![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Born To Run Emirates
May. 31st, 2008 11:53 amAnd so to Springsteen last night at the Emirates Stadium. Some observations:
1) Football stadiums are far more civilized places than they were in the 1960s. If I may go into George Costanza mode for a second, the toilets were excellent.
2) Getting home from a packed football stadium is no easier and no more civilized than it was in the 1960s. No matter how much the internal infrastructure is improved, the outside still can't cope. I ended up walking to the Angel and getting the underground from there. About two miles I guess.
3) Upper Street at 11.30 on a Friday night is surely how people imagined Paris or Berlin in the 1920s. Café culture is alive and well and living in Islington. It nearly, but not quite, make me want to live there.
4) Clarence Clemons was playing the saxophone far better than he was a few years ago at The Rising concert I went to.
5) Patti Scialfa and Danny Federici are gone (I see that Federici died of skin cancer just last month... I should read the 'ordinary' newspapers more), with Suzie Tyrell taking on much of the old Patti role on acoustic guitar.
6) Nils Lofgren joins Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg as the engine of the E-Street Band. Indeed, Bittan seemed to be going through the motions a bit last night. Lofgren, on the other hand, absolutely rocked.
7) The audience, sadly, seemed to go more wild over the three or four tracks played from the Born In The USA album than for anything else bar the old favourites (Thunderroad, Badlands and Born To Run — the last being a rather workaday performance, I fear). Pleasant though Cadillac Ranch and Glory Days are, they are not the pinnacle of Springsteen's career.
8) Candy's Room remains a classic. I don't think I've ever seen him perform it live since 1981. Magnificent
9) Technology has moved on since 2003. I casually "bootlegged" the entire concert on my MP3 player. Playing it back, it's of a quality that appeared on records in the 1970s (i.e., bad).
10) Bruce is 58 now. Clarence is 66. Will this be the last time I see him? Quite possibly. I was lucky in that I arrived at just the right time to get to the front of the purple wristband section (i.e., at the front of the main area behind the "fanatic fans" who arrived really early to get into "the pit" at the front with the yellow wrist-bands. I could have taken a yellow band for free (an event guy was handing them out to people at the front of the main section) but chose to stay where I was. Not sure if this was the right move or not.
11) Stadiums aren't the best place for Bruce, but he still managed to get a 60,000-odd crowd rocking. There was a 10-year-old kid to my left standing in front of his Springsteen-fanatic dad. The kid had never been to a Springsteen concert before. He absolutely loved it. For some strange reason, I found that slightly touching. Has Bruce become the new Johnny Cash to this generation? Some kind of old guy who your parents liked who must have been young once, but far too long ago to bear thinking about?
________________________
1) Football stadiums are far more civilized places than they were in the 1960s. If I may go into George Costanza mode for a second, the toilets were excellent.
2) Getting home from a packed football stadium is no easier and no more civilized than it was in the 1960s. No matter how much the internal infrastructure is improved, the outside still can't cope. I ended up walking to the Angel and getting the underground from there. About two miles I guess.
3) Upper Street at 11.30 on a Friday night is surely how people imagined Paris or Berlin in the 1920s. Café culture is alive and well and living in Islington. It nearly, but not quite, make me want to live there.
4) Clarence Clemons was playing the saxophone far better than he was a few years ago at The Rising concert I went to.
5) Patti Scialfa and Danny Federici are gone (I see that Federici died of skin cancer just last month... I should read the 'ordinary' newspapers more), with Suzie Tyrell taking on much of the old Patti role on acoustic guitar.
6) Nils Lofgren joins Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg as the engine of the E-Street Band. Indeed, Bittan seemed to be going through the motions a bit last night. Lofgren, on the other hand, absolutely rocked.
7) The audience, sadly, seemed to go more wild over the three or four tracks played from the Born In The USA album than for anything else bar the old favourites (Thunderroad, Badlands and Born To Run — the last being a rather workaday performance, I fear). Pleasant though Cadillac Ranch and Glory Days are, they are not the pinnacle of Springsteen's career.
8) Candy's Room remains a classic. I don't think I've ever seen him perform it live since 1981. Magnificent
9) Technology has moved on since 2003. I casually "bootlegged" the entire concert on my MP3 player. Playing it back, it's of a quality that appeared on records in the 1970s (i.e., bad).
10) Bruce is 58 now. Clarence is 66. Will this be the last time I see him? Quite possibly. I was lucky in that I arrived at just the right time to get to the front of the purple wristband section (i.e., at the front of the main area behind the "fanatic fans" who arrived really early to get into "the pit" at the front with the yellow wrist-bands. I could have taken a yellow band for free (an event guy was handing them out to people at the front of the main section) but chose to stay where I was. Not sure if this was the right move or not.
11) Stadiums aren't the best place for Bruce, but he still managed to get a 60,000-odd crowd rocking. There was a 10-year-old kid to my left standing in front of his Springsteen-fanatic dad. The kid had never been to a Springsteen concert before. He absolutely loved it. For some strange reason, I found that slightly touching. Has Bruce become the new Johnny Cash to this generation? Some kind of old guy who your parents liked who must have been young once, but far too long ago to bear thinking about?
________________________
