Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Dan McLaughlin. Dan is a senior editor at National Review and you can find his work, well . . . here! Just click on that tab over there, it’s not hard to figure out! Find him online at @baseballcrank on Twitter.

Summer’s here and the time is finally right for racing in the street. Yes, Political Beats is finally throwing its arms around the single most-requested artist in its three-year history: Mr. Bruce Springsteen, an artist who achieved a modest amount of fame during the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s (and most likely the ’20s as well). Who is Bruce Springsteen? Well, if you only know Springsteen from his years of mega-stardom and commercial ubiquity during the Eighties then you’re missing out on a long, winding artistic evolution that he underwent during the Seventies, the decade that Jeff for one asserts was truly his. From “the new Dylan” to Van-Morrison-meets-the-Jersey-Shore to The Future Of Rock And Roll to dusty roads littered with broken dreams, Political Beats takes you on a lovingly detailed tour of Bruce Springsteen’s evolution, over the first eight years of his career, into The Boss. Outtakes? Obscure live performances? Surprising amounts of Danny Federici on accordion? This episode has it all, a story about a guy in a town full of losers pulling out of there to win.

Part one of two.

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