{"id":25700,"date":"2021-03-15T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=25700"},"modified":"2023-01-02T17:38:48","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T01:38:48","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-rockaway-the-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/15\/roll-of-the-dice-rockaway-the-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: Rockaway the Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a strange but genuine tradition in rock and pop music: the car crash song<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Its emergence and ascendance roughly paralleled the actual automotive fatality rate as it rose throughout the early decades of rock and roll, but it continues to this day despite safer vehicles and roads.<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen has made several contributions to this macabre genre, not all of which have yet seen the light of day.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, Bruce’s first entry was “Wreck on the Highway,<\/a>” a hat tip to what was perhaps the original car crash song, Roy Acuff’s 1942 song by the same name. (“Thunder Road” gets honorable mention for its title homage to Robert Mitchum’s 1957 car crash single, a choice that makes me question whether Bruce’s narrator was truly pulling out of there to win, but that’s a topic for a future Roll of the Dice<\/em> article.)<\/p>\n

But in the\u00a0Nebraska\/Born in the U.S.A.<\/em> era, Bruce seemed particularly fixated on the idea of a fatal car accident while on the run from the law–a counter-metaphor to the way he’d always used the open road to symbolize escape and potential.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago, we took a look at Bruce’s unreleased\u00a0Nebraska<\/em> outtake, “Losin’ Kind,<\/a>” which itself was sort of an early attempt at “Highway 29<\/a>,” so remarkably similar are the two songs. “Losin’ Kind” also bears a lot of similarity to “Highway Patrolman”; Bruce’s themes were so strong and fluid during that particular era that entire scenes, characters, metaphors and morals make their way across many of his songs, both released and unreleased.<\/p>\n

But while “Highway Patrolman” allows Frankie to escape unscathed and “Losin’ Kind” spares its narrator after a\u00a0very\u00a0<\/em>close call, Bruce gives no mercy to Billy, the main character in his 1984 Born in the U.S.A.\u00a0<\/em>outtake, “Rockaway the Days.”<\/p>\n