Stealing Fire [Extra tracks] [Original recording remastered]

Product Description
With 1984's Stealing Fire, Bruce Cockburn's words and music took on a greater urgency than ever before. The previous year, he made his first trip to Central America on behalf of the international development group OXFAM. While in southern Mexico, he visited a refugee camp that had recently been attacked by the helicopters of the U.S.-backed Guatemalan Army. The horrific experience sparked the anger-filled "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," a song which brought him unprecedented attention--garnering heavy radio airplay and regular video rotation on MTV. Stealing Fire is full of many of Cockburn's most powerful political songs, yet it boasts some of his most romantic numbers as well. From "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" to "Making Contact," whether issuing calls to action or cries for help, Bruce Cockburn's poetry demands attention. Upon its release Stealing Fire immediately staked a claim as one of the most compelling albums by any singer-songwriter in the 1980s. Nearly twenty years later, the album's impact isy remastered for CD, features Leon Redbone in top form on a stellar collection of chestnuts and originals. Supporting Leon is a star-studded ensemble including Howard Alden, David Bromberg, Vince Giordano, Eric Weissberg and the Roches, with a special guest appearance by Hank Williams, Jr.

Stealing Fire,Bruce Cockburn,Rounder / Pgd,Adult Alternative Pop/Rock,Canada,Contemporary Folk,Pop,Popular Music,Rock,Rock/Pop,Singer/Songwriter

Stealing Fire [Extra tracks] [Original recording remastered]

Average customer rating:

Simply the best!
The Finest Album From A Righteous Folk-Rocker
Kick at the Darkness Till It Bleeds Daylight
buy this!!!!!
He is a Poet Too!

Stealing Fire
Bruce Cockburn
Manufacturer: Rounder / Umgd
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0000CERLJ
Release Date: 2003-10-07

Tracks:

Lovers In A Dangerous Time
Maybe The Poet
Sahara Gold
Making Contact
Peggy's Kitchen Wall
To Raise The Morning Star
Nicaragua
If I Had A Rocket Launcher
Dust And Diesel
Yanqui Go Home
Call It The Sundance

Album Description

With 1984's Stealing Fire, Bruce Cockburn's words and music took on a greater urgency than ever before. The previous year, he made his first trip to Central America on behalf of the international development group OXFAM. While in southern Mexico, he visited a refugee camp that had recently been attacked by the helicopters of the U.S.-backed Guatemalan Army. The horrific experience sparked the anger-filled "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," a song which brought him unprecedented attention--garnering heavy radio airplay and regular video rotation on MTV. Stealing Fire is full of many of Cockburn's most powerful political songs, yet it boasts some of his most romantic numbers as well. From "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" to "Making Contact," whether issuing calls to action or cries for help, Bruce Cockburn's poetry demands attention. Upon its release Stealing Fire immediately staked a claim as one of the most compelling albums by any singer-songwriter in the 1980s. Nearly twenty years later, the album's impact isy remastered for CD, features Leon Redbone in top form on a stellar collection of chestnuts and originals. Supporting Leon is a star-studded ensemble including Howard Alden, David Bromberg, Vince Giordano, Eric Weissberg and the Roches, with a special guest appearance by Hank Williams, Jr.

Customer Reviews:

Simply the best!.......2007-05-03

This album is one of the best albums on my short list of so far all time. Dancing In The Dragon's Jaw is there along with a few others in rarified air. This is Bruce Cockburn at his peak and a fantastic concept ablum. This is worth every cent and more and it is this kind of writing that has helped to change my life for the Better! Buy this if you love well written poetic melodic beautiful music.

The Finest Album From A Righteous Folk-Rocker.......2006-10-01

STEALING FIRE is the finest album that Bruce Cockburn ever released. The reason I'd wear a T-shirt with this album cover more readily than any featuring his other album covers for a chance to meet my favorite actresses, or on a first date with a girl I'd recently met, is not because of the views expressed, many of which I strongly support, but because of how he expresses them here as opposed to on his other albums. Rather than just go for polemics and broadsides, Cockburn actually describes how the situations being discussed in the songs affect individuals. Prime examples include a song about romance under the most difficult circumstances ("Lovers In A Dangerous Time"), and one about a personal desire for revenge vs. passionate pacifism ("If I Had A Rocket Launcher"), in response to U.S.-funded dictatorships in Latin America. Cockburn's belief that the young Australian tourist jailed in Indonesia since 2005 for drug-smuggling was unjustly convicted makes STEALING FIRE an essential purchase for both your ears AND your conscience, as well as making it perfectly normal for a young man to want to wear the album-cover T-shirt to impress a cute girl.

Kick at the Darkness Till It Bleeds Daylight.......2004-09-28

How many artists do you know that U2 quotes in their songs? That line, from Cockburn's "Lovers In A Dangerous Time," eventually made its way into the U2 canon ("God Pt 2"). But it belongs to Cockburn, and is on this, his most perfectly politically charged album. The song "Nicaragua" sounded close enough to sympathizing with the rebels that it even found Cockburn under fire from the Reagan Administration. But it was the naked fury of "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" that drives the point home. The frustration and helplessness fueling the rage that would make a person declare "if I had a rocket launcher, some sonofab*#ch would die" is universal, and it gave Cockburn one of his best known songs.

The compositions on "Stealing Fire" were inspired by Cockburn's fact finding trek with OXFAM through Mexico and Latin America, and they put the face on the political turmoil of the region at that time. "Peggy's Kitchen Wall" nakedly shows the true scope of what warring governments would rather have you not see, and "Sahara Gold" paints a shimmering portrait of the region. Cockburn's always had a fine eye for detail, and that shows in both "Gold" and in "Dust and Diesel" (the original album closer).

In 1984, only Peter Gabriel and U2 were making statements as grand as Cockburn's "Stealing Fire," and outside of The Clash, there has never been an anti-war statement as anger-filled as "Rocket Launcher." Twenty years later, "Stealing Fire" still burns with the sound of the truth.

(PS - the bonus tracks, after the graceful mix of the original album, sound forced and didactic. Once again, proof that some unreleased songs should stay that way.)

buy this!!!!!.......2004-07-03

This is probably Bruce's best cd. Beautifuly written and not one bad song. Some latin influenced songs such as Nicaragua, Making Contact(makes you feel like doing the Samba Dance)and Dust and Diesel. Great lyrics on this album which also has Bruce's great sense of humour(smiling girl directing traffic
flow,
45 strapped over cotton print dress,
marimba brown and graceful limbs,
give me a moment of loneliness.

He is a Poet Too!.......2004-06-14

"Maybe the Poet" and "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" are the best tracks. Bruce continues his continual sojourn into life, love and the truth that hurts..and that is politics. You cannot write just about love without involving the ugly politics of the human race, as we see face to face in "Peggy's Kitchen Wall"

Tracks:

Lovers In A Dangerous Time
Maybe The Poet
Sahara Gold
Making Contact
Peggy's Kitchen Wall
To Raise The Morning Star
Nicaragua
If I Had A Rocket Launcher
Dust And Diesel

Customer Reviews:

Stealing Fire is a great album.......2006-08-25

After reading the one reviewer comment about the lack of guitar on this album I have to admit yes its lacking but its the mid 80's. It was a time of that dreaded KT! KEYBOARD TEXTURES.The solid works of all guitar influenced bands were weakend by these things.Styx had Kilroy was here Reo Speedwagon had Good Trouble after their successful HI-Infedelity etc. Although this is a commercial album for ole Bruce is is enjoyable.My favorite cut is Sahara Gold and two bonus tracks on the CD.

His 16th Album.......2004-12-16

(sixteenth album) (nee "Strategic Hamlets")(42 minutes without the extras)

Now if you ask me, and quite a substantial number of Vietnam War Era History do now and again, this here Bruce Cockburn album was originally supposed to be named after one of them wacky war plans the Americans made back in the Vietnam War (or, as the Vietnamese call it, "The American War"). It was going to be called "Strategic Hamlets" after one of them war-time game plans they had cooked up, but in the end Bruce or somebody in Bruce's camp decided that this name was better so that got stuck on it. I still like the working title and hope it gets used some day on a future project... it has a nice ring to it. Maybe Bruce can dig it up and use it when he releases the album that is going to contain all the songs about Iraq War II.

This is the album that gave Bruce another hit, his second in the US, and his third or fourth in Canada (depending on how you count). The song was If I Had a Rocket Launcher and it is surprising how many folk know the song, but never bothered to discover the man behind it. Frankly, I got weary of that song pretty early on and haven't looked back since. I can listen to it without minding these days, but back when the Americans were having their little war in Panama and they used the song to blast at Manuel Noriega's hideout in an attempt to flush him out like a quail out of scrub bush, I think I might have screamed if I heard one more person mentioned that that song was used by the military that way and that the military obviously didn't listen to the lyrics to discover what the song was about. Boy howdy how some folks repeat things ad nausium.

One of the extra cuts on the re-issue is Yanqui Go Home, which was previously available only on the German LP Rumours of Glory what came out in 1985. For years that was the only place to find that tune, but at last it has been released to a wider audience and is available to us non-German speaking folk. That song is a ditty and was a good addition to the re-issue. The other extra tune is "Call it the Sundance" and I am not yet to soft on that one... it has yet to catch me and hold me like so many of his other tunes. So it's a toss up, pay the extra money for the two extra songs, or pay the smaller amount of money for the album as it came out originally, or pay nothing and save your money and do without the songs altogether. It's up to you.

A stellar album from Bruce Cockburn.......2004-09-17

Bruce Cockburn is absolutely a man after my own heart. As a Christian whose religious beliefs have led me to embrace the far left side of the political spectrum, I don't find all that many musical performers whose sympathies closely match my own. Though this is one of Cockburn's less religiously toned albums, he didn't cut back on the political sympathies at all. All in all, apart from one of his compilation albums, this is probably my favorite Cockburn album.

Though Cockburn has over the decades turned out a substantial body of work, his albums are not always, or not even very frequently, solid all the way through. Most of his albums are weakened by a number of cuts weaker than the best on the album. That is not true of this one, which starts off with the stellar "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," and is fill with great songs all the way through the end, highlighted by the topical "Nicaragua" (at the time Reagan was publicly supporting the Contras against the Sandinistas, was failing to gain congressional support to assist the former, and was secretly arranging to support them covertly, none of which was known at the time and wouldn't be until the Iran-Contra scandal broke) and "Rocket Launcher," which has received consistent airplay on some radio stations over the years.

My lone complaint with this album is that Cockburn, who is one of the truly superb guitarists in modern music, completely suppressed his guitar on all the songs here. I'm not sure exactly why. Perhaps he was not striving for a guitar focused sound, or perhaps he felt the particular set of songs required less of a showcase for his guitar virtuosity. Whatever the reason, I miss hearing him do more on the guitar, though he does turn in some marvelous work on "Rocket Launcher." This was, however, only a minor problem. All in all, this is a great album highlighted by a great line up of songs.

Anyone who hasn't yet discovered Bruce Cockburn could hardly do better than start here.

pretty good cd.......2003-07-23

i had a friend several years ago who own this cd and loved it.he used to play it for me all the time,but i just could'nt get into.the only songs i liked on it back then was if i had a rocket launcher.recently i spotted this cd in a record store and it was only a couple of dollars,so i decided to pick it up for rocket launcher.when i listened to this cd after many years of not hearing it,i was stunned.this is a really good album.what was i thinking back then for not liking this album.rocket launcher is definitly not the only good track on this album.maybe the poet,sahara gold,making contact,peggy's kitchen wall and nicaragua are all great songs.the only songs on this album i don't like are to raise a morning star and dust and diesel.bruce cockburn is a great singer and one hell of a song writer.this won't be the last cockburn cd in my cd collection.this is a good cd,i recommend it to everyone.

WOW.......2003-06-17

I heard "Rocket Launcher" on a radio station (WOJB-FM) while visiting in northern Wisconsin in the mid-80's and was so impressed I called to see who the artist was.

The entire CD is excellent -- one of my all-time favorites and, I believe, Bruce's best studio effort with more of a rock style than most of his other work.

Whether you agree with his politics or not, this is an outstanding work that you must hear.

Stealing Fire
Average customer rating:
Stealing Fire
Bruce Cockburn
Manufacturer: Capitol/Emi/Sbk/Chrysalis
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B00000DR33
Release Date: 2002-01-01

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