Jungleland

The rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night
And the magic rat drove his sleek machine over the jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The rat pulls into town, rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane
Those six lines likely represent my earliest childhood memory. Then came the kids flashing their guitars just like switchblades, the hungry and the hunted, the bedroom locked and those tunnels uptown.

Tonight I was on the nightly jaunt up to Alamo Square Park when "Jungleland" came on the iPod. This song's essentially responsible for everything that's followed in me: rock n' roll, film, photography, spirit, Americana. I can clearly recall the pianos, vocals, guitars, drums and fury bouncing off the walls of a house that often felt cold as ice. But not when Born To Run made its way onto the stereo, not in my head and not in endless romances that the song delivers. It was New Jersey. And New York. And everywhere. It was the onset of an idealism that will never be shed.

It's well past thirty years since I first heard this song and the rock n' roll perfection that is Born To Run and with each turn of the calendar, nothing even comes close. The Clash. The Stones. The Beatles. The Replacements. Nothing. It's the essence of rock n' roll. It's the essence of freedom. Of life.

"Outside the streets on fire in a real death waltz, between what's flesh and what's fantasy. Man, the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be." As Roy picked up the piano, I'd always recognize that everything was coming to a close. I would lie in bed crossing my fingers that the needle would move back to the beginning, and it usually did.

The hungry and the hunted, explode into rock n' roll bands