Springsteen Responds to Jersey Shore Tragedy

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bruce Springsteen grew up in Freehold, N.J. He made his mark along the Jersey Shore, particularly in Asbury Park.

That's where one of TheStreet's editors, Carlton Wilkinson, lives. Carlton finally got back online Thursday, thanks to backup power provided by a neighbor. He published an excellent article earlier lauding Target (TGT) and privately held Wegman's for their swift, organized and generous responses to Hurricane Sandy.

I've never been to the Jersey Shore, but seeing what Sandy did to it tears my heart out. In selfish moments, I kick myself for not visiting Asbury Park when I had the chance, thinking it will never be the same again. It's Mecca for Springsteen and E Street Band fans.

But, I quickly come back to thinking about what people who live along the Shore have had to endure, and are still enduring.

Over the last week, N.J. Gov. Chris Christie gave politicians a good name.

He not only united with his "opposition," President Barack Obama, he spoke from the heart. Everything I have seen from Christie this week, whether it's the now-famous I don't give a damn about the election soundbite or intense proclamations that New Jersey will recover, mirrored the response I expect from the people I know who live in the tri-state area.

We hadn't heard anything from Springsteen ... until last night.

Bruce postponed a Rochester, N.Y., show earlier in the week because of Sandy. He played it last night. Courtesy of Backstreets.com and YouTube, here's what Springsteen had to say before performing My City of Ruins:

We wish you a happy Halloween, but we are a rock 'n' roll band from the Jersey Shore, and tonight we carry a lot of sadness in our hearts. This was originally a song about my adopted hometown struggling to get on its feet -- it struggled for 25 years, a quarter century, while we watched for Asbury to come back. And we are very proud to say over the past decade, it has risen up and flourished in a way I wasn't ever sure I'd see in my lifetime. And it will do so again!
We're a band that you can't separate from the Jersey shore -- still basically a glorified bar band ... at your service! So we're gonna do this tonight from our hometown to your hometown. We'll send this out to all the people working down there: the police officers, the firemen and also to the governor, who has done such a hard job this past week.

My apologies for the lady singing along in the background, but such is the randomness of bootleg recordings. That aside, this is of pretty good quality.

Springsteen will play a Hurricane Sandy benefit, along with the E Street Band, Sting, Billy Joel and others Friday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC.

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Rocco Pendola is TheStreet's Director of Social Media. Pendola's daily contributions to TheStreet frequently appear on CNBC and at various top online properties, such as Forbes.