some time shortly after i got back to minnesota i went to cheapo to remind myself how much i hate it. i ended up buying bruce springsteen's live 75-85, which i had always assumed was scarce and expensive based on a livejournal post i read many, many years ago (which, now that i think about it, was mostly about how awesome it was and how everyone should have it), but it is not. in fact, there are a couple copies at st. paul cheapo, so if you want one i guess you could look into that. anyway, i am seeing bruce springsteen for free on friday night (hoping to take the shamrock shuttle from o'gara's, for shits and giggles), so i have been acquainting myself with its 5 lps in anticipation.

standout tracks and occasional commentary:
- rosalita (come out tonight): not as good as this, but it's fucking rosalita.
- hungry heart: i always thought i hated this song, but it turns out that the paul beribeau cover album totally makes this song sound really boring and slow. it's awesome.
- two hearts: WOOOOOOO AMERICA!!!!
- badlands: fuckin' a, i love darkness on the edge of town. been spending a lot of time with it lately. totally rad.
- candy's room: i like this even more than badlands.
- bobby jean: this is my favorite springsteen song. see below.

a couple years ago, before i lost all interest in thrift store records, i was rooting around in the records and tapes at the rancho coastal humane society thrift store (great philosophy section in the bookstore, by the way) and found a tape labeled "bruce" on one side and "tom p" on the other. for some reason whoever taped it put "refugee" on a side otherwise full of the middle six songs of born to run, totally neglecting the two best songs on the album (thunder road and jungleland), and i could never get through the tom petty on the other side to see if the missing tracks had migrated over there, but my suspicion is no. at some point this summer, after digging up a copy of born in the usa at m theory in mission hills, i taped over the tom petty side with the b side of born in the usa (i was and continue to be absolutely enchanted by "bobby jean"). this past summer, when i couldn't take any more "beautiful girls" (top shelf jam, my favorite song of the summer despite what i may have said on market street in philadelphia, don't get me wrong, but by august it was time for some tapes), i listened to that tape, over and over, mostly the born in the usa side.

sometimes songs gain meaning because you can really relate to the lyrics about people leaving and having to chase after them but sometimes you just like them because you're sitting in your car next to the park on d street trying to watch the sunset but wanting to lie down in the driver seat of your car and hoping your friends will walk by on the sidewalk even though you know they'll never leave whatever den of iniquity they've adopted this week but you're afraid to call them because you don't really know where you stand but at least you have the tape in your car even though you want to cry and do some sort of stakeout outside rico's or e street. sometimes it's driving home from the che after feeling useless night after night, forgetting how things work and what to do, but sometimes it's something more, the latest nights at charlie's watching the live dvds over and over and then driving home thinking about the video for "glory days" and how you used to know everything about graig nettles and now you don't even care but you made some friends and they're pretty cool. mostly it's because they're good and universal and you feel like part of something bigger, which you never had when you were a lonely teenage shithead in your room. but bruce does that.

kelly and i had planned to meet at rico's at 10 am before i went to work and i was worried she was going to be late but for once she called and told me and since i had already planned on it we got there at basically the same time, give or take 15, which is what you have to expect with her. i stayed up late the night before making a mix cd, but scrapped it and just burned a copy of born in the usa and wrote a note about us. kelly, kevin, and andy were the first people to ever take me to rico's when i was 14 and kelly tried to use the atm but it was broken. this morning it was hot and i was wearing shorts and trying not to think about how jay the bro was going to tell me something weird at work, and the crushing enormity of kelly leaving forever and me leaving forever was kind of too much to bear but i kept it together. we cried in the parking lot but made it through the meal pretty well, spending an hour or so lingering over beans and rice and ice water and maybe a spanish crossword or the coast news or something. on the way to work i couldn't stop thinking about how four months was way, way too long for us not to do something really dumb together and then i had to change in the parking lot, which was much harder than i expected. i listened to "bobby jean" a lot and got really good at rewinding it so it'd be exactly at the beginning, which was great, and the lyrics made me think of the time kelly came to my house when i secretly went to washington, d.c., and my dad told her i went away and then things were bad and we weren't really friends and i listened to a lot of sports radio in the school parking lot.

this was supposed to be about the live boxset, but i guess when you try to write about bruce springsteen everything gets really big and crazy and encinitas becomes america and halfway through you get so into writing that you forget to flip over the record. on friday i hope he plays my favorite songs but he probably won't and i'm going to try to enjoy the songs off the new album but i probably won't. the tape is in my car, though, and unless my sister taped over it, it'll be there next time i'm sitting by the ocean hoping that my friends do terrible things to each other.