"Jersey Girl" (originally by Tom Waits)
Singalong 017: a place where the dancin's free
“I got no time for the corner boys / Down in the street making all that noise”
I can't stress enough how much I hated and feared the music of Bruce Springsteen growing up. It's funny to me now, and I offer zero justification for this, but it had everything to do with my introversion, my alienation from "America" and my classical music training.
I remember watching MTV as an eleven-year-old in 1984. You might say MTV was my TikTok, a newly opened window into the grown up world of music and pop culture that hadn't (yet) gotten commercialized into pure AI-driven nonsense.
The rabbit hole opened up and I went all the way in. There was A-Ha, Pat Benatar, Culture Club, Elvis Costello, Tina Turner, Hall and Oates, The Police, The Jacksons and a million other artists, all in a jumble that ended up comprising, for better or worse, a huge chunk of my education.
And then into that delicious mix came a bulldozer: "Born in the USA".
I remember instinctively recoiling every time the song came into rotation. With its in-your-face hook, snarling Bruce sporting the 501 jeans, bandannas and immense stars-and-stripes backdrop... I'd have to go and do something else for a few minutes, preferably in another room. Just waiting for it to be over. I could not stand that song.
Remembering it now, it might be the first track I ever truly hated. In my life.
“Or the girls down on the avenue / 'Cause tonight I wanna be with you”
Because I had lived in Mexico as a six-year-old. My dad worked there for a year. I'd learned that not only was the world larger and more diverse than my small town American upbringing had let me imagine, but that folks in those places held resentments about what they experienced as our projected superiority.
A big part of my experience in Mexico had been bilingual bullying by older kids, as well as by some teachers. There were girls down on that avenue, and they were mean.
My childhood year in Mexico had the overall effect of turning me into a person who not only felt safer keeping my head down and minding my business, but who also entertained jealous judgments about people who proudly strutted their stuff and broadcast their patriotism.
Add to that the incredible nuclear brinksmanship of the Reagan administration. At any moment, The Bombs were going to start flying and we were all going to instantly become cosmic dust. Thanks to all of the proud Americans in power doing their thing, I was almost sure to be deprived of an adolescence.
Let alone get to be a grown up like Bruce.
The damage was done. I slumped through the rest of my childhood, shunning anything and anyone which had anything whatsoever to do with the Boss. I chose to remain aloof and avoided friendships with the kids who liked him. I let my bubble harden, and it stayed hard for approximately 30 years.
Not just one lost decade of valuable Bruce fanhood, but three. It was a slump that many friends tried - and failed - to shorten.
“Tonight I'm gonna take that ride / Across the river to the Jersey side / Take my baby to the carnival / And I'll take her on all the rides”
Fast forward to 2016, and I'm standing with my true love at the (former) Meadowlands. We are toughing out one of Bruce’s legendary 4+ hour sets, when a curtain parts and suddenly I see a row of fiddle players. Squinting, I perceive that up on stage with the Boss are several friends and colleagues of mine: Sam Bardfeld, Mazz Swift, Todd Reynolds and a handful of other folks I know from the scene. They had been rehearsing under a gag order, to not spoil the surprise.
For my first Bruce show, it was a hell of a reveal.
“'Cause down the shore everything's all right / You and your baby on a Saturday night / Well, you know all my dreams come true / When I'm walking down the street with you”
K and I ended up getting a ride back to town from Sam that Saturday night. He dropped us off on Tenth Avenue and here I stood, a freshly minted Fan, reflecting on all the walls I had erected against Bruce Springsteen, everything he represented, and on all the work I'd had to do to finally break them down. I felt free.
As a grown up American, I can finally embrace the paradox of my citizenship and find plenty of things to celebrate. Especially “Jersey Girl”, a song written by Tom Waits as it turns out.
I know a place where the dancin's free…