Desert Island Disc #2-The River-Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band (1980)-Columbia/CBS
Desert Island Disc #3-Born In The USA-Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band (1984)-Columbia/CBS
This is without question my favorite Bruce Springsteen albums.
The River came out when I was ten and I know what you're thinking, "How did you get the record?" I didn't. I heard "Hungry Heart" on WNBC (say it like Pig Vomit on Private Parts") played on the Captain Frank show. I also saw a cheap video of the song on America's Top 10 with Casey Kasem where the song was played to a three-and-a-half minute concert snippet of "Rosalita" from 1978. It kind of looked like a Kung Fu movie where the character speaks but the words just don't match up. I would drop a quarter in the Golden Dove jukebox when my dad came to take Mitchell and I to Boy Scouts and when it was played at Skate Odyssey (raise your lighters for Skate Odyssey), I would attempt to roller skate, fall on my ass and then in my embarassment, return to the pinball machines to hear the rest of the song.
I bought a CD copy of Born In The USA after I got "Bruce Fever" in 8th Grade. I hopped the Springsteen train in 1984. I was able to see Bruce play one of the shows at the Brendan Byrne Arena before it sold out to become the Continental Airlines Arena, the Izod Center and before that stupid Xanadu Mall (complete with that phallic symbol you can see from ten miles away) swallowed the arena up. He played over three hours and for an impressionable kid like me it was my favorite show (until the Dead and Phish entered) for a long time. He then returned in 1985 to play six shows at Giants Stadium. My friend Jesse Lynn and I went to one show where at 15, we met Leo Da Scalpa. Yes, at 15, Jesse and I scalped our first tickets (before Stub Hub). The plan was to buy three tickets from Leo but Norman backed out. So the two of us meet this guy outside of J&R thinking he would look like Mike Damone from Fast Times. He was a heavy set guy and fortunately Jesse was convincing enough to tell him we were only buying two tickets. He then tells us to walk across Park Row into City Hall Park where he sold us the tickets ($60 a ticket) and did not kick the crap out of us.
A few weeks later we are going to the show at Giants Stadium. Jesse's dad, his mom and sister drive us to the Port Authority. New York in 1985 was a far cry from the oligarchal state that it is now since Rudy and Bloomberg decided to clean it up. Outside the Port Authority, it was Hell's Kitchen (not the Gordon Ramsay show) a festering, gross, Midnight Cowboyesque New York neighborhood where anything could go on. Today, 9th Avenue is a trendy neighborhood of fine dining and overpriced apartments but 25 years ago, well, you could have paid to receive a "good time" from one of the friendly women who would knock on your window to ask if you wanted to pony up the money to have a good time. Jesse's dad drove up to 9th Avenue and 41st Street and at a red light this situation occurred.
Yours truly was looking at one of the women by the Port Authority who looked like a cast off from Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield" video. Scantily clad with high leather boots, I can only guess that she noticed a very, well, over-eager 15 year old staring at her. Maybe she thought I was a baller but the following dialogue occurred between Jesse, Michelle and I. Twenty-five years later, as I type this, I still laugh.....just as it happened one August day in 1985.
Jesse-"Levine, did that hooker just....Holy Crap Levine! Did she just show you her boobs?"
Me-"Jess, shut up, shut up...."
Jesse-"She did, she did, holy s**t! That hooker flashed you."
Michelle Lynn-"Dad, the hooker just flashed Levine!"
Shelly Lynn-"Way to go Levine!"
That's the story, I'm sticking to it. If my friend Jesse is reading this blog, he'll back the story up.
I had the opportunity to see The River and Born In The USA played from start-to-finish in 2008/2009 but after seeing too many Phish shows, I took a pass and regret the decision. A decision I regret still to this day but Bruce Springsteen's The River and Born In The USA are still in my desert island discs not for the above story but for the music.
Best Song on Born In The USA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzFJV3FuOI0Best Song on The River-My favorite Springsteen song of all-time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46dEVLFvze4
I, too, first heard this song at Skate Odyssey (on Quintard, if I remember correctly). The song instantly appealed to me. During my college years, I returned to the song and thought that it was reminiscent of The Ramones (only to read the back story of the song a year later). Keep up the desert album posts.
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