To Terry

I bought Born in the USA when it came out; I was 11 years old and this seemed to me to be the only real 'rock n roll' record out there that I knew about at the time. I can still remember playing it over and over - I loved the bombast of the title track, and I LOVED the single 'Dancing in the Dark', - still do to this day. The track that still gets me choked up, and I can still picture where I was sitting when I first heard it, is 'Bobby Jean', Bruce's farewell to his departed friend Steven Van Zandt. Man. Funeral slice of funeral slices. But for some reason, in a move that did not fit in my later musical personality at all, it never really occurred to me to get Bruce's other records. I wore the HELL outta Born in the USA (still have the cassette, too), but it never occurred to me to pick up anything else. Many, many years later my buddy Op gave me a mix tape of Bruce cuts (remember mix tapes?). I remember riding the Dog down to Charlottesville and I had it in my walkman, kinda listening, not really paying attention etc and then a song called 'Livin On the Edge of the World' came on. Blew, blew blew me away. And just like that, I was in love. After all those years, I was in. Since then Springsteen has been the soundtrack to a lot of my life; particularly long nights with Op at the Turkey's Nest, when people would wanna kill us cause we'd play 15 Bruce cuts in a row on the juke. Fuck 'em, we'd say. There's Patty cutting us off before playing "My Love Will Not Let You Down" a fourth time ("Boys...knock it off"), there's us about to walk up to Greenpoint for a 'rumble', but delaying cause my boy Dave's cut of cuts "Dancing in the Dark" was on the jukebox. Of course meeting the man himself blows it all out of the water, but I remember those little moments too. Op walking outta the cabin to get married, and "Born to Run" comes up randomly on ipod shuffle??? What a sendoff. There's all the 3am last calls, lights coming on while "Land of Hope and Dreams" is rolling on. Anyways, enuff Bruce lovefest. Obviously with the 30-year anniversary Born to Run set just released, that's the album on my mind. I've always said the title track is THE greatest single of the last 30 years - shambolic Phil Spector sounds falling down the stairwell, with words that should mean everything to a small town boy like me. Why every band in the world hasn't tried to reproduce this sound is a mystery to me, but fuck em. The piano echo on "Backstreets", the anguished singing taking me back home, and "Jungleland" unfolding piece by piece until you're in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of who the fuck knows what. Overblown? Yes. Dramatic? Certainly. Over the top? Isn't fucking everything when you're young, when you're running free, when you've found something to believe in, like Bruce did with the actual power of rock n roll? And really, shouldn't it be? You got your whole fucking life to be bored to death; anyone can be boring at any moment. It'd sure be nice to reach for something so great and unattainable these days; its all we can seem to do to get thru the day while hoping we "get" the White Stripes coolness, or Modest Mouse's emo-ness, or Wilco's...well, whatever it is that makes people like Wilco. On Born to Run, Bruce threw it all the table - love, youth, hope, at least HOPING for excitement if nothing else. You can almost picture Bruce pickin you up in a '70 Chevelle and hittin the Dairy Queen, tryin to to talk to chicks, getting ignored, driving up and down the only road in town, no money, no friends, but fuck, there's gotta be something else out there better than this. I felt the same way back in high school, standin round in French's parking lot, sipping a Big Gulp while dudes 10 years older tried to get girls to take them to the prom. yeesh. Christ, look at me blathering bout Bruce. I don’t want no lovefest here, but hey, sit in your room tonight, turn all the lights off, and put on Born to Run. Born to Run will never, ever let you down.