To whet your whistle for episode 79, coming next week:

3/19/15

Tonight, entirely on a whim, I went to Springsteen’s website and I saw that he’d released the last show of the Born to Run tour from archives. These weren’t Columbia releases, but like “official” bootlegs. It looked inexpensive enough, but I didn’t know if it would work on iTunes. I tabbed back and continued scrolling.

The next entry was a similar thing, but this was a show in Cleveland in 1978. I perked up.

You may or not remember that I had for the entirety of my adolescence a cassette that mu old buddy Chris had taped live off the radio. This was an incredibly important thing for me - that cassette went with me through high school and into adult life. But it was imperfect - my buddy had fallen asleep when he taped it and somewhere in the middle of Backstreets, side 2 ended and that was it.

Over the years the label had peeled off of the cassette, but I always knew which one it was when I saw it (and yes, I could have relabeled it.) As important as it was to me, I’d lose it for a while and always be so happy when I found it again - more times than not under one of the seats of my orange Volkswagen bug. I think I still have it somewhere and I’ve thought over the years that one of these days they’d come out with a device that would let me record a cassette (an old, beat-to-pieces, played-out-magnetically-bald cassette) into a digital format.

And now I’ve waited Springsteen out.

Other than the purely personal, besides being a thread of sorts to parts of the best of my youth (and if best isn’t quite right, then maybe the least horrible parts), the recording is notable for several reasons. It is not for no reason that the Darkness era is my favorite* - lyrically, Springsteen is here transitioning between very personal expressions and telling other people’s stories; some of his patter is practiced, but much of it comes across extemporaneously, like a young guy (Springsteen would have been 28) having fun, goofing around; Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, and Max Weinberg all play beautifully and powerfully, and this brings me to the really big thing, which is the best version of Prove It All Night that I know of.

It starts slow - just the piano and a drum - taking the measure of things and laying out the perimeter and the piano playing builds in confidence and then they come down very low and Springsteen mumbles, “Ya gotta prove it all night . . . “ and then his guitar begins to buzz and then it builds and seems to bark (and down) and barks again and he goes into a higher range, takes a pause and stays up there for an extended period and all the while the piano and the drums are just sort of there until he needs them and then it builds and builds and I remember - I swear this is true - I remember being a teenager thinking that if my head blew up at that minute as the music seemed to be leading, well, that’d be ok - and then just as the whole band in unison (but this is all about the guitar, the piano, and drums) builds until there’s nowhere to go, they all drop into the first familiar chords of Prove It All Night.

He’s released different live versions over the years but the ones I’ve heard have always put the guitar solo at the end and none of them have that extraordinary build-up at the beginning. (There’s a solo at the end of this one too, but this has that extra solo! Ah, the 1970s!)

There are other legitimately great moments - the tale he tells to introduce Growin’ Up, the Summertime Blues cover to open the first set, he introduced Sherry Darlin’ and referenced fraternity rock and Louie, Louie and the Swingin’ Medallions’ Double Shot of My Baby’s Love (the first time I’d ever heard of that great song) and then he flubs the first verse, and also the intro to Thunder Road.

When my wife got home from work tonight and I told her the big news, to impress upon her the importance of the moment, I did the intro riff to Thunder Road myself: ‘Last summer me an’ Steve flew out to Reno an’ we went out to the desert where we saw this Indian who had a big sign - it had a picture of Geronimo an’ a sign that said “Landlord” and underneath it was a sign that said “Land of Peace, Love, Justice, and No Mercy - an’ underneath that it said “Thunder Road.”’

I didn’t have it perfectly but when I played it for her she saw how close I was. I’ve forgotten some more important things over the years - and remembered plenty of stupider things - but I’m ok having that nugget in my gray matter; I’m not embarrassed by it. I swear that this music - this specific music - lyrically, sonically - helped make me who I am.

As you’re reading this, know that I sent it to you because you’re one of a handful of people on the planet whole who get this connection between me and Springsteen.

He wouldn’t write Bobbie Jean for another 5 years or so and Blood Brothers and This Hard Land for about another 15 years. I bring this up only because I’m not thinking of my gone and misspent youth, nor of how Springsteen got yet another album out of me, but I’m thinking of you tonight, out there somewhere, and hoping . . .

*Over the years, Darkness and The River have always vied for the top spot in my heart. I got Darkness first, and the words knocked me out - I’d never heard anything like Racing in the Streets - it seemed funny to me to be so descriptive about a car - with a “’69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor” or even the use of the word “dynamo” in Prove It All Night was so memorable because it had never been used before. But it was Badlands and Promised Land that elevated me and which elevate me still. And, you know, Darkness itself described, not the specifics, but certainly the condition, that I was growing up in. I’m not joking when I say that Springsteen was as influential to me as my father. However: to be 16 and to buy The River on the first day of it’s release (at Cinderella City mall in Denver no less) and to take it home and hear the crashing beginning of The Ties That Bind - well, I don’t know that I have ever been so simpatico with cool as I was then. Some of The River seems young to me now in a way that is more difficult to relate to, though to be fair, I’ve not listened to it from front-to-back in a while, so who knows? But Darkness is my favorite by a hair.

PS - This just in: In the last half of Backstreets he tries out an early version of Drive All Night. I’m not sure that Springsteen knew when Darkness ended and The River began, so why should I - my favorite Springsteen era was from ’78-’81! Look what came from those wretched years of inflation and recession!