The first time I heard a Bruce Springsteen song performed live was in 1979, when I was in the tenth grade and Larry Weinberger and A.J. DeStefano stood in our high school parking lot shouting all the words to "Thunder Road" from start to finish, zipping right through that tune at fast-forward speed. Eyes squeezed shut into brief black hyphens, shoulders pumping to an imaginary drum beat, they sang to an audience of ten or twelve sophomores sprawled against the hoods of their parents' old cars, their red and green and blue looseleaf binders strewn right side up and upside down like blackjack hands along the pavement at their feet...

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