from the website...
Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town broke new ground for The Boss in 1978. A counterpoint to the operatic elegance of Born to Run, the album was an angry, raw record that burst forth after a three-year hiatus.
Because of its darker tones, some might call Darkness a difficult album, but despite this, it's a cherished gem for many.
Collecting stories and photos from hundreds of fans, The Light in Darkness celebrates this classic record, allowing readers to revisit the excitement of that moment when the needle found the grooves in that first cut and the thundering power of "Badlands" shook across the hi-fi for the very first time. Or the uninitiated, but soon-to-be-converted teenager, brought along by friends and finding salvation at one of the legendary three-plus hour concerts - shows that embodied all the manic fury of a revival meeting.
My thoughts:The Content: The Light in Darkness is a spectacular addition to the Springsteen print library. The chronological presentation provides seamless narrative flow and the photos – including the pre-show shots from Winterland and Augusta and the marquee and ticket stub shots – are just phenomenal. The book is the ultimate retrospective tour program. A rock and roll time capsule. If you haven’t already done it, order yourself a copy, put on those ‘78 radio broadcasts, and immerse yourself in one of rock’s greatest bands during a seminal season.
Lawrence Kirsch: On a personal note, I’m sure all contributors will agree, it was a pleasure to collaborate with Lawrence Kirsch (My coming of age essay – “Itching for Something to Start” appears on pages 104 - 105). The attention to detail, the painstaking organization of such an abundance of material is no small task. The finished product shows no outward signs of struggle, but anyone who’s been involved in the editorial and publishing quagmire knows that what Lawrence has accomplished with his two books on Bruce is pretty special and required hours of contemplation and devotion. I am proud to be a small part of this history.
In my opinion, For You (Kirsch's previous book on Springsteen) and The Light in Darkness are among the top five Springsteen books ever.
Order your copy here...
http://www.thelightindarkness.com/order/
Here's my contribution to The Light in Darkness
Itching For Something to Start
“What’s the name of your record?” the teacher asked.
“Piece de Resistance,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows and nodded approvingly. Looking back, I suppose she was anticipating French opera.
It was 1979, and as a 14 year-old high school freshman, I thought a music appreciation class would bolster my growing fascination with rock music. I was wrong. We spent most of the term listening to Air Supply songs while our teacher unveiled cleverly camouflaged orchestral flourishes embedded within the compositions. For the final class, however, we got to bring in our favorite records, play a few cuts, and explain what they meant to us.
I placed the needle on side 5 of the three-record set and watched as the other twelve students grimaced and shook their heads.
So much for appreciation.
In 1978, my parents decided I would have to wait another year before going to my first concert, so I lived vicariously through the live albums of the era. The Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, Seger’s Live Bullet, The J Geils Band’s Blow Your Face Out, and The Who’s Live at Leeds. I’d sit for hours, headphones on, creating a virtual rock and roll festival in my head while flipping through the pages of Creem, Hit Parader, and Rolling Stone.
But there was one soundtrack missing; Bruce Springsteen didn’t have a live album, ironic since of all things said and written about Bruce, the one most often repeated was, “Wait until you see him live.”
Well, I had no choice. I had to wait.
I was into Bruce. My older brother had Born to Run on 8-track and I listened to it often; but, because it had been released before I began buying records, its impact, while significant, was not enough to separate Bruce from the other bands I was a fan of. There’s no substitute for being a teenager and living through the anticipation and arrival of a new album; the moment of discovery; the hope and possibility that it may change you.
If I remember correctly, “Prove it All Night” was on the airwaves before Darkness on the Edge of Town was released. I was a fidgety kid with a short attention span, the type of student who read a paragraph six times without comprehension, but everything slowed down when I heard Bruce whispering to his unnamed lover during the song’s bridge. I was accustomed to frustrated authority figures talking at me with raised voices, telling me what to do, what to think. And here was this subdued, hopeful voice laying it on the line over a bass drum heartbeat like a ghost in my speakers saying, this is what I want you to wear, what I want you to do, I can’t make you go, but I think it’s important. Then, as the song faded out, Bruce’s anguished moans told me that the outcome was still in doubt. And that was the beauty in it; he was inviting me to draw my own conclusions. There was a longing for connection that, as a self-conscious 13 year-old, I found both overwhelming and reassuring.
I bought the album the day it was released and memorized the lyrics in two nights. I had never committed anything so lengthy to memory before. Some of the older kids were catching shows as the band made its way around New England visiting various college campuses and small theaters. I envied them in their concert tee-shirts as they told stories of Bruce jumping on the piano or venturing out into the audience.
As summer drew to a close, Boston radio station WBCN announced they would broadcast Bruce’s September 19 show from Passaic, New Jersey. I lined up a pair of TDK cassettes in front of my brother’s Nikko stereo and prepared to capture the moment.
Things rolled along smoothly until about 80 minutes into the show when, just after “Jungleland,” Bruce addressed the crowd. “We’re gonna take a twenty minute break and we’ll be back to do another set for ya.”
I made two major show-taper mistakes that night; First, I learned it takes more than two 60-minute cassettes to capture an entire Springsteen show, and second, if you edit out crowd noise and storytelling in an effort to cram the music onto those tapes, you end up with the musical equivalent of a widescreen motion picture reformatted for television; still worth watching, but a far cry from the panoramic scope the director intended.
So, not only was I born a year too late to see the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, I blew my opportunity to own a document that would hold me over until the next tour. Or, so I thought.
The following spring, bootleg recordings began appearing like fine jewelry in the display case at my local record store. I knew about bootlegs; shady characters covertly taping concerts, reproducing them - often in horrendous quality - and selling them for outrageous money on the black market. A forbidden antidote for the musically obsessed – undeniably enticing.
Among the items behind the glass was a tan colored box with a mimeographed photo of a well-dressed Bruce Springsteen. Piece de Resistance was the title and I recognized it immediately as the Passaic show from the previous September.
“Can I see the Springsteen bootleg?”
The clerk eyed me warily copping a beat-it-kid attitude like a pusher on a corner. Perhaps it was the $20 - secured with a double advance on my allowance - that convinced him I was a serious prospect. Minutes later, I was out the door with the package under my arm. The fact there was no receipt underscored the buyer-beware aspect of bootleg culture; regardless of the quality, I would be broke for the next two weeks. It seemed worth the gamble, and I applied righteous indignation to justify purchasing an unauthorized recording of my hero; It’s Bruce’s fault, I told myself, for not releasing what I wanted, what I needed.
The LPs were not labeled, so I memorized the grooves that bracketed each song; the short passage on side 4 was “Candy’s Room”; the back to back epics on side 2, “Prove it all Night” (with guitar intro) and “Racing in the Street.” The older songs sounded new and the Darkness songs resonated with vintage appeal. There was an earnestness in Bruce’s voice and an urgency in the E Street Band’s playing that had eluded me during my desecrated taping of the show months earlier. I marveled at the pacing and energy; the show was like a high-stakes sporting event with no stoppage in play. The quality was decent - a repressing of a repressing I would learn years later - but the content was extraordinary.
Until the day I brought them to school, the records did not leave my turntable.
“Why do you like this record?” the teacher asked, as “Not Fade Away” segued into “She’s the One.”
Standing before a group was torture for me, so I rehearsed a speech. Life-changing. Awe-inspiring. I wanted my classmates to understand what I felt. But when I looked into their disinterested eyes, my need for approval was replaced with rebellious fortitude. By rejecting Bruce, they were invalidating my convictions. Suddenly, I was no longer shy.
“Well,” I said, looking out at my peers, “ for one thing, it’s illegal to own it, but mostly, because you people don’t get it.” It was like telling them I had robbed a bank, but they would never know what the money was for.
They made their choices and they’ll never know...
I may have missed the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, but it didn’t miss me. The album, the voice, the notions of what the future held as I literally came of age stand as a demarcation point where Bruce separated from the pack, and so did I.
Lessons learned.
Class dismissed.
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