THE RETURN OF THE BOSS CLUB

Back in the mid-eighties, right around when Bruce Springsteen went from being The Boss to being King of the Rock Universe, there was a club in Hollywood known as The Boss Club. Dedicated to Bruce, it was a dance club which played almost all Springsteen, all the time -- they occasionally tossed in something by a Springsteen band member or friend.

Now this may seem musically constraining to some of you, but for one night a week, this kind of Bruce immersion was a tremendous amount of fun. It wasn't the venue itself, which was a bar above a Japanese restaurant (later to become The Roxbury). The room lacked little amenities, like good lighting, first rate sound, and ventilation. But in that window when Bruce became super-hot, the club went with him. It was packed, not just with hard-core Springsteen fans, but with wannabes and those who heard it was cool. Even the requisite celebrities showed up -- I still remember the night Rob Lowe showed up with Fawn Hall.

It wasn't just the music, it was the people. They were people like us, with a passion for Springsteen. You like to sing along? This was the place to be, you could sing as loud as you wanted. People danced in what was often sweltering heat, but we didn't care. Cadillac Ranch played and we went right into the choreography Bruce used from the River tour. We made it our own, those of us who were there on a regular basis, turning it into a line dance and the highlight of the night.

Like all club scenes, it died out. Seth Marsh, who ran it, had the mailing list and promised us it would return.

There have been a couple of those revivals, usually when there was a tour, or maybe a new album. Of course, The Return of Tom Joad didn't exactly get people up and dancing. And the tour without the E Street Band was not greeted with any kind of enthusiasm.

Which brings us to last Tuesday and the latest revival. It was in a club in Hollywood, The Martini Lounge. The ventilation was good, the sound was excellent, and, remarkably, it was back. The enthusiasm was there, just like it was 1985. Fourteen years is a long time and many of us who returned were a little heavier, a little grayer, a little worse for wear. But when the music started, we were young again.

The familiar faces were there, Owen, like me a little older than the rest, but with the same enthusiasm as always, leading the group, hammering his air guitar like he never stopped. I am hoping he actually did stop -- it's considered normal at TBC, in real life, it's pre-adolescent at best. There were the sisters, Mary and Eileen, up from Orange County, looking, in the slightly dim light of the club like they had stepped out of a time machine. Paul (the black guy) was there as well -- for those of you who find the parenthetical identification odd, it's an even odder fact that Springsteen's audiences are 98% white. I have never understood this phenomenon, but it's a fact. And Paul is the only non-white regular and on most nights, the only black guy there. Which also means he gets to do all the sax parts in choreographed moments -- he looks more like Clarence Clemons than anyone else there, that's for sure.

Seth looked particularly pleased by this gathering of the flock. He was giving away door prizes and hawking t-shirts and greeting all of us like we were long lost relatives.

It was great to be back. I remembered my first visit to the club. Everyone was singing along to all the songs, to bootleg live versions and obscure B-sides (of course, to a true Springsteen fan, nothing is obscure), and I felt like I was back in high school and I had forgotten to study for the test. Now, we have survived whatever life has tossed at us and we were back again, not remembering the old days, but bringing them back to life. Let's rock.

-- For the ones who've got a notion, a notion deep inside, that it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive -- Thunder Road (1975)