Bruce Springsteen: “Born to Run” (1975)
We moved to Utica NY in the summer of 1978 so I could start a new job as director of special (= non-credit) programs at the local SUNY (State University of New York) college. I moved first. The dean needed me as soon as possible so I moved right after I handed in my grades at Well College. It took a few weeks to find a place for us to live. Then we had to wait six weeks for it to become available. In the meantime, nine weeks in all, I bunked out at the Y on weekdays and commuted to and from Ithaca on weekends.
We had settled in by the end of the summer. Our apartment was in New Hartford, just outside Utica. We had decided to live there because its schools had the best reputation in the area, both for academics and extracurricular activities.
A couple of days after J.’s school started in the fall, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came to town, performing in the arena downtown. Itt turned out to be a knockout affair. The band was on fire and Springsteen’s duets with sax player Clarence Clemmons brought down the house. We got home late that night so we let Jeremy sleep the next morning. We sent him to school in mid-morning with a note that read: “Our son missed school this morning because we took him to a concert.” We just never mentioned who gave the concert.
I bought our first Brucie record in 1975. I had motored to New Haven and Yale to attend the colloquium on my dissertation. It went well so I celebrated by buying a record –just like I have other times I wanted to remember an event. (See my blog on Jeremy’s birth.) It was Springsteen’s Born to Run, which had just been released. Boy, did it kick! The drumming and massed guitar and keyboard backing was propulsive and, for a music supposedly so simple, the songs were melodically and harmonically rich. I liked the band because it played tight. I’ve always had a preference for groups that play tight, not ragged –The Band, for instance, or the Jimi Hendrix Experience but not the Band of Gypsies, Bob Seger, the Talking Heads, Radiohead with P. J. Harvey, “This Mess We’re In,” which I first heard in Dubai ca. 2003. Loose playing is what made it take so long for me to like the Stones and probably why I still don’t listen to the Grateful Dead. I’m not a Smoke the Weed and Drift Along Playing My Axe kind of guy. I’m more of a Listen to the Other Players and Find Ways to Play With Them fellow –and for god’s sake, keep the music moving!
As to Springsteen, I subsequently bought The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973), Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), and his wonderful solo acoustic album, Nebraska (1982). Then, for no particular reason other than I had other music I wanted to listen to and only had so much time and money, I stopped buying albums by Brucie. Liked ’em. Just didn’t purchase ’em.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Springsteen: “State Trooper” (1982)
MUSIC & ME 