Song of the Day: Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Streets"

When the New Year began, I made two resolutions.

One was to return all shopping carts to their designated dropping-off places.

The second was to start a daily feature on this blog to celebrate all of my favorite songs, accompanied by a video. All would be songs that meant something to me, or tied me to a scene from the past. For example, the first song I heard when I reported for boot camp at the Coast Guard Academy was Queen's "We Will Rock You," and I can't hear that song without reliving the sticky humidity and unspeakable fear of that Connecticut summer.

The first song I thought of was accompanied by another summer song that I was turned out to back at CGA, but at a happier time. It was the summer between sophomore and junior year, just before I would become an underclassman and (hopefully) strike fear into the hearts of the first-year cadets who would be arriving shortly. Back then, I only had a cassette-playing walkman, and that summer I spent listening to Bruce Springsteen's "Live/1975–85" box set, since the three cassettes were the only cassettes I owned. I would run by the Thames River in the twilight and listen to the cassettes over and over again. The song "Racing in the Street" is on there. Originally released on Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town" album, the live version is superior to the original version. The live version makes me think of summer, which is quickly approaching, and it makes me smile, though I have never raced a single thing in this life.

It also is a song about getting older, a familar theme that Springsteen has mined frequently. He never did it better than in this song.

Here is that song, with unfortunately only a still image attached: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZTQc0-d5lA

Here is another version, recorded more recently, that depicts the E Street Band performing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQqQxD021Y