Bruce Springsteen: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (Columbia)

WHEN BRUCE Springsteen's first Columbia album, Greetings From Asbury Park, came out almost a year ago, it was met with the most extravagant and outrageous praise I've ever encountered in the Rock Press. Reviewers compared him to Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, El Topo, Webster's New World Dictionary. If superlatives were a dime a dozen, Springsteen could have retired then and there.