{"id":6402,"date":"2014-10-10T17:33:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T23:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=6402"},"modified":"2014-10-10T17:33:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T23:33:59","slug":"friday-evening-videos-im-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/10\/friday-evening-videos-im-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Evening Videos: “I’m on Fire”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you’ve forgotten (or never knew), Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. <\/em>was an incredible powerhouse of an album. Not only did it mark a change toward a more commercial sound for The Boss, it generated a mind-boggling seven<\/em> top-10 singles (out of 12 total tracks on the album) and kept Springsteen’s name on the Billboard<\/em> Hot 100 for nearly two years, from May 1984 to March of 1986. It remains Bruce’s best-selling album, even though he’s one of the more prolific artists out there (he’s released 11 other records in the decades since Born in the U.S.A., <\/em>up to and including this year’s High Hopes<\/em>), and it is one of my personal favorites by any artist.<\/p>\n

This week’s selection for Friday Evening Videos is a song called “I’m on Fire,” which was the fourth single from Born in the U.S.A. <\/em>It was kind of an odd candidate for a single, in my opinion, but perhaps its quiet wistfulness was calculated to be a palate cleanser following the upbeat pop sound of “Dancing in the Dark,” the urgency of “Cover Me,” and the outraged social commentary of the album’s title track.<\/p>\n

I don’t have any particular anecdote or memory connected to this song; it’s simply one I have always liked, especially in the wee hours when I’m the only one awake in the house and something deep inside me is crying out for something<\/em> that I often can’t even name. Surely I’m wasn’t the only angsty young man back in the Awesome ’80s who thought the line about a knife, edgy and dull, cutting a six-inch valley through the middle of someone’s soul, was written specifically about him. <\/em>As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my relationship to the song has changed, but if anything, that relationship has only grown deeper and richer. It speaks to me now of a much wider range of things I feel angsty about… and that damn knife cuts more deeply than ever during those long, dark hours between midnight and dawn.<\/p>\n

One quick thought on the video: like the song, it’s simple and no-frills, and it, too, has long been a favorite of mine, largely because of the car Bruce is driving. That’s a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, if you don’t know your vintage steel. My dad has a red ’57, which he bought when I was in middle school. It was the first of our “collector fleet,” and is the only one I still feel nervous about driving…<\/p>\n