I couldn't resist looking it up. Handsome Dick Manitoba was born in the Bronx as Richard Blum. No surprise. Rock has always been a business where you could succeed even if -- maybe especially if -- you were born in the downwardly mobile classes. My rock hero of heroes, Bruce Springsteen, had an angry bus driver for a father. If that doesn't prove your parents are not your destiny I don't know what could. I don't know if Bruce still tells stories in his shows -- I have seen him 15 times but even he is not exempt from my geezer rule. He used to tell a lot of them. One I heard at a show in Champaign, IL and which was captured on a bootleg LP (retro alert! lol) was about being in high school and coming home late one night. He said his father was sitting in the kitchen in the dark, smoking a cigarette. He talked about their conversation and how they always banged heads. When he told the story you could tell he had come to terms with his father's disappointments in life but had not forgotten. One of the things I like best about Bruce is he sees the sadness in life and chooses to stay positive. Anyway, that soliloquy was his intro to "Independence Day."
Well papa go to bed now it's getting late
Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now
Ill be leaving in the morning from st. marys gate
We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow
`cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too
But they can't touch me now and you can't touch me now
They ain't gonna do to me what I watched them do to you
So say goodbye it's independence day
Its independence day all down the line
Just say goodbye it's independence day
Its independence day this time
Now I don't know what it always was with us
We chose the words and yeah we drew the lines
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind
Well say goodbye it's independence day
All boys must run away come independence day
So say goodbye it's independence day
All men must make their way come independence day
Now the rooms are all empty down at frankies joint
And the highway she's deserted down to breakers point
There's a lot of people leaving town now
Leaving their friends their homes
At night they walk that dark and dusty highway all alone
Well papa go to bed now it's getting late
Nothing we can say can change anything now
Because there's just different people coming down here now
And they see things in different ways
And soon everything weve known will just be swept away
So say goodbye it's independence day
Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say
But wont you just say goodbye it's independence day
I swear I never meant to take those things away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpj2IwFULMhttp://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1434584/19980505/springsteen_bruce.jhtml
