Round about three years ago, I was out in the overgrown and wild east, the soft and bitter east, visiting my stomping grounds of
Blue Ridge Mountains, Susquehanna and Schulykill and Delaware rivers, not quite south but not-north, and the sister of my
heart, Filia. One late afternoon, we got in her car and drove out past the battlefields, past shallow creekbeds and fallingdown
trading posts; we smoked cheap cigarettes and heard whippoorwills calling wheeepooorwheel in the trees. Then, she put a CD in
the car stereo. The music was sparse & haunted, the voice thick with sorrow & lust. It took me a few seconds to get it into my
head: Wait, is this Bruce Springsteen? Sure enough, it was, but it was the album Nebraska, a side of The Boss I hadn't encountered
before. Til that afternoon, I associated Springsteen with cheesy pop songs, and with his asshole fans who laud him as the greatest
songwriter of our time, of maybe all-time. But Nebraska, which was released in 1989 after Bruce recorded it all by himself on a
four-track, is a story of outlaws and lovegonewrong and death and life. I made Filia burn me a copy, and soon after I got home I
found a copy of it on vinyl, and of course I bought it, it is one of those albums that is meant for LP, for the click when the arm
lifts, for the pop-hiss of static between songs. Then, I picked up other Springsteen albums. I began to appreciate all his modes &
moods – the rock ballads, the anthems, the cheesiest of pop songs – for even his pop songs are poignant, and full of more meaning
than most bands these days that claim to be 'meaningful.' I became such a huge fan that I bought both We Shall Overcome and
Magic the very day they were released.
And let me tell you, I believe in Bruce Springsteen's America – a land where we're all in love with a Jersey girl, a land peopled
by underdog heroes and sympathetic criminals, where we forget our problems by dancing in the dark and racing in the street,
and where Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies one day comes back. So, put your make-up on, fix
your hair all pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.