Similarly, it is tempting to populate a recollection of a Bruce Springsteen concert with allusions to lyrics and song titles. Of course, I am secretly hoping that Bruce will read this, chuckle quietly to himself, and decide to invite me onstage to dance at his next show. A game manager might chose to write responsibly and abstain from too many admittedly corny references. A gunslinger, however, would take the complete opposite approach and decide to sling as many of them as possible.
Seeing The Boss at Giants Stadium has to be on everyone's bucket list. I can finally cross this one off of mine; now, all I have to do is purchase the various types of buckets that make up the remainder of my list and I'm set. The experience is probably a lot like seeing Brett Favre at Mall of America Field.
The concert itself was on a Saturday night. I began the pilgrimage to the Meadowlands from my campus in Philadelphia, stopping by Rutgers University in New Brunswick to pick up an old high school friend. This leg of the trip was marked by my aggressive driving and devil-may-care demeanor, as well as the wind tossing my hair heroically in the wind as I grew to be 6'4''. Even thinking about Bruce has this effect on people. I would have made better time in getting to my friend's house at Rutgers, but the weather was a bit foggy and the streets were clogged with disappointing football teams. Damn you, Cook-Douglas Fightin' Wildcats!
I left Philly at 12:30 and was in New Brunswick by 1:45. We made the trip back to our hometown, where a third friend was meeting us in order to drive us to Giants Stadium. This third friend is without a doubt the biggest Springsteen fan I have ever met. To wit: he called the entire Super Bowl halftime set list – accurate both in terms of which songs and in which order. Second, he called that Springsteen would play two relatively obscure tracks when I saw him live in Philadelphia. He has also seen Bruce sixteen times in concert.
We were in our hometown from 2:30 until 3:00 watching the conclusion to a college football game. Central Connecticut State was playing Sacred Heart on a network known as MSG+ HD, which not only proves how we will watch any scrub college football game under any circumstances, but that my plans to gamble heavily on the Oklahoma Thunder preseason is now only the second most pathetic thing of October 2009.
We finally traded for enough shotguns and struck out for the show. Sadly, the fourth member of our party got dysentery and died, ironically, of a bullet ricochet. A pizza place on Route 22 provided the pre-tailgating nourishment for our party. Garlic doesn't give me bad breath, but it will make my lips taste pretty bad until I brush my teeth – forcing me to abandon my plans to kiss Gary Tallent during "Jackson Cage".
Traffic wasn't too bad, since most of the last chance power drives had taken place the previous night. I couldn't fully grasp the significance of seeing The Boss play on his home turf until I caught sight of the iconic Giants Stadium sign atop the side of the stadium in the parking lot. Finding a parking spot, seeing dozens of Jersey license plates, watching frumpy old people happily act like they're twenty – it was good to be home.
Tailgating from 4:00 until 8:15 is an experience that is very similar to attending a family reunion. I felt an undeniable but inexplicable bond of affection running through a large group of moderately weird looking people. My favorite part of the entire experience was how hundreds of cars were each blaring classic Springsteen songs to the extent where if you walked from your tailgating site to the port-o-potty, every five steps you'd hear a riff from a different track.
Interactions with strangers at tailgates are always fun. The combination of E Street-generated goodwill and tons of grilled meat made everyone a little happier. A neighboring woman approached us and offered grilled sausage and pepper sandwiches, which were delicious, but the grilled zucchini she gave us next was somehow better. I saw a guy who looked exactly like Vinny Testaverde's younger brother – down to the curly swept back hair and goofy posture. Another guy looked exactly like Stan Van Gundy. Actually, considering that we were in Jersey, it probably would have been more surprisingly if I saw a guy who didn't look like Stan Van Gundy.
At 7:45, it was time to finally head onto the field. This was no time to gunsling and risk accidentally ending up at a Bon Jovi concert at Metrostars Stadium. I spent $100 for the right to stand on the floor, roughly one hundred feet away from the stage. One of my friends who met us there had recently sacrificed a bull to Poseidon, and thankfully the lord of the wine-dark sea smiled on us and blessed us with the ability to move up in seating until we were forty feet away from the stage. That, and the fact that my friend knew a state trooper who ushered us closer to the stage. Also, I just finished reading Odysseus. I have always been a firm believer that poetry should either be epic or nonexistent, so I enjoyed it.
Having floor seats at Giants Stadium to Bruce Springsteen is the kind of sentence that you like to run over and over and your mind, much like the sentence "I have tickets to the midnight showing of The Replacements VI: Replace This!" Legions of happy faces smile back at you when you look up into the stands from the aluminum-covered floor. To be honest, there were moments where I enjoyed pretending that I was a member in the band and they were all looking at me. Yes, it's lame, but if you ever have the experience you'll understand what I'm talking about. Plus, the history of Giants Stadium was flashing through my head – Parcells, LT, the Emmitt Smith in '93, Keyshawn, Vincenzo, 41-0.
The first song was a new one specially written to close Giants Stadium, which needless to say was poignant and effective. His first actual song was an awesome rendition of "Out in the Street" off of The River. Adam Sandler covered the song pretty well, but Bruce did it better. He played the entire track listing from the album Born in the U.S.A, which is fortunate since I believe the following concert he played all of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Springsteen also gave two fantastic, fiery speeches, one coming as fireworks erupted across the top of the stadium. And, he closed with "Thunder Road".
Frequently, during concerts, Springsteen will invite a small child from the rows closest to the stage to sing the chorus to a song or for a quick dance. This happened several times during the show, most notably during "Dancing in the Dark", as Bruce responded to a sign "asking for a 13th birthday 'dance'" and pulled the girl onstage for thirty seconds near the end of the song. As long as this girl doesn't grow up to star in an overrated sitcom, I will remember it as the finest moment of the night. A living legend creating a birthday moment for a little girl combined with the cultural signficiance of that song was almost too much to handle. By the time Bruce – aided by 60,000 backup singers – finished crooning "it's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win", any doubts that a 60-year-old man could kill it were removed.
On the way out, I noticed a few of his older fans that looked like they had 35 years worth of Springsteen concert memories written into their smiling faces. I imagine that they keep coming back year after year not for the chance to hear "Born to Run" for the millionth time, but rather to revel in all the finer details of a Bruce show that make it so special. For me, it was the smile on the girl's face as she left the stage, the cracks in the Big Man's hands when he crushes a solo, and the spittle flying between Bruce and Stevie when they sing so close together on a shared mike that they could kiss.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
My friend's BlackBerry was originally only taking photos in sepia, which I assumed was a tribute to that classic Springsteen track "Tough Times Down at the Sepia Factory". Fortunately, the error was fixed, and here are the highlights:
Huge banner seen outside the stadium on the way in. The silhouettes of the band members, which you can kind of see on the left part of the image, were the best part.
View of stage, before seating upgrade.
This is actually the image from the when I attended the ceremony where the Giants retired Kerry Collins's jersey.
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce
"...from the coastline to the cities all the little pretties raised their hands!"
View of the stage, after the seating upgrade.
Stan Van Gundy!
I love this guy for wearing this jersey to the Bruce show.
