They were born to run

[Mousetoescamper]

Posted in honor of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz!

I've seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band but once. The show was held on April 12, 1976, at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena, a 4,000-seat hockey rink in Johnstown, PA. That's my ticket stub pictured below.



On that day I was 19 years old and enrolled as a journalism major at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. The Born To Run album had been released in August 1975, eight months before the show. I was wrecked on wine and weed, but remember the band's performance of BTR, which was their current "hit." Before the BTR album was released, my only Springsteen album had been The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. I loved that album and was disappointed when I first heard the single of "Born To Run" on a local Top 40 station. At the time I thought the band had done gone commercial.

There might be an audience recording of the show, but it's not turned up in any of my searches. Too bad about that, but I did find the following recording of the band from later that year at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. While identified only as a 1976 show in Pennsylvania, I've confirmed that this is a clip from a recording of the October 27, 1976, show at the Spectrum.

[amerikat]

1. I was an early adopter of his sound.

Grew up in Central NJ probably not 25 miles from his home in Freehold NJ. I was a teenager when I first heard him. Local Philly radio stations played him even before his first record came out(Greetings from Asbury Park). I was hooked on that big sound.

A couple of songs he played back then that never made it to an album that I know of anyway.
one was Dinah won't you blow your horn another was Santa Anna. Wish I could find them somewhere.

The Wild the Innocent was next and it was so much more polished and a had a certain energy to it. Loved it.


Got to see him many times in concert. Trenton War Memorial, saw him a couple of times there. Rutgers University, Places in Philly(Grendel's Lair?) and the Rutgers's main Campus in New Brunswick and a couple of other central NJ venues.

Agree. It is a great song for Harris/Walz
Pretty sure Bruce would let them use it as a campaign song.

[Mousetoescamper]

2. I feel lucky to have seen him so early in his long career

While playing guitar in a band in Florida in 1980, I got to know a drummer from NJ who said he knew Springsteen before the time of Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom. As he put it, when Springsteen was "a pimple-faced kid living in a chicken shack." He was a great drummer but seemed to be jealous and bitter that he was stuck playing in cover bands while Springsteen had become quite famous and beloved.


There's been some buzz about the campaign's reaching out to Gen Z with contemporary music at rallies and with other generational touchstones. While BTR might not appeal to Gen Z, there are about 70 million of us of a certain demographic who'll remember the song.


Thanks for your personal blast from the past!

[amerikat]

3. He did well. He's on our side of the great divide

Happy to have him.