Well, it’s past midnight in Boston and time just creeps
Something like one-thirty in the morning
Heat’s on, wife’s gone, can’t get no sleep
And the weather outside is thunderstorming
I was gonna hit the road at the crack of dawn
But there’s no sense in laying here and waiting
So I shake a leg and shake off a yawn
Jump into the car and start the engine cannonading
Well she ain’t no fifty-nine Cadillac, Jack
She ain’t no classic-ass fifty seven Chevy
They say she burns rice, I think “they”’re full of shice
‘Cause she takes me to places unreached by those heavies
And this morning she’ll take me far away from this place
Where the only direction is backed into a corner
No more wild race, no more disgrace
And four more hours before I slip across the border
Full tank of gas and the oil changed
Fistful of quarters for the toll change
Got the stereo cranked and blasting through the roof
With my favorite rock’n’roll bands
Lightning and thunder surround me
Like hell breaking loose all around me
Well it don’t matter ‘cause my old world shatters
and my enemies scatter as I’m headed
down to Jughandleland.
Well, I ain’t ever worked no magic and I ain’t no rat
But I slipped the state line just the same
I may be the new guy here but I know where it’s at
And I’m ready to play this game
No sleek machines with today’s gasoline
All the new boxes look alike
With all the old cruisers on the golden oldies scene
I’m prob’ly better off with a new bike
Yeah, a true nature’s child, born to be wild
Rendezvous with the midnight gang
Yeah, for awhile I can make this my style
In two-bit dives and underground hangs
This is the life I’ve been aching and hurting for
Twelve years of exile on my sleeve
Rock’n’roll street life on the Jersey Shore
Though it’s all changed, I still believe
The circuit’s dead and the kids don’t care
About their old man’s pickup scenes
The music’s changed and so’s the hair
Everything’s gone mean and extreme
The poets and visionaries
Have buried their heads in the sand
Their voice are mute and their sound is muffled
Down in Jughandleland.
Twenty-four years since I started this voyage
And I’m still counting the white lines
Through blocks and freeze-outs I finally got the courage
To look for Destination 99
Though the freedom of speed gets snarled and snagged
In a million mundane commutes
I won’t be broken or bagged or bound and gagged
By the cynics who would silence my truths
And what was true then is still true now
Though stomped into the ground by the punks
I’ll find it and speak it anyway, anyhow
Even if I have to sift through the rubble and the junk
And so tonight in my beat-up old box
I’m headed to I don’t know where
To hear some band out of time whose music still “rocks”
That I know I’ll find out there
And from the parkway to the Turnpike to the steel graveyard
From the bombed-out back roads to the boulevards
From those in cars to make a living to those living in their cars
And from those never-grown-ups still flashing their guitars
The desperate and pathetic
Still try to make their stand
Wounded, killed, and resurrected
Forever and ever in Jughandleland.
©2023 The Hesh Inc.
The story of this song is essentially the same as yesterday's, only that this version is even more blatant in its Bossiness (albeit one verse shorter) than the first version. The first verse is the same as the other version, but then it takes a left turn (via jughandle, of course) deep into Bruce territory. Although the sentiment expressed in it is just as true, I left it out of the Soul In Exile canon because I prefer to speak in my own voice. (I had been considering a full album consisting of my explicit Springsteenisms for sometime in the future, but given my shift in attitude toward the man in recent years, that is not likely to happen.)