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| From | "Drew MacDonald" <drewmacdonald@attbi.com> |
| Subject | Hornby & Thunder Road (was: Re: Favorite All-Time Videos) |
| Date | Fri, 16 May 2003 22:40:08 -0700 |
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Despite my interest in the subject matter and my admiration for Hornby's
work, I've been dragging my feet on picking up a copy of SONGBOOK, simply
because his publisher (Dave Eggers) is too cool to sell it through chain
bookstores like mine. (As with Eggers' own recent novel, you can only get
SONGBOOK at indie stores. Yeah, yeah, as someone who goes out of his way to
shop at indie record stores, I see Eggers' point, but having to disappoint
so many of my customers soured me on the gesture.)
But now I need to see what Hornby has to say about "Thunder Road," even if I
do have to actually buy a book without an employee discount!
Incidentally, the versions of "Road" that appear on the two Springsteen
cover discs in last month's Uncut magazine (by Badly Drawn Boy and Greg
Kihn) show me how invulnerable the song is. They ain't beauties, but hey,
they're all right. My favorites from the two discs are Steve Earle's
of-course-he-nailed-it "State Trooper" and the Hollies' MORish-but-gorgeous
"4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)."
Drew
> Moreover, I don't think Hornby was making a head/heart division (and I
know
> you're not absolutely saying that). To the contrary, I think there's a
lot
> of heart in some of his explanations. For example, he talks about how
> strongly he identified with Springsteen's "Thunder Road" when it came out,
> but the song has equal resonance to him now as a 40-something -- he notes
> that the lyrics take on a whole new perspective to him now.
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