Home What To Do     What To Rent     What To Think    What To Read    What To Listen To

Where To Go Links Contact    Life With The Poor       Anonymous Personals       The Movie List



Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen

"If you factor in Bruce Springsteen's income, the working class actually has more money than the upper class."
- Moe Rocca

     Excuse me, but I thought I heard you say something. Yeah, you in the New Order T-shirt, did you just say something? Are you sure? Because I thought I heard you say "This is some kinda joke, right?" Oh, I see, you're too cool to listen to Bruce Springsteen. I bet if I took a look at your CD collection I'd find a copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town wedged between Never Mind The Bollocks and Kicking Against The Pricks. You don't need to hide it any longer. From this day forward, Darkness on the Edge of Town shall be considered as cool as London Calling. So it is written - so it shall be done.

     Keep pushing 'til it's understood and these Badlands start treating us good.

     The year is 1978. I'm fifteen years old and I hate everything, particularly Rock 'n' Roll. To me, Rock 'n' Roll meant The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and The Doobie Brothers (Phun Phact: My first concert, at the age of twelve, was Yes). A bunch of rich dickheads singing about how great it was to be a bunch of rich dickheads. What I pined for was to hear a loser on the radio. I regular guy who'd been suffering the beat-down since the day he was born (to run). Sure, I was dimly aware of the existence of Punk, but it seemed like something that would always remain unreachable - the distant property of New Yorkers and Londoners. And I sure as Hell didn't think that Bruce Springsteen was gonna be that guy. In fact, I thought he was dead.

     You see, Bruce hadn't made an album three years. His last one, Born To Run contained two songs that I consider to be two of the best Rock 'n' Roll songs ever written - Thunder Road ("Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays") and Meeting Across The River ("So if you want to come along you gotta promise you won't say anything"). Too bad for Bruce - he released this album when I was only twelve. I wouldn't become aware of it until after I heard Darkness. This brings us to Jamesway and shoplifting.

     There were no record stores in my hometown - at least none that I was aware of. Everybody bought their records at Jamesway, which was the Seventies' equivalent of Kmart. Pretty fuckin' sad, huh? We bought everything at Jamesway. Everybody did. That's were the whole town got their clothes, dishes, and lawn ornaments. Since Jamesway had a monopoly on music, they marked the albums up about 4,000 percent. We had no choice but to steal - and steal we did. And that's how Darkness ended up in my hands. A friend of mine swiped a copy and he thought I'd like. But remember, stealing is wrong - and only dopes use dope…and you can't judge a book by its cover. But you sure as shittin' can do that with an album.

     Look at the cover of Darkness. Now go get one of your friends outta bed, early on a Sunday morning. I knew, instantly, that this guy was one of us. Remember, this was before Bruce was the Boss. Before Reagan quoted "Born in the USA" and before he danced with Courtney Cox. Bruce and I would have a falling out, then. And we'd never really patch things up. But that would come later, right now Badlands was blaring out of my cheap, little speakers (Purchased at Jamesway, too).

     Badlands . Even if you hate Bruce, you've gotta admit, he sure knew how to kick off an album. Quick, what line from Badlands sticks out? "Keep pushing 'till it's understood and these Badlands start treating us good." Now, imagine an LA punk band, circa 1980 singing Badlands. Pretty fuckin' cool, eh? Still hate Springsteen?

     Adam Raised A Cain is almost a classic. Sure the title's a bad pun, but I bet Bruce's friends thought it was pretty funny once they sobered up enough to get the "joke". I really hate to rush past A.R.A.C., but I've gotta, because we really need to talk about the next track.

     Something in the Night . Christ, I can still hear that bass drum pounding in my head. This is the song that lets you know that you're no longer in Born To Run land. As down as Born To Run could be, there was a streak of optimism that ran through it. Bruce really thought that things were gonna work out for his fans. Three years later, he's realized that those jobs at the factory are for life. That sometimes you don't pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You just stay down. It's a rare philosophy to hear expressed on a Seventies Rock album. Maybe Bruce spent those three years off studying Nihilism? I doubt it, though. It's more likely that he just bummed around studying the working class. How else could you explain the bleak poetry of Candy' Room?

     That's right, trendy asshole, I said poetry. "In Candy's room there's pictures of her heroes on the wall. But to get to Candy's room, you've gotta walk the darkness of Candy's hall." If Alan Ginsberg had written that people would be getting it tattooed on their foreheads. But since Bruce wrote it, it gets filed under "Jersey Rocker" instead of Beat Poet, where it belongs. "There's a sadness in her pretty face. A sadness all her own from which no man can keep Candy safe." You try to do better than that, Art Boy! Go to your poetry slam and try - just fuckin' try - to do better than that. While you're working on that, let's move on.

     Promised Land is my favorite Springsteen song if only because it contains the following lines: "The dogs on Main Street howl 'cus they understand that I can take one moment right into my hand. Mister, I ain't no boy. Yes, I'm a man. And I believe in a promised land." And there it is. The difference between knowledge and belief. Bruce knows that his fans are doomed to crappy jobs in dying rust-belt towns. He's seen the future. Yet, he still believes in the power of the common man to set things right. It's naive. It's overly sentimental. It's goddamn wonderful. It's Tom Joad's speech at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. And you know what what? You believe it too. Despite all your aloof hipster posturing, you still believe, deep in your heart-of-hearts, that those guys down at the Kleenex factory are the only people capable of overthrowing the evil robber-Barons that have taken over this country.

     Or maybe not.

     Maybe I'm reading way too much into this album. Like and anthropologist who finds a tooth and deducts that its owner was left-handed, walked with a limp and was very fond of sheep. I mean, this is Bruce Springsteen that we're talking about. The guy's from New Jersey, for Christ's sake. Look, here's the bottom line - this is good record. It's surprisingly dark. Is it a great record? Well, when I went off to college, only one non-punk record went with me, and this was it.

Top