You can take this vivid and bone-honest autobio and consider it many ways. Maybe it’s the one legendary, never-ending show, where the rarities and greatest hits all get roared out with E Street at Mach 10. Maybe you can take however long it took you read, let’s just say four days divided by four hours per concert, and that makes 24 shows. Pretty freakin’ cool, really.

‘Cos the Bruce here is the Bruce there onstage. Prowling. Laughing. Cursing. Throwing light on America’s shadows and recalling St. Rose of Lima like it was yesterday and you were neighbors. Nah, not just neighbors. You were schoolmates. Best men and bridesmaids on the same Main Street, ripped and robbed of its color and soul. A broken concrete postcard only a few managed to escape intact.

It’s a voice like Guthrie and Flannery O. It’s a song you watch evolve from the first tentative chords to a full blown anthem. It’s a song that has you in it, and how many songs can you sing like that?

– Mike Jurkovic