My Time

I spend a large amount of time involved with my work and my kids. The free time I get is like this evening, after nine, when everyone's asleep and I can relax and prepare for tomorrow. I spend a disturbing percentage of this time online, writing this or wasting time at the AVclub. (Goodreads takes up some energy too... sites that talk about books or movies are dangerous to discover.)

I'm spending a lot of this evening catching up on the wonderful collection of Bruce Springsteen that Herc gifted me.
After getting past how eerily similar he looks to my father, I can delve into stacks of the Boss from the seventies.

(Like George Lucas and certain members of Metallica, it is common knowledge that Bruce was kidnapped halfway through recording Born in the USA and taken to another planet. He now hangs out on the beach watching "Star Wars Seven: The Galaxy Sees True Awesomeness" while snuggling beautiful alien women.)(For your own sake, never mention the horror of the prequels in my presence. If it don't have Lando, dammit, it ain't Star Wars!)(Lando's not a system. He's a man.)


Therefore the current version that will play the Super Bowl in a few weeks is not the Boss. For the sake of convenience, to avoid confusion when referencing the different musicians, we can call him the Temp. The actual Boss, however: his early work is downright amazing. I live version of Dylan's "I Want You" alone is worth building a time machine to travel back to 1975. It's strange to here this music and think that I wasn't even born yet when he was playing onstage in Ohio. My parents were 100 miles away attending high school.

I never want to be one of those people who thinks everything prior to now is somehow better to now. I hope I'm not too guilty of that. I do find myself being gently tugged to the past more lately. I don't know if it's a slight bump, or a real trend. I just cleared out my hard drive, and noticed that I am not listening to anything made in the 90s or later. Granted I listen to a lot of jazz and classical, which skews the numbers a bit. My hardcore and punk is not getting played, though, and hasn't been for a few years. Maybe I will come back to it: I still feel as though I like it, I just don't want to hear it. I imagine many people my age are like that with the jazz and classical on their ipods, I suppose. They load it up, intent on listening, then go for the punk. I put the Ebullition catalog on mine, thinking it'd be fun to hear... then skip to Bach when I actually have the time to listen to music.

The Boss is starting Jungleland. That's my cue. (Danny Federici is amazing on that song, God rest your soul.)