For You Original Stories and Photographs By Bruce Springsteen's Legendary Fans

For You Original Stories and Photographs By Bruce Springsteen's Legendary Fans
by Anthony Kuzminski


I’ve always been devotional and obsessive fan when it comes to music. Merely having the released albums has never been enough for me for certain artists. For the chosen few, I go over the deep end and need to have everything. One of the artists I follow religiously is Bruce Springsteen. While he was amongst the first artists whose albums I bought, my addiction to his music didn’t get the best of me until college. By this point, Springsteen had dismissed the E Street Band, had won an Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia” and was largely hibernating while still being among the world’s most respected artists. I can’t even pinpoint my exact watershed moment, but if I remember correctly, I felt an enormous void in my life and was continually looking for answers in films, books and music. One day, while perusing a used CD store, I magically found all of Springsteen’s albums that I had not yet bought on CD. I snapped them all up and later that day while listening to the dark, desolate and hopelessness of the characters on Nebraska, something snapped. I can’t even properly express what happened, but I felt as if there was someone out there who understood me, my feeling, my emotions and my struggles. As the disc spun its way towards a conclusion, it reinvigorated me and provided me with a “reason to believe”. From there I went on to collect every B-side and bootleg I could get my hands on. Listening to the album cuts wasn’t enough. I needed to hear the alternate and live versions that would one day validate my traveling hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles to be touched and inspired by this music. When you really love a certain artist, you find live versions of songs that have that extra bite that will leave a small scar on your heart. When you go back and eventually listen to the studio cut, in your head you can hear exactly where the crowds roars and voices congeal in a perfect concert moment. Ever since then, I’ve been compulsive when it comes to Bruce Springsteen and even though my devotion has waned in recent years, I still consider him an integral part of my musical experience.

Read the full review at UnRatedMagazine.com