Happy May Day

It's been a while since I thought of anything worth recording. I've been busy; school's taking on its usual Springtime madness with testing and next-year planning. My babies turned a year old last week and I've really enjoyed spending time with all of my children, seeing them grow and mature into young individuals who love life, their parents and hopefully the God that has given them life.

I reeled at the death of Dan Federici and spent a good week musically mourning his passing. While the early E Street records gave a glimpse at the "glory days" of the band, the records that really defined Dan's role in the band are "The River" and "Born in the U.S.A.". I listened to the former two or three times for the simple, sparse and yet moving organ parts on side four of the album. There, one can find the voice of sadness and dispair that flies under the radar of the anthems of hope and redemption. "The River" doesn't offer hope as much as it presents the compexity of growing up and seeing life as it is: morally vacuous and simply present. It is the individual's role in this life to take the steps that lead down a particular path, either of safety and security or that of perdition. Musically, the simple one- and two-note chords Dan played on Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, Wreck On the Highway and even Ramrod are sadder yet. "The River" launched Bruce and the band to megastardom and yet, as I've said before, is probably the most misunderstood record as its image is one of a rockin' good time. The next E St. record suffers a bit from the same ails as "The River" and yet I can not help myself from revisiting it with a feeling of nostalgia and determination. While the first side's great, it's a bit disparately assembled, with no running theme. Side Two, as one flips the record over, finds the messages that Bruce and the Boys had been delivering for a decade prior: faith and strength in the face of adversity, loss and lonely life itself. To me, this is where Dan's contribution as a player abounds: No Surrender, Dancing In the Dark and the seemingly cheesy chords of Glory Days, one of my favorite songs on the album. A very simple song, one that should be discarded along with most of the 1980s for meaningless banalities, except for those stories of the people you know and struggle to avoid and yet, still resemble and eventually fall towards: "I hope I don't sit around talkin' about it, but I probably will/Just sit around, tryin' to recapture a little of the glory-a/but time slips away and leaves you with nothing, Mister, but boring stories of..." And here I am, doing just that.
Bruce's eulogy was beautiful, one for the ages, and the tour has exploded in beautiful sadness, a tribute leg for a fallen brother. Loss and sadness often strip people to their core beings; musically, the E Street band has been playing as if the collective lives of its members depend on an authentic tribute to a life member. Seeing the setlists and reading the reviews, one can only wish for a similar tribute for themselves.

Let's not start talking politics here. I've had it with the whole damnable process.