In late 1995, inspired by these sources, Bruce Springsteen presented his own modern day interpretation of the themes surrounding this character. 

The Ghost Of Tom Joad is essentially a modern day folk album exploring the underbelly of society. The stories of the homeless, destitute, lost, and forgotten are told with themes of social repression and indifference confronting the listener with stark images and messages. While this album has been compared to Nebraska, I find that the characters here exhibit a resilience that those of Nebraska lack, suggesting a possibility of hope. 

The lyrics are the most important component of this release. I have always found it interesting that despite the fact that Springsteen is a huge, wealthy star, he can plumb the depths of the American working class soul so well. This is definitely an album that needs to be listened to closely, something that is all too rare these days. The title track especially is really a visionary creation. It's a real indication of Springsteen’s genius that he would think to use Steinbeck as a unifying theme in the creation of an album.
 
“Highway 29” is a moody, eerie tale of life gone terribly wrong. “The Line” may be the most emotional track on the album as it deals with the topics of poverty and desperation. “Youngstown” returns Springsteen to the factory with a tale of war veterans and depression. The darkest and most unforgiving song is “Balboa Park” dealing with drugs and the selling of one's self. 

The Ghost Of Tom Joad is a brilliant creation from the mind of Bruce Springsteen. It marked another in a long line of surprising turns in his recording career. His continued ability to resonate with the public while maintaining artistic integrity has been rare in rock history. This is an album that will pull you in and stay with you .

Thanks for taking the time to look at this auction

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