Springsteen Fanboy Post

This is the new video from Bruce Springsteen's forthcoming record, Magic, which I just found on Stereogum. I'm quite surprised that I didn't get it from my dad first, although he'll probably email a link later today. Mike Nicolaides is quite the Springsteen fanatic, and in turn has raised his family to be Springsteen fanatics as well. This is why I pay the car insurance bills that I owe him by logging on to ticket websites at 10AM on a Saturday to see if I can access the site and snag some good seats. We're going to see the E-Street Band play next Friday at the Wachovia Center, and if I know my father, he'll be going on Saturday to the second show as well.

Seeing this video reminded me of a couple of my favorite Bruce moments. And, if I tell one of these stories, I start rambling and end up having to tell all of them. Here I go:

• My first concert ever was the Human Touch / Lucky Town tour, and it was a gift for my birthday that year. Bruce had broken up the E-Street band and was playing with a bunch of new artists, but I didn't care because he played "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" during the encore. Mom made me wear earplugs, even though we were in the furthest seats from the stage.
• Getting teased at school for wearing the t-shirt from said show the next day.
• My mother taught me to dance, except she taught me the Courtney Cox dance from the "Dancing in the Dark" music video. I suck at dancing now and whenever I'm not sure what to do at weddings or parties I always revert to doing this move: *snaps fingers, shuffles feet*
• Dad started collecting bootlegs the hard way before high-speed internet became common. (In fact, downloading shows was part of the reason he finally shilled out the money for cable internet way back in 2000. True story.) He would find other Springsteen fans with shows on this newsgroup and copy cassettes and later burn CDs to mail back and forth across the country. The walk-in closet that him and my mother share has almost an entire wall dedicated to shelves and shelves of these tapes and discs. If you've ever been to a Springsteen show, tell him the tour and the city, and chances are he can pull it out of his cabinet to copy for you.
• Last year, Lauren and I bought him a coffee-table book that sort of resembled a pop-up book for Springsteen fans. It had replica tickets from Jersey shows back in the 70's, concert photos, lyrics scrawled on notepad paper, the whole deal. He flips it open to see a photo of a setlist, which he examines carefully and then says, "Oh, cool. January 15th, 1987. I remember that show." When we flipped to the index, it turns out that he had successfully nailed that show date. Pulled it out of thin air. When he becomes a grandfather early next year, he won't pull quarters from behind the kid's ear, he'll just do this.
• We went to see the E-Street band reunion tours in '99 and again in '03. We had tickets to nearly half of the 20 sold-out shows at Continental Airlines Arena the first time. At the show that I went to, we were one of the first people to come into the arena and we were randomly selected by one of Bruce's road crew for a free upgrade to the second row. Second row at an E-Street Band show makes it pretty fucking difficult to top that as "best concert of all time" for me, and it still is. I didn't even mind the skinny 50 year-old dude that was wigging out in front of us for the entire 3-hour show.
• For the show in 2003, I was sick as a dog while waiting out in the Meadowlands parking lot to go in to Giants Stadium. I was dehydrated, I was running a fever, and I was hungover from the day before (and only 19 years old! Don't tell Mom and Dad!). It was 90 degrees on the asphalt and I was still huddled in a sweatshirt, shivering like it was freezing out. Determined to go in and enjoy the show anyway, I sat there and felt like crap until someone in the section lit up a joint during "Rosalita". Not sure if it was the song or the secondhand pot smoke that picked me up, but I felt like a million bucks for the rest of the week.
• I helped with the renovations to the basement addition when Dad was constructing "Mike's Tiki Bar." When the finishing touches were applied, Phillies and Eagles posters and bobbleheads adorned one wall, golf balls and pictures of the Three Stooges took up another, and the rest of this enormous space was transformed into a Springsteen shrine. Every piece of memorabilia my father owned that wasn't a CD from his collection is on the wall downstairs. It's sick.
• Dad was on the NJN Evening News, shown standing outside the Convention Center in Asbury Park while the band practiced inside before their '99 reunion tour. He was holding his cell phone up to the granite walls from his spot on the beach where dozens of other hardcore fans were gathered to listen. He was leaving recordings of the muffled music on our answering machine at home. The next week he took the entire family to Asbury to do it again; I remember being bored to tears in the freezing cold on that god-forsaken boardwalk.
  
• Nearly two years ago, Matt, Nick and Anthony jumped into my old Toyota ever so trustingly and let me cart them off on my own trip to Asbury Park to do some urban exploration. Hey- just because I was sulking in '99 doesn't mean it didn't spark an interest with me. Here are select photos from that trip:
  
  
  

So, I realize that I'm making my father out to sound like he's obsessed, but trust me when I say he's just enthusiastic. And I know I end up sounding obsessed too, but usually I try to keep it under wraps one way or another. For example, I'm now setting a once-a-year limit on Bruce Springsteen posts on Open All Night. See? Seriously, though, I wouldn't be as passionate about music without seeing the impact Bruce's music has had on my dad's life, his marriage, and his parenting.

Jesus, what sappy bullshit did I just write? I guess I just wanted to express exactly how excited I am about this album and this show next week. BRUUUUUUUUCE