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So I get home from the Springsteen show and I'm buzzing, just buzzing and dancing and pacing around my college apartment not knowing what to do with myself. Head to the stereo. "Born in the U.S.A." goes in. Track 7. And ... What. The Hell. Is This?

Now, I had been to a few concerts in my young life. Of course, I knew that the recorded version could never really compete with your memory (especially a fresh one) of the live version. But I didn't expect this sort of difference. In place of the rocketing jangle I heard a few hours before was this gauzy mix of synthesizer and vocal moaning. Might as well have been a Perry Como record, as far as I was concerned. I turned it off, preferring the anthem in my brain.

Got the "Live 1975-1985" CD set a while later, as a gift from my future wife. Wow, a live version of "No Surrender." Yes. Finally, I can hear this song in its titanic glory without all that '80s studio ick. Disc 3. Track 11. And ... oh, man. A solo acoustic version? Could not believe it.

Thank goodness Bruce and Co. have continued to perform that version, the right version, almost every time I've seen them in the ensuing years. Each time with Bruce's three fingers in the air on that crucial line. The performance has never hit me as hard, but then there's nothing like your first time.

I've also come around on the "No Surrenders" encoded on my CDs. That quiet, acoustic take? I really like it now. There's a clarity of purpose there. Although stripped of bombast, it doesn't lack strength.

That live version is also stretched to nearly a 5-minute record, which means I can learn 66% more than the record Bruce is singing about. I think the numbers are right on that. Maybe not, seeing as I learned most of my math from rock songs. However, I am positive that 2+2=5, God is 7, and if 6 was 9, everything would still be OK.

Then there's that original recorded version. The song's still great and I've taught myself to ignore the synthesizers, the moaning, the slickness -- the same way I've trained myself to ignore all the Padme/Anakin scenes in "Attack of the Clones" and just enjoy the kick-ass lightsabering, car-chasing, clone-warring action-adventure stuff.

Despite all the '80s over-production (which has tainted more than a few Springsteen songs from that era), hope still comes busting through my speakers when I put on "No Surrender." I love the hope, the optimism, the victory in that song. It's something that is rarely glimpsed in Springsteen's songwriting from the onset of "Darkness" in 1978 to the reveal of "Magic" in 2007.

It was that sense of hope that nearly kept "No Surrender" off that blockbuster LP, because “you don’t hold out and triumph all the time in life," Springsteen wrote in his book, "Songs." "You compromise, you suffer defeat; you slip into life’s gray areas." True, but there was plenty of compromise, defeat and slipping in the rest of "U.S.A.," something bandmate "Little" Steven Van Zandt surely understood. Van Zandt "argued that the portrait of friendship and the song’s expression of the inspirational power of rock music was an important part of the picture,” Springsteen wrote.

So what did we learn today?

We learned that, despite the presence of many who do not, some old guys rock.

We learned that you don't have to compromise your ideals just because you're getting older, you don't have to buckle under the weight of "middle-age" and that you're never too old to feel young.

We learned that there's a reason Little Steven is called Bruce's "right"-hand man.

And we learned to never underestimate the educational value of a 3-minute record.


Rocksposure.com welcomes Bryan Wawzenek to our musical quest of Showcasing the Unshowcased. A true musical explorer, Bryan will be contributing artcles and features on a regular basis. Have a question or a record with a 3 minute lesson that you would like to be taught? Email him at Wawzenek@Rocksposure.com

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