A lot has been said about Darkness on the Edge of Town over the years by rock critics, culture hounds and even academics. I can only say what I feel about an album that’s been an important reference point for me as an artist and as a person. When I listen to that 1978 release I meditate on my dreams, the cost of straying from them, and the very real circumstances that make them so hard to achieve. Listening reminds me of the family bonds that can either build me up or tear me to pieces, and the pull of my darker sides. I hear Springsteen tell a story that reflects the impossible marriage of hope and despair that is the American Dream and the cost of believing in it. Darkness is a pivotal piece of art for me that, strange enough, I didn’t fully appreciate until I lived in South Africa, many miles and years removed from my New Jersey upbringing.

OK, I’ll admit that last paragraph looks like I cut and pasted it from the countless articles and interviews released this fall to promote the 30^th Anniversary Darkness boxed set/uber package . In the wake of that media blitz it’s hard to justify writing this blog, which even for me was overkill. At times it seemed like carefully crafted PR moves to solidify Bruce’s legacy. That said I wouldn’t mind having a management team like his.

Having grown up in New Jersey you’d think I was a Boss fan from the beginning. Not so. My first true musical awakenings were in high school and ran parallel to the reign of Born in the USA over airways and pop culture in general. In the summer of 1984 there was no escaping that album while living in the heart of Bruce Country (not only did Springsteen and I have the same history teacher in high school, but he recorded his classic album Nebraska in the house that my friend Doug lived in). I hated all of it. With his bandana, ripped flannel shirt, dopey grin and cheesy videos the verdict was in: Bruce was a meathead, as stale and uncreative as the kids at school who wore his t-shirts. He couldn’t touch the heady music I was trying (failing) to emulate at the time: The Who, ELP, Yes, King Crimson and the like. That was REAL music, let me tell you!

Like the narrator in “Born to Run” I ran out of my dead end suburb desperate and with no plan for what came next. I landed in a New England college town full of self importance and left-wing political anger (thank you, Ronald Reagan), trying desperately to forget where I came from. It was then, ironically, that I started to see Springsteen as more than a face in People Magazine. With distance from home I could hear him now. As I immersed myself into his first three albums I realized I knew the characters in his songs: the derelict kids roaming beach towns and the romantics yearning for something better, looking for meaning. I grew up and lived with those characters. I saw myself, too. It was a new way to listen to music for me: he wasn't trying to sing to us, but about us. It was like Uncle Bruce putting his hand on my shoulder and saying “Kid, it’s OK. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. Now put away your copy of Close to the Edge and let’s get down to business.”

When I got to Springsteen’s fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, I found it very different than its predecessors. It was hard and claustrophobic, with stripped down arrangements that contrasted from the long meandering narratives and grandiose arrangements of his first three records. Gone was the romance and escapism, the wacky adventures of people like Hazy Davy and Crazy Janey, and the Dylan-esque ramblings of songs like “Blinded by the Light.” At 28 Springsteen’s message was clear: time to grow up, boys and girls. It’s a cruel world, so what are you gonna to do about it? This was some serious shit that I was not up for.

There were other problems. I didn’t care for its radio friendly 3:50 songs, it’s downtrodden and depressed characters, and its caveman rock arrangements. Songs like “Racing in the Streets”, in which the main character glorifies illegal drag strip competitions, typified my indifference toward the album. Ugh. Who cares!

Still, I tried to listen to Darkness every once in a while and even brought it with me when I studied in South Africa at the University of Fort Hare in 1996. It was just six years after the end of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela had been president for two years and hope was in the air. For the first time Fort Hare, a formerly segregated black university, was accepting exchange students from the U.S. and Europe. I was one of 10 white students amongst thousands of Africans from places as far away as Eretria. Many South African radicals had attended Fort Hare over the years, including Mandela. It was an amazing time in their history that I was lucky enough to be around for.

It was here of all places that I had a Bruce moment. I was walking across campus and “Something in the Night” came on my walkman (remember those?). The line “you’re born with nothing and better off that way” brought me back to some heated political debates in my dorm the night before. It had been getting late and we’d covered a lot of ground: polygamy, land redistribution, circumcision rituals (I’m not kidding), foreign investment, etc. Talk often came around to me because a lot of the guys held up America as a role model for democracy and race relations, which I tried (unsuccessfully) to play down. Finally a guy I’d had run-ins with before stood up and said he’d heard enough. He was utterly unimpressed with me, which in a way was refreshing but also made me feel like a turd. For instance, he’d complain that I hadn’t learned enough Xhosa, the language of the Western Cape, and often refused to converse in English in my presence. His friends called him stubborn and rude.

He told us he was glad he had been raised during apartheid, in a segregated township where bare necessities like running water were hard to come by, where the threat of a crackdown from the oppressive white-minority government loomed every day. The bonds of community and family, he said, were strengthened during those times. In white South African society, with its political, social and financial power, he sensed isolation and anxiety. “Now that I can cross the lines and see how whites live I don’t think they’re any happier than we are…less happy, in fact.” He saw the fruits of privilege as antithetical to true happiness, instead breeding discontent and a longing for more. I could hear Bruce singing “As soon as you’ve got something they send someone to try and take it away.” 

The optimism that many South Africans expressed at that time, after living so many years under Afrikaner rule, pulled songs like “The Promised Land” and “Badlands” out of FM anthem territory and into real life. I no longer heard naïve optimism or working class stereotypes. I started to see post-Apartheid South Africa, with multi-racial rule and the most inclusive constitution on the planet, as the Promised Land.

And like the characters on Darkness who hadn’t reconciled their hurt, I got glimpses of wounds still fresh from the Apartheid years. At parties at Fort Hare I’d often get taken under the wing of a former underground fighter, political prisoner or exile. They wanted to learn about the U.S. and I wanted to learn about them, an exchange I felt I got the better end of. As the alcohol flowed, however, the stories grew less glorious and more tinged with sadness as these guys relived their memories of war, detention, torture, the loss of loved ones; awful and sad tales. I’d never made sacrifices so big or known loss of that kind, and I could only guess how someone learns to live with it, or if they ever do. I’d walk around campus with heaviness from these conversations and hear these lines repeating in my head:

Everybody's got a secret Sonny
Something that they just can't face
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take
Till some day they just cut it loose
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town

Now, years later, I still think about my friends from Fort Hare when I listen to the recent re-release of Darkness. Funny how I had to travel to sub-Saharan Africa to find meaning in an album that’s supposed to be a meditation on the ups and downs of living in America. The songs ask really important questions: are you ready to grow up? Are you going to stay and deal with your life or run away? Can you reconcile where you came from, what you’ve been through and the baggage that comes with it? Now, as an adult and a father, I have to deal with these questions almost every day. Once I heard those questions being asked in those songs, and stopped fixating on the guy supping up his 59 Chevy for a drag race, I stepped into manhood. To me that distinction separates the boys from the men. I just wrote to my brother in Paris reminding him of this, asking that he someday explain to his son that the song “Racing in the Streets” is not about cars, but about how to live your life:

Some guys they just give up living
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racin' in the street

But I find this new trend encouraging. I love this format and believe in the power of telling a long form story with rock/pop music: the rock opera should not be underestimated. 

Since I was twelve I've been plotting various rock operas in my head. Lucky for you none of them came to light. So I have to ask myself: is there still a rock opera within me and what story could it tell?

Much to my surprise my hometown of Matawan, NJ was listed as one of the top 50 towns by Businessweek to "raise your kids for less." In fact it came in at 12. I must admit I am a little shocked by this. This is not the Matawan I remember.

The article lists the top 50 towns with the best family-oriented neighborhoods, the most affordable homes and the best schools. They say "a good measure of all the things a child needs to grow and prosper every parent should consider when choosing a new home: test scores, cost of living, recreational and cultural activities, number of schools, and risk of crime." To determine the best schools the authors took into account the number of public and private schools in the vicinity, how well the reading and math test scores at those schools stacked up against the state average, and any No Child Left Behind awards or grants received from the government. Oh yeah, they mentioned something about "diversity" as part of the criteria. Gotta put that in somewhere....

In the TOP 50....wow. Things sure have changed since I was a kid. Still, recent visits show another side of "12" that the article doesn't talk about. Businessweek failed to mention the massive sprawl that's spreading in Matawan and Monmouth County. The authors seem to value open green space as an important part of the picture, but if this is the case how the hell did Matawan come in at 12? What I've seen there and in surrounding towns the past few years is farm lands, woods and fields replaced by cheap condos, one on top of the other with little or no green space. Sure, this happens everywhere. Development happens. Houses get built. Schools get built. Businesses are created. But there seems to be no long term sustainable growth plan in place. The policy seems to be "build wherever we can, as cheaply and as crowded as possible." Aesthetics, land preservation and common sense do not apply. Does Businessweek consider overdevelopement a "cultural activity"?

It was no surprise to me that several Monmouth County mayors were found guilty of bribery and conspiracy a couple of years back, in collusion with developers, construction firms and even mafia to ease restrictions and zoning laws so more and more crappy homes could be built. The Feds busted them well after the money changed hands, the farms were dug up and the foundations poured. Businessweek might have mentioned that. Great place for kids. I guess the risk of white collar crime doesn't register on their crime-o-meter.

Hard to think about Matawan that way, as "12". When I grew up there my parents had just fled New York City in a white flight panic, hoping "12" would be a safe haven from what the city had become for them: too black. They weren't alone in the Flatbush Diaspora. It seemed all the families I knew left Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Jersey City or Newark for the promise of safer streets and quiet nights. In my neighborhood, Strathmore, there were three styles of houses repeated over and over again: the Rancher, the Country Clubber, and the Cape. This uniform and non-descript design, created by William J. Levitt of Levittown fame, was monotonous and had no character. Coming home from work at night you could easily pull up to the wrong house, open the wrong door, and sit down to eat with the wrong family. When I think of Strathmore now it reminds me of the planet Camazotz in "A Wrinkle in Time", where "all objects and places appear exactly alike as the living are forced to conform by an unseen and menacing force."

Now all their kids are moving back to Brooklyn and renovating brownstones.....funny.

When I think of Matawan schools I think of my senior year in high school when our teachers worked without a contract and the students staged a walkout in protest.  Massive budget cuts, programs slashed....you know the drill. This seemed to happen in "12" every few years.

I remember being in 2nd grade and barely able to read. My teachers didn't notice. "12" schools at their best.

I think of the racially charged fights of the 1970s between kids in Strathmore and black kids from Cliffwood Beach, another neighborhood in Matawan.  I remember a mob of kids on our front lawn coming to beat the shit out of my brother. I think of hoodlums bred from suburban malaise. I think of my other brother smashing the glass of a pinball machine at Shop Rite out of pure boredom or frustration or maybe because he saw "Tommy" the week before. Vandalism was the recreation in Matawan back then. 

12 in the top 50 places to raise your kids for less. Well, I can tell you I was raised there with less. Go Matawan.