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W’s parents weren’t able to use their Bruce Springsteen* tickets for this past Saturday, so they gave them to us.

I was hesitant to take them for several reasons, including:

• I don’t really know any Springsteen songs, except for the famous ones.  And by famous, I mean it has to be mainstream famous.  W looked at me with disgust and disbelief when I told him I didn’t know what song was “Thunder Road”.  He didn’t believe me, assuming I knew the song, but not the name. But then he pointed it out to me when it came on the radio, and I swear, it did not ring any bells. When a Springsteen song comes on the radio, it’s kinda like white noise to me and I don’t absorb it. Kinda like when sports radio is on, then W comes back into the car after filling up gas and asks me “who just scored?”  Uh… there’s a game on?
• Even the songs I DO know, I only know the chorus.  And as I found out at the show, I didn’t really know those, e.g., I knew the “… born to run!” part, but didn’t know what people were saying when they pumped their hands in the air (“Tramps like us!”, I found out later)
• I feel really bad taking hard-to-get tickets for something I know others are so passionate about.  Just knowing there are people who would DIE to go to the show, and here I am, a less-than-interested participant who’d like to be catching up on “So you think you can Dance”  instead makes me feel guilty. It stems from working  to get tickets so aggressively WAY back when the Mets were in World Series contention.  I worked a random connection to get tix for W, but every game ticket was a nail biting crap shoot.  And then there was a coworker who wasn’t even a Met fan getting plum tickets to every game because her dad had corporate seats.  Really really f’n annoying.
• As a general rule, I don’t like concerts.**  I lose interest extremely quickly.  The exception to this is Billy Joel, who I could see every day for a month and still show up enthusiastically.  And I did have an amazingly fun time at a Bon Jovi concert at Giants Stadium a couple years ago.  But Billy Joel has yet to make a song I don’t like, and singing “Living on a Prayer” with a stadium full of people while gorgeous Bon Jovi is flashing those pearly whites after hours of tailgating is just something special.  He’s like a fine wine, that guy.

I didn’t see the actual tickets until after we were inside the turnstile. And then I had a minor heart attack when I saw the face value. It was a strategic move on W’s part, as I would have scalped those suckers so fast and got me some sushi and Blue Ribbon bread pudding.

I think it’s funny to play “guess who twittered what” on our Twitter feed from the concert:

@dahomeoffice Bruce I don’t care about Elvis costello unless he’s singig Veronica where’s Billy?11:38 PM Nov 7th from Echofon

@dahomeoffice love glory days, hate that it was dedicated to yanks 10:41 PM Nov 7th from mobile web

@dahomeoffice This guy needs to take a page from Billy Joel and play songs I like 10:30 PM Nov 7th from Echofon

@dahomeoffice 1 hour 15 into show and I know 2 songs so far 9:46 PM Nov 7th from Echofon

@dahomeoffice Help! stuck @ Bruce Springsteen concert! If you’re one of people w joints in section 339 I’m in seat L2 please help 9:33 PM Nov 7th from Echofon

@dahomeoffice Springsteen at msg. Good old fashioned rock and roll9:27 PM Nov 7th from TwitterBerry

@dahomeoffice Hoping W scalps these springsteen tix instead of having me sit in MSG for 5 hrs OR hoping billy joel makes surprise visit7:06 PM Nov 7th from TweetDeck

As a special treat Bruce has been playing one album, in its entirety!, at each of his concerts this tour.  To further grab me into the show, Bruce announced that for our show he’d be playing one of his early albums that “didn’t sell well.”  DIDN’T SELL WELL!!  

Bruce singing from an album that “didn’t sell well” did not stop this guy from knowing all the words and having best night of his life.  He was high fiving everyone with each new song!

In summary:

• it was nice to be in such a high energy environment with happy people
• Bruce looks GREAT
• BUT playing a weak album was long and boring
• not to sound like a fogey, but it was really loud, which took emotion out of songs like “The Rising,” which I think he should have taken it down a notch for. I saw him singing it on “Storytellers” and I got weepy.  Take a cue from Billy Joel, whose live, slow, quiet “Innocent Man” makes everyone cry like a baby!
• the 10 minute final song with Elvis Costello would not end, even though the crowd really stopped getting into it
• I don’t think a guy like Bruce should have his final song be a non-original song, forget about sharing it with another star.  That’s second-to-last song fodder.  Take a cue from The Great Bon Jovi, who has you worried until the last moment that he’s not going to sing “Living on a Prayer”… then boy, does that place go nuts!
• Don’t end a concert at which you charge $115 for a cheap seat with saying, “We’ll be here tomorrow night!”   To me that was implying that tonight was just one show, he’ll continue with stuff tomorrow, hope you don’t miss it.  You don’t want to leave an expensive, sold out show thinking you’re going to miss out on the next night. That really rubbed me the wrong way.

Glenn Close shares my sentiment… here she is captured at the very same Bruce Springsteen concert via TMZ.com under the title “Glenn Close… Born to Nap”

* If you need any more supporting material to underscore my incompetence and general musical ignorance, when updating Twitter I had at first written “Bruce Springstein” – then W informed me that he was not a good New Jersey Jew.

**  My and W’s first date was actually a Def Leppard/ Bryan Adams concert in Coney Island.  That was a whole lotta fun too because of  1) how funny it is to be going to a Def Leppard/ Bryan Adams concert; and 2) Wow, Bryan Adams has more hits than you realize!  Unfortunately, this successful first date led poor W to believe I liked concerts, which led to a string of date misfires.  I even once went on a long tirade about how I hate Dave Matthews after driving past the venue.  I went into detail about how excruciating a Dave Matthews concert is to me, citing specific examples that I ranked up with some of the worst nights of my 20s.  And then poor W had to follow up with, “oh… well… actually… I have tickets for the show this weekend for us.”  Poor guy.

Wow, I’m a pain in the ass, aren’t I.