summer album of the week: 06/06/09
bruce springsteen: darkness on the edge of town (released june 1978)
“Summer’s here and the time is right for racin’ in the street” proclaims Bruce Springsteen at the halfway point of an album that was pure rock ‘n’ roll salvation. Admittedly, he sings the lyric (and the tune it serves as title to) not as a blast of summery cheer but as a requiem. From the anthems (Badlands, Prove It All Night), to the Black & Decker rockers (Streets of Fire, Adam Raised a Cain) to laments that chime with Phil Spector-esque grandeur (the extraordinary title tune), Darkness was the album that made good on the pop promise of 1975’s Born to Run. It had to. Ensnared in managerial lawsuits, Springsteen was unable to record in Born to Run’s immediate aftermath. By 1978, the litigation lifted. Thus, The Boss returned and Darkness became a summer epic.
I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.