Springsteen Challenge Day 29: How Many Times Have You Seen Bruce in Concert? Where?

Today will be a three-post mega-update.  The reason for this is because Hurricane Sandy struck earlier this week, and, while I was able to prep on Monday and write an update early, I was not able to prep for Tuesday because I was without internet and power.  I already knew that I was going to write two for Halloween.  Turns out it will just be three today. This is the second.

This is a quicker post.  This is a very straightforward, unable to be interpreted writing prompt.  To make it slightly longer, I’ll post them with my three favorite songs from each.  This won’t be as hard as you’d think – I keep a spreadsheet of the setlists for the concerts I’ve seen. I also keep track of the official studio releases to see what songs I’ve seen in concert, and which ones I haven’t.  I’ve only seen all the songs off of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town live, though, it’s important to note, Bruce did all of these during his “album” sections of his tours – 2009 at Giants Stadium and beyond. To answer the first part of the question, I’ve seen Bruce live 16 times.

Springsteen Challenge Day 28 (SANDY!!!): Favorite Video of Bruce (music video, interview, concert footage)

Today will be a three-post mega-update.  The reason for this is because Hurricane Sandy struck earlier this week, and, while I was able to prep on Monday and write an update early, I was not able to prep for Tuesday because I was without internet and power.  I already knew that I was going to write two for Halloween.  Turns out it will just be three today. This is the first.

At any rate, to me, a video of Bruce has to be something like a found item.  We’ve already discussed Music Videos on Day 18. Streets of Philadelphia.  Boom.  This post will not be about a music video, a medium that Bruce doesn’t utilize well, and doesn’t really suit his music.  Additionally, I’ve discussed at length many of the Bruce concert DVDs and live footage that I love.  This needs to be something else.  This needs to be something that is so sporadic and intimate, more than an interview (another medium that doesn’t suit Bruce, as most televised interviews tend to be of the 8-12 minute variety, and Bruce really needs more of the long-form interview to say what he wants to say.  There are some good Jimmy Fallon interview performances recently as Fallon has become a “friend of the artist,” dedicating entire shows to the release of Bruce’s Darkness on the Edge of Town box set, and to the release of Wrecking Ball, but to really dig deeply into Bruce, he needs something like “The Fog of War” by Errol Morris – him in a chair, telling his story, interspersed with concert footage, news coverage, and the found items like the one I’m going to talk about.  The video I find to be my favorite is a grainy handheld tape, no professional recording equipment, and truly was spur-of-the-moment, and it happened almost 25 years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, on a nondescript street.

Springsteen Challenge Day 27: Favorite Bruce Instrument

This one is easy.  Bruce Springsteen plays a lot of instruments. On the Devils and Dust tour, I saw him play the acoustic guitar, the piano, a pump organ, a keyboard, the harmonica, and a bass stomp pad.  He’s pretty damned good at all of them.  When he goes on tour, he has guitar cases for the purpose of keeping his guitars in an kind of environmental stasis.  In fact, given all guitars that are brought on tour – Garry’s bass guitars, Soozie’s acoustics, Nils’ array of guitars, Stevie’s variety of stringed instruments – small and large, as well as the guitars of the family Springsteen – both Bruce AND Patti, it’s safe to say the guitar tech is one of the most important members of Bruce’s road crew.  He’s so important, in fact, that most people know him by name – Kevin Buell.  At one of the MetLife stadium shows, during Dancing in the Dark, Bruce pulled a woman on stage with a sign requesting a Dancing in the Dark dance with Kevin (she didn’t get it.)  I think you can see where I’m going with this.  Bruce is a rocker.  The tool of a rock and roll star is a guitar.  But my favorite Bruce instrument isn’t *just* a guitar. It’s the guitar.

Springsteen Challenge Day 26: Favorite Character from a Bruce Song

To think of Bruce’s songs not as small bits of music, but rather, divorced from their music, and independent universes in which there are people, places, and things that all carry on past the limits of the track is to be deeply affected by the poetry that Bruce creates.  Bruce even released a collection of his lyrics in book form – aptly titled “Songs.” Bruce’s words have meant a great deal, and there are a number of characters that strike me as favorites – the unnamed narrator of Backstreets, Teri from Backstreets (or is it Terry?), the narrator and his girl from Racing in the Street, and Bill Horton from Cautious Man.  I actually am not a huge fan of Pete from Outlaw Pete – I think he’s pretty one dimensional, but he’s supposed to be an archetype of a strong, silent, John Wayne-esque cowboy.  There aren’t too many named characters on The Rising, or even in albums like Lucky Town.  Rainey Williams from “Black Cowboys” is a good character, but that which makes him unique is external; he is reactive to his environment.  No, my favorite character from a Bruce Springsteen song comes from the Nebraska album, and the song “Highway Patrolman” in the form of Joe Roberts.

Springsteen Challenge Day 25: Favorite Bruce Collaboration with another Artist/Band (Live)

To me, in order for a performance to be a great live collaboration, I had to see it.  So, the amazing collaborative efforts Bruce had with his tour mates on the 1988 Human Rights Now! Tour, sharing the mic with Sting and Tracy Chapman, among others are off limits.  The MTV VMAs in 1997 with the Wallflowers on “One Headlight” is out.  Even the massive collaborative effort a few years ago with Lady Gaga, Sting, Debbie Harry, and Elton John on stage is off limits (all available on YouTube, by the way.) Another great is when U2 invited Bruce on Stage in Philly in 1987 to play guitar (Bono’s arm is in a sling for some reason), and they had a fantastic version of “Stand By Me.” But, all of these songs are off limits, because I wasn’t there, and live music is different live and in the moment than when it is felt after the fact, on a recording.

Springsteen Challenge Day 24: Favorite Bruce Collaboration with another Band/Artist (Studio)

I’m part Irish.  So is Bruce.  Clearly, we’re blood brothers.  Kidding.  For whatever reason, despite not having much Irish about me that you can readily see – I’m not redheaded, I don’t have a lilt to my pronunciation of things, and I don’t actually know which side of the Northern Ireland/Britain discussion I’m on, because I really don’t know that much about it.  I suspect I’m in favor of the Northern Irish, because I’m never in favor of colonialism and empire versus home rule. But that’s neither here nor there. I will say, I’m a big fan of Irish/British Isles cuisine. My wife, on the other hand, has a very Irish first name and Maiden name. It has the “Mc” and everything. All of this is not necessarily non sequitur.  I promise, I’m going somewhere.  My favorite Bruce collaboration with another Band/Artist (Studio) involves this Irish heritage and love of the Irish culture (minus Riverdance), as well as my wedding (I know, you’re shocked.)

Springsteen Challenge Day 23: Favorite Little Steven Guitar Solo

I have a confession to make: Little Steven is not my favorite E Street Band Member.  We’ve covered that Nils is.  I was obviously a fan of the Big Man, Clarence Clemons, and I love watching Max, focused intently on the back of Bruce’s head, hammering out the big beat, hitting the cymbal crashes and bass drum thumps timed to Bruce’s movements.  Stevie is less animated than most.  He is less interested in the theatrics of the show at times.  And Stevie is also not the best Guitar player in the band.  But, Little Steven Van Zandt is the most indispensable member of the E Street Band because he is the glue that holds the band together.

Springsteen Challenge Day 22: Favorite Big Man Sax Solo

I miss the Big Man.  Clarence Clemons was truly the foil to Bruce’s spastic rocker – tall, imposing, happy-go-lucky, a guy who had some issues with alcohol and drugs from time to time, where Bruce was the brooding, energetic guy who only occasionally had a beer, and has long maintained he’d never touched any drugs.  My fiancée (at the time.  She’s my wife now) texted me in 2011 and said, “Clarence died.”  My wife doesn’t like Bruce, and other than Clarence being the only full time E Street Band member who is black, she wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a two-person lineup.  But, she sent me that two-word text, and it sent my night through a search for the quintessential Clarence sax solo.

Springsteen Challenge Day 21: Favorite Bruce Harmonica Solo

Bruce is, at heart, a folk singer with a heart of rock and roll.  In the book “Woody Guthrie: A Life,” The author, Joe Klein, takes great pains to show how Bob Dylan would come and sit at Woody’s bed in the hospital where he was wasting away due to his Huntington’s Disease. He makes sure to note that Bob Dylan was “The Kid” to Woody, and that Woody was who Bob wanted to be.  But, that’s not really the case.  Bob Dylan isn’t necessarily hyper political.  Bob Dylan, while if I had to guess I’d say he’s liberal, doesn’t really involve himself in politics.  Bruce Springsteen has involved himself in one way or another ever since the Reagan administration. For that reason alone, I think he’s closer aligned with Woody Guthrie than is Bob Dylan.  But, for their personal proximity, as well as their songwriting capabilities and troubadour spirit, Bob and Bruce are alike.  Additionally, they both make use of not only the Harmonica, but the harmonica holder around their neck.  Bruce utilizes the harmonica on Nebraska, as well as The Ghost of Tom Joad albums, but also on some random tracks here or there.  And, I’ll tell you, my favorite Springsteen harmonica solo is NOT from Thunder Road.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great, but it’s not my favorite.

Springsteen Challenge Day 20: Favorite Bruce Anecdote (From Him)

When I saw this topic upon perusing the Springsteen Challenge list, I knew exactly which anecdote I would pick.  I knew I liked Bruce Springsteen from the minute I heard him do a long introduction before a song.  I tend to make semi-spurious connections between stories, and weird things trigger my memory, launching me in to bizarre childhood memories and stories that didn’t happen to me that I either attribute to me, or briefly set up.  Discussions with me are like a choose your own adventure book where, in the end, all of the outcomes are being anywhere from bored to tears to mildly amused but over it.  Bruce does this in a way more coherent way. His yarns before songs go anywhere from weird to incredible.  Sometimes, he does it during a song, interspersing the performance with spoken word blank verse poetry.  It’s one of my favorite parts of seeing him live. In fact, I’ve focused almost solely on Bruce, and his “artist coaching tree” – the likes of Kenny Chesney and the Gaslight Anthem in recent years that, when hearing a live album from someone else, it always strikes me odd that it’s not introduced with a VH1 Storytellers-esque treatise on the songwriting process and the underlying messages contained therein.

Springsteen Challenge Day 19: Favorite Bruce TV Special/Documentary/Movie

This is kind of a strange one.  There haven’t been many good documentaries released about Bruce.  There is the making of Born to Run, known as Wings for Wheels, and the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, each released with their digitally masterered recording re-releases, but those are in-house, and not particularly objective.  Additionally, there aren’t really any movies out about Bruce.  You could kind of count his appearance in “High Fidelity” as a Bruce movie – he shares a bit of wisdom with John Cusack, but realistically, it’s just a few lines as he tunes his guitar. Plus, I don’t think he’d be all that good an actor.  This leaves TV specials.

Springsteen Challenge Day 18: Favorite Bruce Music Video

This is an interesting topic.  Bruce Springsteen’s music videos are either feast or famine.  There’s no overriding artistic vision in his music videos.  He’s had some of the greats direct his videos, though.  Brian de Palma (Scarface) directed a few.  Sean Penn pieced one together from footage of “The Indian Runner” – a movie inspired by a Springsteen song (seems only fair, then….); Jonathan Demme made a few, including my favorite.  But, by and large, Bruce’s videos tend to be live videos overdubbed with the album version, or perhaps the production of the song itself in the studio, interspersed with some random videos of Bruce playing the guitar defiantly in a scenic vista.  Suffice to say, Bruce isn’t exactly holding music video launch specials like Michael Jackson did in his heyday for videos like “Black or White” and “Remember the Time” – really, no one is.  Those days are long gone.  As a side note, those videos were mini movies, really.  Black or White had MacCaulay Caulkin and George Wendt in it, and Remember the Time had Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, Tiny Lister, and Iman in it.  Nowadays, MTV doesn’t even play music videos.  But I digress…

Springsteen Challenge Day 17: The song/album that turned you on to Bruce Springsteen

Ironically, it was “Love is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar.  Kidding.  I didn’t get into Bruce until 2003 at the earliest. I know, based upon my deep and abiding love for his music, it would seem as though I had been listening to Born in the USA in the womb.  My parents are not really fans of Bruce.  My mom just isn’t much for soaring guitar riffs and brooding songs. My dad is a conservative and has no use for this hippie bleeding heart liberal crap. It wasn’t until I met my friend Erik that I started liking Bruce Springsteen.

Springsteen Challenge Day 16: Piece of Springsteen Memorabilia I wish I owned

This is something that is seemingly difficult – would I want a guitar pick Bruce handed me, or maybe the hat in Bruce’s back pocket on the cover of the Born in the USA album, which I always thought was a rag. Upon closer inspection, it’s clearly a hat. What, really, is memorabilia?  I don’t think a photo counts.  Realistically, it’d be great to have a photo of Bruce with my wife and me – just hanging out, oh, hey, look, it’s Bruce Springsteen!  Boss!  Can we get a quick photo?  Not right now, I mean, you look to be knuckles deep in that Quiznos hot and toasty sub, but just, whenever you’re ready to wrap up the other half and take it home for lunch tomorrow.  Let me show you the inscription on my wedding band, and our save the date – you won’t think it’s completely creepy at all!  That’d be awesome. But, I don’t consider personal photographs to be memorabilia.  I consider things that have multiple copies made – it doesn’t need to be mass-produced, but it should be available to more than just the people who were there – those are memories.

Springsteen Challenge Day 15: My Favorite Piece of Bruce Memorabilia I Own

This is more difficult than you’d think.  Many of you might assume that, as a Springsteen fanboy, I would own as much Bruce memorabilia as possible – towels he’d wiped his face with, old flannel shirts from the Born in the USA days, anything related to Bruce, really.  However, I actually don’t own tons and tons of knick-knacks related to Bruce.  Most of what I own from Bruce are albums – digital, CD, Vinyl.  I have magazines that have covered him in some way, shape, or form, and I don’t throw out my copies of Backstreets. I have bootlegs, tour programs, and concert ticket stubs, although, I must say, those are falling by the wayside with ticketfast – it’s way different to keep a large sheet of paper with a barcode on it than is to keep a small piece of cardstock… also with a barcode on it.  But I don’t really have all that much memorabilia.

Springsteen Challenge Day 14: Favorite Cover of a Bruce Song

This is difficult for me.  I don’t really listen to other artists’ renditions of Bruce songs.  I tend to spend my time listening to covers of Springsteen songs and think “Yeah, but I could be listening to my favorite artist perform this song, and it’d be a song he wrote…” I often think a few things when I listen to a cover of a Bruce song:

1)   Bruce did it better

2)   None of this sounds right

3)   Did you just change a lyric?  Did you just change a fucking lyric to a Springsteen song?  And what was that pan flute doing in there?

Springsteen Challenge Day 13: Favorite live cover performed by Bruce

(Side note: yes, I know, I missed a few days.  It was my 1-year anniversary this weekend, so, like everything else in these posts, I lay the responsibility for my actions at the feet of my bride.  Have some of that, sweetheart.)

This is another in the long list of “Nate’s going to choose to interpret this how he wants to in order to tell a story that he likes” posts.  I take “Bruce Live” to mean times I’ve seen him live in concert.  Which means commercially released stuff, for which I was not in attendance, doesn’t count.  But, I’ll go over some of it anyway!

Springsteen Challenge Day 12: Least Favorite Bruce Album

I should note, this says “least favorite” – I don’t hate any Bruce album.  But I do have a least favorite.  Obviously, Born to Run, Darkness, Nebraska, The Rising – these are all pantheon albums.  I love them all, start to finish.  What’s interesting is, there are albums that Bruce Fans do not like.  Devils and Dust, the Other Band albums, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and The Seeger Sessions seem to have an at best mixed following.  My least favorite album is among these I’ve listed.  This is kind of like a really boring game of Clue where no one cares who the killer is, and Tim Curry won’t leave you alone.

Springsteen Challenge Day 11: Least Favorite Bruce Song

Yeah, this just got heavy in here.  You thought this was going to be thirty days of effusive praise for Mr. Bruce Springsteen.  Well, sometimes you’ve gotta crack a few eggs to make a Bruce omelette.  I’ve referenced, at least twice during this challenge, the Bruce song “The Angel” from the “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” album. I do not like “The Angel.”  Many people lump it in with “Mary, Queen of Arkansas” as a bad Springsteen song.  I’m not nuts about MQoA, but, to me, it’s listenable.  If picking a favorite lyric is difficult because there are so many, this is the opposite – picking my least favorite Bruce song from ones I dislike is easy, because there are so few. 

Springsteen Challenge Day 10: Favorite E Street Band Member

Obviously, this means NOT including Bruce.  This is an interesting question, because, I could just be super lazy and say Bruce and then fall asleep faster tonight.  The question then becomes – is Bruce Springsteen in the E Street Band? Or is the E Street Band his backing band? Springsteen and the E Streeters are a rare breed in rock superstardom. Most major bands have a name for all the members – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who – it wasn’t Lennon and McCartney with the Beatles, or Roger Daltrey and the Who.  But, with Bruce Springsteen, it’s a curious question – is he a member of his band or not?

Springsteen Challenge Day 9: Favorite Bootleg Recording

This is an interesting post to write, because only three mini stories come to mind regarding bootlegs and Bruce. For starters, while Landau and the Springsteen team don’t actively discourage bootlegging of Bruce concerts (“Bootleggers, roll your tapes!” was the call from Mr. Springsteen himself in 1978, while introducing a song), there is something a bit odd about the notion of having bootlegged versions of shows.  Does Bruce feel like he owns every performance he puts on? Or, does he realize that most of his fans are like me, in that they will buy whatever he puts out as a release – so even if they have a bootlegged, soundboard or pit audio, version of a show, they’ll still buy the official Columbia release of whatever show Bruce chooses to release for $29.99 on DVD or audio.

Springsteen Challenge Day 8: Favorite Springsteen Era

To be honest, this was the prompt I was the least excited about writing. I am 28 years old, and for most of my formative years, Bruce Springsteen was not touring with the E Street Band.  By the time I appreciated music in the early nineties, Bruce was touring with the “other” band. The extent of my interaction and awareness of Bruce was when my mom forgot to send in her “no thanks” Columbia music club card, and the monthly pick that month was “Born in the USA.”  I never listened to it, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have understood the depth and importance of the album.  My next interaction with Bruce was incessant commercials on HBO advertising the Live in New York City performance made specifically for HBO. I remember thinking “who in the hell would care about Bruce Springsteen?”

Springsteen Challenge Day 7: Favorite Bruce Album (Live)

Throughout this process, I have consistently interpreted the prompts to better suit my writing style.  In this instance, I don’t need to.  This is fairly straightforward in terms of my favorite Bruce live album.  There aren’t nearly as many Bruce live albums as there are bootlegs. I am, however, not including bootlegs.  The “favorite bootleg” is a category all its own.  Thus, this will be an official released album – not DVDs, unless there was an audio version released in support.  This significantly narrows the options.

Springsteen Challenge Day 6: Favorite Bruce Album (Studio)

If picking my favorite Lyric was tough, this is the exact opposite.  As is the case with all of these writing prompts, I’m going to go ahead and interpret the rules in such a way that allows me to write a bit more.  Otherwise, here’s what this post would look like:

“Springsteen Challenge Day 6: Favorite Bruce Album (Studio): Born to Run.  Moving on.”

Springsteen Challenge Day 5: Favorite Bruce Photo

It’s day five, and today’s Bruce challenge prompt is: your favorite Bruce photo.

This is another prompt that I’m going to choose to define on my own.  I’ve been to more than a dozen Bruce shows in my lifetime.  I’ve been up against the stage, I’ve been in what I assume to be the furthest possible seat from the stage at Madison Square Garden, I’ve been three rows from the top of the Gund Arena in Cleveland, and I’ve been front and center on the Oval at Ohio State as Bruce was introduced by former Senator and Astronaut John Glenn.  I’ve seen Bruce close up and far away enough that I’ve got some phone pictures.  In fact, there is one phone picture that, when I sent it to my wife, who was working for the newsmedia in New York at the time, she had a friend make a comment “My friend may actually kill himself if he sees that photo.  Let me send it to him.”  But, that’s a story for another prompt.

Springsteen Challenge Day 4: Song that Cheers You Up

There are obvious contenders for this – I mentioned earlier how I used to listen to Thunder Road on the days where I came out on the losing end.  But, that was more a “I want something to remind me I can do this.”  It wasn’t a cheering up, so much as a reassurance.  I may be splitting hairs here to not duplicate prior posts, but I can only write from my thoughts, and I promise, I’m not trying to cheat on the Bruce Challenge.

Springsteen Challenge Day 3: Song that Makes You Sad

This is a prompt that I considered for a few minutes, because it made me think two things in response:

A)   What kind of sad? I mean, you can talk to me about the holocaust, or suicide, or hunger and malnourishment, and I become extremely sad about our world. But I can shake that off if need be. I can paste a smile over it, and it goes away by sheer force of will.

B)   This prompt very quickly becomes a literary trope.  I’ll explain momentarily.

Springsteen Challenge Day 2: Favorite Lyric

This is like choosing which finger to cut off.  There are so many fantastic lyrics.  The easiest way is to give a countdown from five to one, identifying the four that it’s not, but why they are in the top five.  To me, Bruce’s lyrics are poetic.  They are expressive in a way that gives meaning to many, while being written from the perspective of one.  Bruce is our modern American poet laureate, the common man’s voice; he’s blessed with the uncanny ability to tap in to the zeitgeist, transcending the rapidly changing American landscape, understanding the unique individuality we possess within our communal society.  He is politically liberal; so am I, but his struggles, his fitful anger against his own unhappiness with himself, and his look at the American landscape as he sees it.  So, while I don’t intend to make this a soapbox for my own brand of progressive politics, much of my connection to Bruce is that we see the world similarly, so there may be some political under/overtones.

Springsteen Challenge Day 1: Favorite Bruce Song

It was inevitable that I’d undertake the 30 day Springsteen challenge, and quite apropos – yesterday was the 30^th anniversary of the release of Nebraska, one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen albums – one that is dark, and brooding, and overlooked by casual fans.

The 30 day Bruce Challenge can be found, by the way, at http://fuckyeahtheboss.tumblr.com/post/908819375/30-day-bruce-springsteen-challenge

The 30 day Bruce Springsteen Challenge consists of 30 days of writing about your favorites with regard to Bruce Springsteen – song, album, moment, live performance, lyric.  All of them.  They’re in there.  I won’t completely rip off that website – click the link to see what each writing prompt is.  I’ll preview the following day’s post at the end of each post.  I’ll be writing these a few days in advance, so that, in case something happens, I don’t miss a day.