My son has showed me the DITD video and asked me if I knew who Courtney was. I suddenly realized he doesn't have a clue about how much I know about Bruce.
When I die, please someone, somehow, find my oldest son and tell him about Silvia/Louisa. His name is Leon.
It has never been a song I particularly like, but I love these lines....
I don't understand how you can hold me so tight
And love me so damn loose
New Jersey declares Bruce Springsteen Day
https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/celebrities/2023/04/16/643bbe54e2704e468c8b45ab.html
So.... MTB Plugged is 30 years old... This got me thinking, I checked the date of my first Bruce gig which was May 16th, 1993.
My first Bruce show on this tour is May 18th. It would have been quite symbolic if it were my last show, wouldn't it?
Thankfully, I have tickets for July also, so I won't be as emotional as I would have been otherwise...
Now playing this from Red Rocks #2 and I think I'd love to review the original River Tour someday.
Reading about the Red Rocks shows from August 1981 as I don't know much about them.
I'd never heard this until now. I love it!
I might have to track down both shows in full.
Listening to Heart this evening and it struck me that These Dreams reminds me of Countin' On A Miracle - the storybook imagery, the enchanted forest. I just played them back to back and they pair well as a he said/she said twofer.
To follow up on my March 2nd post...
Since 2017 my Springsteen listening has been split into halves: Archive Series when out and about; Live Downloads reserved for when I review the shows, with the ones I haven't reached yet on the blog 'locked' and only available for listening when the time calls for them - I don't 100% know why I did this, maybe to not overplay anything and tire of it?
Anyway, since February of this year my focus has, of course, been on the 2023 tour, but because of its mostly unchanging setlIsts I'm sometimes finding myself avoiding them after the most recent blog is published so as to keep the music fresh for the next release. What am I opting for on my travels? 2016! No time for the Archives right now (although I definitely didn't listen to Nashville 2008 or NJ 1999 enough). I have a suspicion it's because I'm engrossed in current day E Street right now and want more of it, but I also think it has more to do with that consistent setlist I talked about nearly twenty days ago in this thread.
To listen to songs like "Last Man Standing" from this tour and link it with what he was saying with "Meet Me in the City" and "Wreck on the Highway"; to be blown away by stand outs such as "The E Street Shuffle" and "Kitty's Back" and then play "I Wanna Marry You" and "Crush on You" which shone brightly from January to April 2016 is a blessing.
And it isn't just The River portion that I've been revisiting either, because in the build up to the Philly show, for example, I got stuck back into September 7th 2016 and revelled in "The Fever," "Does This Bus Stop," "Saint in the City" and "New York City Serenade." Would love to see these songs feature again this time around, but while waiting it's a delight to dream and just be grateful that these songs all featured on that night.
This current tour mightn't be giving us what we all wanted, but at least they're touring and I'm happy it's having an equally positive affect on music from previous tours also.
Redressing the balance a little, as there has been a bit of cynicism lately! I met with a friend who works at the Royal Opera House at the weekend. She has recently been working on a show with the woman who designed the lighting for SOB. She says that in 40 years in the business Bruce is one of the easiest people to work with. Knows what he wants, but is charming, friendly and not in the least pretentious. ❤️
The consistency of the 2023 tour setlist has me revisiting one of the 2016 1st leg shows - if we all thought I'd never go back after reviewing them, we didn't realise The River would become one of my absolute absolute favourite albums.
I've felt this for a while, and maybe should've translated it into one of the Jan-Apr blogs (then again there are still album performances to come in the 2016 shows I haven't reviewed...) but every time I listen to The River played live in 2016 I can't help but think it's one of the most special things Bruce ever did, and that when it's all over, we'll look back on it and say, "Damn, he did something really, really lovely with this. The quality of music they were playing, what he was telling us while they were doing it..."
Maybe I'm rambling - I hope not - but I've kinda made myself a bit emotional writing that and thinking about this. Or maybe it's "Drive All Night." Maybe it's both 🤷
Serious question: how much should a concert ticket be? How much is reasonable?
Back circa 1978-1980, tickets were $6-$9.
The median income was $15k.
Which means the hourly average wage was $7.50
So roughly an hour’s worth of work bought a ticket. Maybe two hours for some fans.
The same held true through 1984: ticket prices and the median went up, but a ticket still cost roughly an hour's worth of work, give or take fifteen minute.
Today’s median income, staggeringly, is under $32k. (For now, we won't get into how the .1% have fucked over the rest of us.)
Which means the hourly average wage is $16.
Which means that the ticket prices the last time he toured—$152 in 2016—cost 10 hours’ worth of work. More than an entire day’s labor to go see a concert.
(And that’s before you get into transportation and a sitter and food and all that.)
So back to my original question: does that seem reasonable?
Maybe it does. The economics of being a musician have changed over the past 40+ years. Back then, with a few exceptions, touring was was a promotional venture, meant to promote sales of the latest record. And record sales were where most musicians made most of their money. Nowadays, obviously, that's not even remotely true for all but a very small handful of the biggest stars.
So. How much is reasonable for a concert ticket?
I wish he'd ditch the solo acoustic I'll See You In My Dreams at least a night or two for a full-band rendition. It's more powerful with the band.
This is an interesting article, I've always assumed the percentage of mental health issues was higher than average among musicians. Now it is apparently confirmed.
Bruce publicly talking about his depression was an admirable and gutsy move, one of the arguments I keep in his defense whenever I feel disappointed with something he does I don't agree with.
Summary: Musicians and musically active people tend to have a higher genetic risk factor for bipolar disorder and depression, a new study reports.
https://neurosciencenews.com/music-genetics-mental-health-22468/
So, I had a new deck/ outdoor area built a few months ago. Here's a picture.
Why is this in the Random Bruce thread? Well, you may notice a name sign up on beam near the roof. Here's a close up...
Here's the view while I enjoy some Bruce and a beer on this sunny Friday arvo in Adelaide
Insanely entertaining, one of my new favourite live Bruce videos
Check out Roy, Gary and Steve's reactions to Bruce's carry on towards the end. And I was gonna say I grinned like a loon through the whole thing, but my reaction was nothing compared to Everet Bradley's infectious delight at the goings on...
Responding to my own post yet again... "as I said to myself, who was with me at the time".
But fired up by night 1 of the new tour, and now a few Friday beers, I'm watching my Hyde Park 2009 DVD and recognise two more songs that I've always enjoyed and that almost universally get panned in Bruce fan circles.
I hope by now you guys know I'm not trolling...
But I genuinely like both Outlaw Pete and Working On A Dream.
Outlaw Pete I liked from the get go... I remember buying the CD at my local JB Hi Fi, getting in the car, putting the CD in and really getting into that song straight away. And to this day I don't hear the Kiss 'I Was Made For Lovin' you connection. The live version on Hyde Park is even better. Bruce's "can you hear me" pleas, combined with that sweeping camera crowd shot... one of my favourite official live Bruce video moments.
Working On A Dream... ok, the live version does get a bit hokey and the build a house schtick isn't great, but the album track I like for some reason. It just has a casual, heart warming sing along freedom to it that I connect with. Infact, I recently relistened to the whole WOAD album and had a good time doing so. I still think, musically and thematically, it may outgrow Magic in Bruce's legacy... at least for long time fans. I challenge someone younger like, say, @Mario Brega, to come back many years from now when he has (God willing) been married and had a family, not to find amazing emotional depth and nuance in WOAD while looking at Magic as a passionate but yet archaic product of it's political times.
Both these songs, I think, are lyrically (but not musically) inspired by Bruce's Seeger Sessions period. Both songs to me reflect stuff like Old Man Tucker and John Henry. I think Outlaw Pete in particular is an amazing exercise in Bruce setting a crazy folk tale to more modern music.
Anyway, I like them, and most others don't. Oh, hang on, let's go to the Hyde Park video replay: observe, Bruce and the band pounding through She's The One. In the background crowd shots, there is zero happening. Later on, Radio Nowhere... crowd shots show the first row on the fence excited, nothing anywhere else. Let's check the Outlaw Pete replay... wow, large parts of the crowd clapping away in time. Now WOAD... what, a fair part of the crowd swaying their arms along to the song.
Maybe some agree with me afterall.