It's getting hot. The 4th of July is almost here, and while I'll be taking in a White Sox game on the South Side with my dad, I figured it best to leave you all with a few deep cuts from America’s poet, Bruce Springsteen. Sure sure, everyone knows “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Born to Run,” “Born Dancing in the Dark,” “Born on Thunder Road,” “Born on the Streets of Philadelphia,” and “The River,” but here are ten lesser-known tracks to get you through the long weekend, arranged in barbecue order from Lighting Up the Grill to Sleeping on the Couch with the Meat Sweats.
To quote the Boss himself, “it’s Independence Day.”
“It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” (via Hammersmith Odeon ‘75)
Though it originally appears on Springsteen’s debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, it took the E Street Band a couple of years to learn how to play it the way it was meant to be played: this version is as loud, terrifying, and redemptive as the lyrics themselves. And, at half the length of Born to Run’s “Jungleland,” it’s Springsteen as skin-kneed playwright in his most economical. The lyrics are over and done with in the first three minutes, but the story doesn’t end until Bruce and Little Steven Van Zandt trade wailing leads over a chugging E Street train.
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