Bruuuuuuuuce!

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band
Scottrade Center
St. Louis, MO
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Section 303, Row B, Seat 11
$57

I had never seen Bruce Springsteen in concert. I tried to once, twenty years ago on the Tunnel of Love tour. My best friend A was a big fan and we waited in line. That was back in the days when we were 13 and couldn't go to a concert without a parent chaperone. Tickets were selling fast, and they made the announcement that only single seats were still available. We couldn't sit by ourselves. We left the line at that point and gave up.

I wouldn't call myself a huge Springsteen fan, but I own Born to Run and like a lot of his songs that get played on the radio. I also respected how he's handled himself through the years and I knew of his reputation as a great concert experience. When this concert was announced, I realized that Bruce was on my list of "artists I'd like to eventually see in concert" and Roy and I bought tickets. It was more successful this time - we aimed for the second price level and got our goal seats. They were halfway back, a good angle to view the stage, and in the second row of the mezzanine level.

The night before the concert, Roy hurt his back. It is nothing serious, but he still wasn't feeling right on Saturday. He wasn't sure, but didn't think he'd be comfortable enough to go to the concert. The whole rest of my day on Saturday focused on finding someone to take his ticket. I e-mailed my neighbors, Roy's family, our concert-going friends. I wasn't successful. For some people, we only had their work e-mail addresses. For others, they're not e-mail junkies like we are and just didn't check their mail. People who would be interested already had plans for a Saturday night. Maybe I'm a social pariah and they didn't want to go with me. I was feeling desperate and called some coworkers and some people I had already e-mailed. No luck.

I don't know why I was so upset about this. I go to concerts alone all the time. But those are for trips no one else wants to go on or obscure bands that no one else would like. But it's a decision I make in advance. I think it does say something about me and how few friends I've made since moving to St. Louis that I couldn't find someone interested in seeing such a popular mainstream artist like Bruce Springsteen, even at the last minute. I thought about not going and just spending the evening home with Roy watching a movie, but he convinced me to go. The irony is, the first time I wanted to see Springsteen I couldn't because I couldn't sit alone, and now I had two tickets together, but was still sitting alone.

I don't like driving at night when I'm tired and I don't like dealing with the traffic downtown, so I took Metrolink to the Scottrade Center. I'm pretty public transportation-savvy, but there has been some crime on Metrolink lately and even an assault at my station a few weeks ago. I decided as a single woman walking around that the only safe thing would be to travel when everyone else did; as long as it was busy, it would be safe. So I had to wait until the concert was over to take the train, even if I got tired or something. I also asked Roy to meet me at the station after the concert so I wouldn't have to walk alone to my car. I couldn't even get on the first Metrolink train because it was full of people going to the football game downtown. I again thought of just giving up and going home, but I was able to get on the next train.

We had plans of my selling the extra ticket, but it didn't work out. There were still tickets available, and the scalpers wouldn't buy a single ticket. Just as I walked inside the building, I saw a guy pleading for a single ticket. He was missing several teeth and was wearing worn out clothes. I wondered if he was homeless. I had the extra ticket in my pocket, and I wondered for a moment if I really wanted to sit next to this guy for the concert. I gave him the ticket. He thanked me and seemed pleasant enough. He never did come to our seats. I don't know where he ended up.

Once I got inside, I bought a tour program and a bottle of water. I got to my seat and pulled out a magazine. The audience was fun to watch. The floor section was general admission. I love this idea. It gives the big fans the opportunity to wait in line and see the concert from close up, and it kills scalpers selling those front seats. The stage jutted right out to where people were standing. There was a barricade about 1/3 of the way back on the floor to have some sort of aisle and crowd control. Most of the audience were in the first 2/3 of the floor, crowded tight. Further back, people had a lot more room. I bet those people could still see the stage fine and they had lots of room. I wouldn't mind seeing Yes from a spot like that.

The ticket said the show was starting at 7:30pm. It didn't. Around 8pm, the blinking advertisements around the arena were turned off and I put away my magazine. It didn't start then either. In fact, the show started at 8:45pm, a full hour and fifteen minutes after I was expecting it to. I remember looking at my watch around 10:45 and thinking if the show had started on time, it would be over by then.

The band finally came out and all was forgiven. The show was thrilling. They opened with a cover of "Then He Kissed Me" reworked lyrically as "Then She Kissed Me". (Dumb trivia: When the Beach Boys covered this song, they changed it to "Then I Kissed Her" while KISS did it was "Then She Kissed Me".)

Bruce Springsteen deserves every accolade he gets as a great concert performer. Most of my show highlights were involving his energy and his interaction with the audience, rather than the music itself. It just amazes me that someone as famous as he is leaned over the crowd and let them support him and push him back up. Or crouch down close enough to let them strum his guitar. There was a lot of mutual love and trust going between Springsteen and the people down on the floor.

The stage itself was minimalist, with most of its design set up to get close with the fans. There was a video screen on either side of the stage. The camera operators did a great job, keeping out of the way but picking up everything. I split my time watching the screen and watching the real life band about 50/50. I had the option of getting seats a couple sections over, a little closer to the stage. I preferred these, with a more "front" view. This position actually made it easier to see the video screen, so I'm glad I had these seats.

Roy and I bought a copy of his new album Magic. With being kinda familiar with those songs, I knew maybe half the songs played. I only knew a handful of songs well - Thunder Road, Badlands, Born to Run, Jungleland, Cover Me, Dancing in the Dark, Because the Night, Spirit in the Night, and another cover Twist and Shout. Even the songs I didn't know were so ... accessible and so uptempo and energetic, I enjoyed the whole evening.

The first big moment for me was actually a very intimate moment enjoyed by the whole crowd. Bruce pulled a young boy, maybe 7 or 8 years old, out of the audience during Spirit in the Night. He squatted down and had the kid sit on his lap and sang to him. The boy just nodded his head along to the music and acted like it was perfectly normal for this to happen. He even got to sing the "all night" backing vocals. Later on in the song, Springsteen walked to the right, to a part of the stage that jutted out into the audience. He lay down on the stage and then moved, still laying down, into the audience and let the crowd prop him up.

One big thing this tour was the requests. I had read about this in the paper before the show, where he was doing a number of requests at each show. Seeing it in work was really cool. It's not just that people held up signs with song requests. Springsteen made an announcement and collected a bunch of the signs and he laid the signs on stage. He'd choose a song and show the band, and then they'd play it. I didn't recognize most of these. It was so just cool that the show was so loosely structured to allow this, and that someone of Springsteen's stature would risk playing unrehearsed songs. There were six or so requests played, a few grouped together near the beginning of the show, one later in the set, and one in the encore.

For one song, Springsteen said the request was going to stump the band. He told us the audience was getting sassy and requesting songs they hadn't played live in 25 or 30 years. Stump the band, it also might be stump the audience. But not Bruce Springsteen. "I'm an elephant," he said, pointing to himself. "An elephant never forgets."

The cynical part of me could say it was easy to play all these requests because the songs are so straightforward, except for knowing the lyrics and vocal melody of course. I really only have two complaints about the show: one is the delay in starting and subsequent late night. The other was the sound. There were nine people up on stage, and I could clearly hear Springsteen's vocals and whoever was soloing at the time loud in the mix. Everyone else seemed to be playing rhythm, and it was a mushy muddy sound. Did there need to be that many people on stage playing rhythm? I know the E Street Band is iconic and all, but the only real musical moments that caught my attention were Clarence Clemons' solos. This concert was different from so many smaller ones I see because it was more about the energy and the give and take between Springsteen and the audience than about the music itself.

The main set ended around 11pm. I was getting tired, but I did not want to leave this show early. I know Springsteen is famous for 3 hour or longer concerts, and it had been just over two so far. Maybe he'd let me get to sleep soon? No, it was an hour long encore. At one point, they turned the venue lights on, and I think the light gave me a second wind. I knew Rosalita is the famous Springsteen concert ending, so I kept waiting for it. I can't believe how long the encore was. The general admission floor was obviously standing all night. I noticed the first level area standing mostly too. My section was seated, up until partway through the encore. While I'm making fun of myself for being tired here, I was still enjoying it and cheering. It's fun to stand and sing along to songs like Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark, and Twist and Shout that I've known for as long as I've been a music fan. To my surprise, the show ended with Twist and Shout, and they never did Rosalita.

I can't believe how much energy that man put out during this concert. Even towards the end, he was jumping down to the floor with the audience or running across the stage and falling to his knees, sliding the rest of the way there. I went to a bunch of metal concerts when I was a teenager, but I don't think that even those match the energy level of this concert. And the crowd was fascinating. There weren't many breaks between songs, but whenever there was a break, you'd just hear this "ooooooo" sound, like so many people were in the middle of yelling "Bruuuuuuce".

The show ended around midnight. I hightailed it out of there to get to the Metrolink station. I didn't have to wait too long. Roy met me at the station, but I would have been fine without him. Quite a few people got off at the Delmar stop, even with the recent trouble there. (No sign of security, even though the incident happened around midnight on a Saturday.) Roy on the other hand felt a little uncomfortable waiting by himself until the train got there. I even stayed up late enough to tell him about the show.

I am glad I went. Once the show started, I didn't feel like I was by myself at all.