On Secret Albums Recorded by Famous Bands Part 1: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Backing Gary U.S. Bonds on “Dedication” and “On the Line”

I’m not entirely sure what this blog/email list is going to be just yet, but I figure that until a style evolves I can write about some things I’m a fan of. My journey to being a Springsteen fan was long and circuitous. When I was a child Born in the USA made Bruce omnipresent. He was immediately adopted by all of the people I had, at a very young age, developed a dislike to - the yuppies, the preppies, the jocks, the Reaganites.

Don’t ask me why I was eight and sick of the dominant rock bro culture, but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I gave Bruce Springsteen a fair shake and discovered that his work really spoke to me. Just big sweeping anthems about the kinds of feelings that consumed me when I was young, even if I didn’t understand them and was unable to put them into words.

The sweeping guitars, the screaming sax of the Big Man, the pounding piano and pulsing organ, the metronomic drum work of Wax Weinberg, this was a big enough sound to embody every feeling I had. “I want…