Before the Show - March 2008
I am restless and excited, waiting for Monday night's Springsteen show at GM Place.
I was only five years old when I first heard Born to Run. From then and into my teens, Bruce was the voice of an older brother, a friendly South Jersey camp counselor to whom you could whisper your secrets in the dark.
The raspy voice and the ringing music explained the ways of the world and expressed my feelings when I didn't even know what they were. Cars, girls, loss, hope, desperation, exaltation.*
He wrote Born to Run when he 24. What was I doing at 24? Carrying books or trays of empty dishes. My two little girls pick The Rising out of a CD mix in the minivan, demanding more Bruce or louder Bruce.
La la - la la la la la la...
To the ears of babes.
You have to smile when you realize they get it, even at just 3 or 5.
The live Springsteen experience defines what rock music always espoused to be, and yet has always been elusive, lost just after Elvis was drafted. The marathon concerts are part revival act, part circus, part sermon.
Springsteen burst onto the disco ridden national scene in the 70's on the covers of both Time and Newsweek, and was promptly crowned the future of rock'n'roll.
Thirty years later, the musical lithium permeating popular music causes him to ask on his latest album, Magic, "Is there anybody alive out there?"
A question for the ages, and not a bad one, at that.
Monday's show promises to be a special evening for all in attendance.
A testament to the relentless experience of living a genuine life, words and music by the Boss.
I only wish I could bring the girls.
*Remember Madame Bovary?
"Has it ever happened to you, to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own sentiment?"
