Tell Me About Your Spouse

Just checked IMDB, no defo haven't seen it.

Earlier today I watched the movie "JULIET, NAKED". It reminded me of this thread.

I’m sure you saw the announcement that Bruce is doing some more Broadway shows, to welcome the return of theatre. Now, I’ve seen two shows already - one by myself, and a second where I went all out, broke the bank, got front row seats for both of us, had a perfect view, and Bruce gave me his pick at the end. A show experience could never get better for me, and I wouldn’t even try.

So when my husband saw the emails announcing the shows last night, Nick didn’t say, “You’re not going AGAIN, are you??!”, or, “seriously???”, he just asked, “So, will you be buying a ticket?” This is how I know I have the best partner I could ever hope for.

I believe we have moved beyond the overload - yesterday afternoon I offered to listen to the interview recommended by TJ through headphones but Mr J said it was fine, he was as interested as me and said it was a great interview!

Due to the water damage the air condition has done, our speakers had to be dismantled. Much as I would like to blast LTY throughout the house, I now have to make do telling Alexa to play the album. Not much of a consolation because not much of a listening pleasure - somewhat tinny, to be exact. Mr. B went on a short trip, so he escaped any repeated listenings.

Next year is our 25th wedding anniversary, but I am getting concerned we might not make it.

The wife saw the latest Nugs entry on the credit card statement and said "Another Bruce show? Don't you have enough already?"

Not sure there's any coming back from this...

I am single. I just bore friends with my Bruce obsession. My sister is a Bruce fan though.

Resurrecting this thread to see how your other halves have coped with the Bruce overload this past week?

Mr J is definitely Bruced out - a couple of examples, last weekend I said I only needed to watch Graham Norton, then I could watch Bake Off, to which he replied 'he's not on that as well is he?' Yesterday when I got home he told me he had been listening to a Paul McCartney interview on BBC Sounds, he took his phone and our remote speaker upstairs to carry on listening, when suddenly out of the speaker came LTY - he said it's everywhere, like a virus, it's in the car, in every room in the house!

I met Mr. B in the course of duty. He was a young army captain and I was a journalist new in town. I was invited by his batallion to an important press conference and I went there thinking about defense mission, politics (these were cold war times) and I was instead meeting a commander and several of his captains in an over-tired and somewhat inebriated condition.

They had just come back from an overnight gig of an aspiring rock band they hoped to book for a concert at the garrison in town. For that they drove 400 miles round trip and were still elated by what they had seen and heard.

I adjusted my attitude toward soldiers somewhat in the future, and, meeting again and again in the small town, got to know them better. Especially that one.

We have been together for 40 years and married for 21. Mr. B declares himself a Bruce fan, but "casual" would be no misnomer. I usually invite him to the concerts I want to go to, and he patiently trots along and even enjoys himself when there. On his own he would probably give them a miss. He smiles indulgently at my habit of working Bruce information into conversations. When after the first two cords of a song on the radio or in the supermarket, I say "that's Bruce" he just shrugs: "That's my wife!"

I have to level down this explosion of romance. I met my husband in a bar, and what followed was Spirit in the Night... 😇

My spouse is pretty and soft and smells nice.

I met her at Uni. She was the year above me. She was the friend of another friend. I liked her. We were both going out with other people at that time, I didn’t see her for about a year. When we caught up next both of us were single and went out that Friday night. That was August 86. She won the University Medal for her year and is pretty. I played Rugby and Cricket and told jokes. She is my Mary. She climbed in. We married March 91.

She has never been much of a Springsteen fan. My mates and I were always the big music fans. She came to one concert in 2017. She said Bruce was a great entertainer. I have been with mates all the other times. Once also with my daughter.

Mrs G has two Bruce songs on her playlist, Ain’t Good Enough For You, and Girls in Their Summer Clothes. She really likes both of those. She enjoyed the Blinded By the Light movie but fell asleep in the middle of Western Stars movie. She got the shits when I kept playing Tucson Train over and over when it was first released. She knows the words to a lot of Bruce songs through osmosis and exposure. I think the BBTL movie helped her understand how Bruce’s music has freed a lot of us.

Pretty sure she loves me. Saw a picture recently where she was looking at me like Steve Van Zandt looks at Roger McGuinn. I thought that was a good sign.

This is a picture of the glamorous couple from about 28 years ago.

Must confess my reaction was something similar to @Mario Brega when you said you're 20.... All I can say though is thank you yet again for all your time, effort and work and I second the sentiment of never assume....

Wow, how much romance around here. Let me screw it up a bit. I am twenty years old, I hope it will take a little while to be able to talk about my spouse 😉

(But I'm glad that music has that power. Maybe one day I'll experience it.)

 My college girlfriend and I had been dating for about four months when summer break arrived. I headed home to Connecticut (from Virginia) and she went back to Colorado. Naturally, it being the mid-to-late 80s, I made her a bunch of tapes. She had a long drive each day out to the conservation center where she worked that summer, so she had plenty of time to listen.

She was a devoted music lover with a beautiful voice. Her dad was crazy about Elvis and 1970s country music. Her mom had been a Beatlemaniac in high school. So she was well-versed in the basics. But she was the oldest kid in her family and all of her friends were, oddly, also the oldest children in theirs, so she never really got exposed to AOR or a lot of classic rock, such as Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Rolling Stones, etc. So if "You Really Got Me" comes on, she'll recognize it, but won't know what it is or who it's by. But you put on some Glen Campbell or Loretta Lynn or Bee Gees, and she's got every word down cold.

But she was a child of the 70s and 80s, so along with Olivia Newton-John and Dolly Parton, she loved what had been dubbed The Second British Invasion: Adam Ant, Culture Club, the Eurhythmics. And above all, Duran Duran.

She did not care for Bruce Springsteen. She mainly knew the song “Born in the USA” and found the persistent keyboard riff overly repetitive and annoying. “Dancing in the Dark” was fine but nothing to write home about. Mainly, it was just another video with awkward dancing to sit through until a really good one came on.

When we saw each other again at the end of the summer, she said she’d liked the R.E.M. compilation, although she’d already been a fan. She’d never heard of the Replacements, but really liked them. She admitted that despite trying repeatedly, she just couldn’t get into Eric Clapton or Jackson Browne.

But Bruce...she’d fallen head over heels in love with Bruce.

I’d given her two 90-minute tapes, each with two songs from each album: one the slightly more famous stuff (“Dancing in the Dark,” say, or “Born to Run”) and the other what could be considered the slightly deeper cuts (“My Hometown” or “Independence Day”).

She was (and is) a writer. So the rich wordplay of the first two albums blew her away. Once “Spirits in the Night” and, especially, “Fourth of July, Asbury Park” got its hooks in her, she was a goner. "Thunder Road," "Backstreets," "The River," "Atlantic City" — she was gobsmacked by the depth of his writing, how much he could say in so few words.

Decades later, she’d lose some conservative friends by defending “Reno” as one of the most beautiful, if tragic and intentionally sordid, love songs ever. At the Devils & Dust show in Greensboro she’d recognize the bullet mic version of “Reason to Believe” instantly, long before anyone sitting around us. She saw him at the Meadowlands with the Other Band (and was positive he'd played "Fourth of July" just for her—and, to be fair, it was the first time he'd played it on that tour, so...) and she saw him in Los Angeles on the Magic tour. She tried really hard to talk me into naming one of our daughters Rosalita. (She failed spectacularly, something she does very rarely.) And she often says that Bruce Springsteen is the soundtrack of our marriage.

Hey Rach, how's it going?

Ok, this is the cutest thread ever.

Wifey doesn't care for Bruce, but she really likes The Fever and Iceman. And, she quite liked Western Stars, so there IS something there. She has been to 4 Bruce gigs (never by choice, though): 2003 in Oslo, the 2nd Seeger show in Oslo, the 2nd show in Stockholm 2013 (it was on my 40th birthday, so she was obligated) and finally Trondheim in 2016.

My wife is lovely, but she doesnt get Bruce or his ability to speak to my soul. She does understand me. She has her ways.

If I'm about to tell something to my husband, and have sparkles of enthusiasm in my eyes, he usually says: "Now you're going to tell me something about Bruce, aren't you?"

It's 1981 and the River tour. I'm young, too young (in hindsight), really to be married. I had managed to get tickets for Bruce & The E Street Band in a 3000 seat theatre by queuing all night and was so excited to be seeing E Street live at last. Then a second night is added (tickets available by post only). I apply for tickets but worry that I won't get any (demand was huge for these small venues). I have a friend in a record store and he says I'll try the CBS rep. Cut to the chase, I end up with 2 spares after I get lucky in the draw and the rep comes through (and even includes a copy of Bruce's promo "As Requested Around The World" LP).

The dates for the shows finally come around and on the morning of the second show, I still have one spare ticket. This is 1981 and the face value of the ticket is £6.00 but they're selling for £100 (on the first night) outside the venue.

I'm thinking I'll just give the spare ticket to someone outside the venue, when I remember a girl I used to work with. I don't know her address but do remember her telling me once where her parents live. I look up the phone book and call them, awkwardly explaining why I need to speak to their daughter. I finally get hold of her 2 hours before the show, offer the ticket (telling her it'll be great) and we arrange to meet. I give her the ticket but it's a single in a different area and I say it'll be difficult to meet up again after the show but hope she enjoys seeing Bruce.

She calls me the next day to say she was amazed at the whole experience and thanks me for thinking of her.

Over 3 years go by (I haven't seen her again) but I'm now separated from my (then) wife awaiting a divorce. I move to work in another office and yes the girl I gave the ticket to 3 years before, works there. I see her, we arrange to meet up and I say fancy seeing Bruce again, he's touring BITUSA. We get tickets and go down to Newcastle for the show. After that we're going out together.

That was a long time ago, we've been married over thirty years now and have together seen Bruce all over Europe and once in the US.

A spare ticket will sometimes take you on quite a journey.