While the first person predominated on his previous albums, on Darkness he makes greater use than ever before of the second person. Part of the power of the record also lies in a new narrative device that Bruce employed on Darkness. How was it that this album by a skinny kid from Jersey had so much to say to me?īruce adopted a new language on Darkness, switching from the language of the tragic, the epic, to a tougher and leaner language informed by Hank Williams and Flannery O’Connor. It wasn’t the first Springsteen album I ever heard, but it was the first that I felt was my own. “ Badlands, you gotta live it every day…”ĭarkness on the Edge of Town-Bruce Springsteen’s fourth studio album-was released in June of 1978. He was only stunned, but the car was totaled. My father had been driving the Datsun-chrome fixtures glinting immaculate in the California sun-on his way from work, when out of nowhere, he was T-boned by a distracted driver. And after he came back, he drove that car everywhere.
#Sea of darkness album plus
Because it was cheaper, he drove it all 2,000 plus miles down to Mexico and into his own past, winding down the California coast and into Central Mexico-the opposite route of the one he had taken over two decades earlier, when he first came to the United States. When my father had finally done all the work he could, it was time for the car to get a brand new paint job-fire engine red. The Datsun’s inner workings seemed like magic to me I remember how it would hum to life in the hot afternoon sun, the hood of the car warm under my fingers.
As a child, I knew cars were the realm of men, and at best I would hang nervously around the periphery when my dad was working, afraid to get too close.
The 510 is a popular model for collectors because its parts are easily interchangeable, making it a simple matter to fix and upgrade, and soon he had the L16, four-cylinder engine working like new. When my father wasn’t working-which wasn’t often-he would invariably be under the hood of the Datsun, or driving to the junkyard to find spare parts. But soon, as more and more replacement parts were needed, our driveway seemed to pile up with rusted Datsuns-one, two, three cars. My father worked three or four jobs at a time we were a working-class immigrant family, living in the California Bay Area this was prior to the loss of our home to foreclosure and my father being laid off, meaning we still had a home, with a two-car garage, and therefore space for his cars. When I was a boy, my father bought a white 1970 Datsun 510.
“ For all the shut-down strangers and hot rod angels…”īruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town is the album I have listened to more than any other.
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