Last night I was surfing YouTube videos and ran into two songs that played together are really outstanding in my personal preference scale. Meeting across the river running into Jungleland, Madison Square Garden, June 2000. It was a pre-digital video recording, a pre-digital era. Still, fantastic audio, and images that anyway managed to express the beauty and warmth of the songs.
You know, maybe it’s just the memory. Maybe it’s just because a week after that video I would have landed in America for my first, incredible time in New York City, to be at the MSG myself. Even now after all these years, I can clearly remember all the arena shouting together DOWN IN JUN…GLE…LAND at the first refrain. There in that moment I understood how some songs really belong to their hometown, where they were born. And Clarence’s saxophone solo right there to bring everyone and everything away. Danny on the organ accordion, the E Street still complete. THE band.
June 2000, college graduation still fresh in my hands, life opened in front of me with an infinite series of possibilities, old roads to leave, new roads to travel. Pre-digital era, and maybe yes, it’s just the memory.
But I think that thanks to Eddie with his need for a ride and to the Rat gunned down by his own dreams, some bands will always explode into rock’n’roll.
