No discussion of my early musical favorites would be complete without Bruce. I remember that Darkness came out the week of my 8th grade graduation (1978), and Bob Coburn, KMET's afternoon DJ (2 to 6), set the needle down on Badlands at 2 and then, throughout his show, played the entire record. The next day after graduation practice I rode my bike to Music Plus and bought the album for $4.59 (The NICE PRICE; normally it would have been $4.99). And so but now it's the summer, and I have to be honest my thoughts were turning to girls in a serious way around this time, but since it WAS summer there weren't really all that many girls around, PLUS I was headed to an all boys' Catholic high school in the Fall, PLUS I was convinced no girls would like me, anyway. But what I did have was this album, and I played it over and over, and that line from Badlands "We're the ones who had a notion/a notion deep inside/it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive" probably had as much influence on this young boy and the way I eventually came to think about my life as anything else I've read or heard since.
But it's this one, Candy's Room, Side 1 Track 4 (I think) - THIS was the one I could barely listen to because it spoke to those feelings I was having about girls, and it made me simultaneously hopeful and sad, with a hint of something else sprinkled in I'm not sure I've identified to this day. So, I found this live version, and though the sound isn't great, the energy is, and it's a fair approximation of this mixture of emotional energy and courage it gave me...
Candy's Room live, 1978...
IBL:mm
But it's this one, Candy's Room, Side 1 Track 4 (I think) - THIS was the one I could barely listen to because it spoke to those feelings I was having about girls, and it made me simultaneously hopeful and sad, with a hint of something else sprinkled in I'm not sure I've identified to this day. So, I found this live version, and though the sound isn't great, the energy is, and it's a fair approximation of this mixture of emotional energy and courage it gave me...
Candy's Room live, 1978...
IBL:mm
So I was pretty sure we would be getting around to this guy. Well, it was like a mystery. We were from a different coast than he was. Cars were okay but we didn't spend our days under the hood working on one. We had friends who did. We were turned on by music. We were more bowled over by the Stones than we were by the Beatles, we loved old rural blues, we admired the Who but we would never be Mods, we loved and completelyinhaled Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. By the time a record like The Wall came along, we had already dreamed it listening to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and Animals, and we didn't really need it. By then we were listening to the pounding blues of John Lee Hooker and The Band and Van Morrison. But this guy, this guy walked out onto our imaginations on his own. The first two records made perfect sense, what else could you do after Dylan? Make baroque heartfelt soul. You could feel it on "Sandy" and "Mary Queen of Arkansas", but still we were totally unprepared for the epic size of Born to Run. That was our opera. It was just huge! And the instrumentation told you all the time, life or death. And our 70s imaginations were ready for the message, "Take your shot, kid. Really, really, what have you got to lose?" The next three albums were about what we had to lose, and by then it was too late, it was our music and we had grown up together. Reaching out to someone else for some kind of response or recognition, for some kind of vulnerability was what it was all about. The song that typifies this for me is Thunder Road. Here's a link to Springsteen singing it with Melisa Etheridge in one of the most soulful versions of this song I have heard in a long time.
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpyxh3xpv8
Mike, I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk about all the memories I share with you regarding this music. I'll just mention one. Because we were "tolerant" enough to take my kid sister to a Springsteen concert, she volunteered to the Berkeley Food Project for a good 15 years of her life.
Thanks for this, George. Yes, Yvonne came with us - and Merdyl too, I think - for part of the Born in the U.S.A. tour in Oakland, maybe fall of 1984. And Springsteen mentioned the Food Project and their good work from the stage, and she volunteered. Later, she put in a good word for me and I worked at the men's shelter in Berkeley from, basically, January of 1991 to July of 1993, when I left for Michigan.
ReplyDeleteIf I had only one Brooose song to keep, it'd be a tough call between 'Candy's Room' and 'Born To Run'. Probably take 'Candy's Room' owing to judicious omission of hands strapped across engines (Elvis Costello has never written one line that fucking awful).
ReplyDeleteConversely, I somehow feel that I could soldier manfully on in the face of the permanent loss of 'Hungry Heart'. De gustibus, chacun à son goût, est.
'Candy's Room' is one of those florid, wild, insane, emotionally overwrought songs that sometimes feel that life is worth living...and ending. As in, how can I live my life at a lower pitch than this? If nothing in my life makes me feel this intense, is it worth living?
Sometimes this seems to indicate that I have never left adolescence, never 'matured'. I've always thought that maturity was well over-rated, but then I would, right?
But when I hear a 'Candy's Room' (or inter alia, 'Feelin' Good' (Nina Simone), 'London Calling', 'All The Young Dudes', 'I'd Rather Go Blind', 'Holidays In The Sun', 'Haitian Fight Song', 'He Stopped Loving Her Today')...well, I don't feel immature. I feel alive.
That was supposed to be 'etc.' after "à son goût."
ReplyDelete...and insert "makes me" after "sometimes" in 2nd line of 3rd graph...I'm doing this a lot these days -- omitting words when typing though they're clear in my head.
ReplyDeletePaulie - first off, Hungry Heart needs to take a long walk off a short Asbury Park pier, agreed...
ReplyDeleteSecond, well-said on everything here. "I feel alive." Right, you hear these songs and that's the over riding emotion. Many songs do that to me but one other Bruce off the top of my head, "Open All Night" off of "Nebraska". I'm actually going to write something about that in these pages in the near future...
Thanks for this...