The Promised Land

It was August 25, 1978.  I had just graduated from High School a few months earlier, and that summer I spent as much with friends and family who would soon become relegated to phone calls and letters.  My best friend Tom and I were sitting around his house listening to the radio, when the DJ announced that there were still a few tickets left for the Bruce Springsteen show at the New Haven Coliseum.  It was only about an hour's drive, so we jumped in Tom's Cougar and headed south on I-91.  We bought a couple of "restricted view" seats on the left side of the stage, blocked only by a couple of lighting cables.

I had been a Springsteen fan for about three years, starting with "Born to Run" in 1975, and working my way back to his first two records.  After a three-year hiatus, he released "Darkness on the Edge of Town" in the summer of 1978.  I can remember riding my bike to the department store to buy it the first week it was on sale.  I liked the music and knew the songs, but was totally unprepared for what the next three and a half hours would be like.

I had been to a number of concerts in my teenage years, but the raw energy and emotion from Bruce and the E Street Band was like nothing I had ever seen or heard.  A long intro set, then an intermission, an even longer second set, and two encore sets left my head spinning and my ears ringing.  Anyone who was lucky enough to see them in those early, formative years knows what I'm talking about.  And anyone who didn't, well, you missed out.

Two weeks later, I headed off to college to get myself an education.  That was followed by graduate school in Miami, and then my first job.  During that time, I managed to catch another Springsteen show at the Orange Bowl on the "Born in the U.S.A." tour.  That prompted me to take my first guitar lessons, and I learned to play many of the same songs that I loved listening to.  Over the next 20+ years, Bruce would continue to make music, and I'd continue to listen and learn.

Fast-forward to last Friday night at the Arco Arena in Sacramento, California.  Another concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.  Nearly 30 years and 3,000 miles removed from my first one, I sat there in the darkness as the band took the stage.  The organ intro began, and I quickly recognized the opening number.  They had played "Spirit in the Night" at the New Haven show, and for those brief, few moments, I felt like I was 17 again, with my whole life ahead of me.

So much has changed over the past 30 years.  The New Haven Coliseum has been torn down. Mercury no longer makes the Cougar.  Both Tom and I had married our college sweethearts; both of those marriages had ended in divorce.  But probably the most important change was that in 2008, I am living in an America that is not the same country that I grew up in.

Bruce knows all about this, introducing two songs with references to how disastrous the past 8 years have been.  Listening to "The Promised Land" for the first time back in the summer of 1978, I could never have imagined how true those words would be as Bruce sang them last Friday night.

Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted.

That pretty much sums it up for me these days.  It's long past time that we blow away all the lies of the past 8 years.  And despite how much damage that George Bush has done to our country, I still believe that America can be The Promised Land again.  I also believe that the candidate who has the best chance of helping us get there is Barack Obama.

My first exposure to Senator Obama was watching his 2004 Democratic Convention speech.  The feeling was not unlike that first Springsteen concert in 1978.  His words really struck a chord with me, that "there is no white America, no black America, just the United States of America."  Does that mean Barack Obama is a rock star?  Maybe, and if so, what's wrong with that?  To all the Obama supporters on this site, keep up the good work.  And to all the others, I invite you to meet me in the land of hope and dreams.