And Everybody's Wrecked on Main Street

It was forty years ago yesterday afternoon that I was unpacking a shipment of new releases in the record department of the store I worked. The number of folks who had dropped in before the truck made its regular delivery asking about one particular album was very impressive except.....

The album they were asking about was a local guy and when I say local, I was working in Manalapan, off Route 35 north of Freehold, and the local artist basically lived in the Boro as Freeholders called it. I wasn't one but was going out with somebody from there and she was a fan. Actually everybody all the way to the shore, blue hair and piney alike, was a fan.

They had good reason. A great live act, the local artist even then seemed to play all night and going to a show was like going to a marathon (but one with great music). Every one who saw him live knew he was going to be big, we just didn't know he was going to be BIG. But he did.

Forty years ago, yesterday, Greetings from Asbury Park, N. J.,  was released. I've never checked, and wouldn't know how, but I think every record shipped to any store in Jersey was gone before the store closed that night. He knew, we knew, and now four decades, so does everyone, everywhere. Nobody wins unless everybody wins.

"That blaze of noise, boys, he's gunnin' that bitch low to the blastin' point.
Rides headfirst into a hurricane and disappears into a point.
And there's nothing left but some blood where the body fell, that is, nothing left that you could sell.
Just junk all across the horizon, a real highway man's farewell."
-bill kenny