So there I was, at 12 years old, standing in front of my schoolmates, our teachers, parents, and siblings. Wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, jean jacket, and a red bandanna, I thrust my fist in the air as the gym PA broadcast Max Weinberg’s hard-hitting snare. Somehow it did not at all seem strange to me that I would sing along with Bruce Springsteen’s ode to a veteran dispossessed of the American Dream. It’s only in retrospect that this scene seems more like the conclusion of “About a Boy” without the intervention of Hugh Grant.
From the time I was 8 until I was 17, I spent at least a month each summer at Brigadude. A time honored tradition at Brigadude Hootananies was the singing of Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” with slightly altered lyrics. Being in a group of friends, yelling those lyrics at the top of my lungs was one of my earliest experiences of community. Bruce was a pretty popular guy with the staff, and the summer that “Born in the USA” came out, it was the soundtrack of the season. It is the first album I can remember buying and learning all the songs on. I quickly purchased all of the Springsteen catalog and was proud of the red-lettered cassette tape spines in the center of my growing collection.
Springsteen’s next album, “Tunnel of Love,” was more difficult for me. His songs about struggling to find love in a difficult marriage were not so accessible to a 14 year old. This album was the first to feature musicians other than the E-Street Band. (And you can stop it right there because I know damn well that the E-Street Band did not play on “Nebraska” but neither did anyone else but Bruce.) Previous studio albums, and especially the live release of 1985, reminded me of the experience of being a part of a community. I imagined that the days of three or four hour sets with the E-Street Band and a stadium full of guys yelling “BRUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!” were of a golden age which I would never experience.
Through the somewhat lean years of non-E-Street recordings, the love of that music never left me. In congregations of Parrot Heads or Deadheads, I never failed to find another Springsteen devotee. Blind Will, the blues man from Troy, NY, was my fellow traveler through the Valley of Love and Delight. He and I knew the power of wanting things that could only be found in the darkness on the edge of town. A few years after school, he and I traveled 8 hours round trip on the night before Easter in order to stand in the Raleigh Coliseum with 30,000 other guys yelling “BRUUUUUUUUUCE!” at the top of our lungs.
Springsteen was in full force that night, reunited with the E-Street Band. In the intervening years, I had visited Asbury Park a couple of times. In addition to the Stone Pony and Madam Marie’s, I saw the faded glory of the Asbury Park Convention Center. It illustrated for me how dreams had been found and lost, and might be found again both on the Jersey Shore and in my adopted home among the Suwaree. There, on sale at the concert, was a t-shirt with the Asbury Park Convention Center on the front. Although it is now over 10 years old, faded, and way too big since I lost weight, that shirt will probably always be in my drawer. It reminds me of the communities to which I belong. The shot of the Convention Center shows it bathed in an orange sun which I always assumed was setting. As I write this, however, I realize that Asbury Park is on the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is rising on a new day.