"Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen (from the album, Born in the U.S.A., 1984)
It's Memorial Day weekend in the You Ess of Eh, readers, and what better way to kick off the holiday festivities than with a loud, sing-a-long rock number that makes you want to put your hands together and clap like you're bombed on Budweiser listening to a cover band at a county fair. I heard this number in Big Lots yesterday, when I was indulging in one of the great national pasttimes--i.e. looking for useless crap to buy on the cheap--and I found myself bobbing my head, singing along under my breath, and thinking, "Damn, right. Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!"
This song offers the best of all the Whining Stranger's aesthetic preferences: pop musical earnestness (the high point of which is when the Boss, on the out-chorus shouts, "Come on now. Keep it rockin,' boys," as though he and the E-Street band are doing a special appearance at a tailgate party in your driveway); and a disaffected lyric about how, sadly, the good things never last. And if that weren't enough to make my heart swell with rock-and-roll love, recall that Bruce wears a Detroit Tigers cap in the song's video. (Which reminds me, it's Memorial Fuggin' Day weekend and the Tigers have the best record in baseball! Woo-hoo!)
So, go on. Live it up. Skip the X-Men movie. Stay home. Put the Bud on ice. Pull your speakers out into the backyard. Let the Springsteen blare. And don't forget to watch the Pistons open up a can of whoopass (I know, I know, I am so 2001) on the Miami Heat tonight.
God Bless America. And less than 1000 days now till Hillary's in office.
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