My Top 2000 Songs #1154: On The Dark Side

Eddie & The Cruisers, the 1983 film about the titular fictitious New Jersey bar band, was only so-so; but the soundtrack, written & performed by real-life Northeastern bar band John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, was pretty solid. Whether that's because of, or despite, sounding a lot like a Bruce Springsteen tribute band is hard to say. But inescapable Bruce parallels aside, several of the tracks are indisputably great, most notably the anthemic three-chord fist-pumper "On The Dark Side," a song that practically begs to played in a dive bar on the Jersey Shore with a handful of drunken patrons shouting along.

Some of my enduring love of the song is strictly personal. I remember watching this on VHS in my college dorm freshman year, and then seeing the band when they played a party on campus, so the album, and particular this song, is imprinted with some great memories, albeit memories rendered pretty damn hazy thanks by the passage of time and the substantial consumption of Rolling Rock.

From the film:

John Cafferty video:

Cafferty live:

Covered by Corey Taylor of metal band Slipknot:

Seems like a good excuse to share my playlist of Fake Bands!