At the Church of the Prophet of Freehold

Last night was the night, the long-awaited Bruce Springsteen concert, tickets to which I won by virtue of a surfeit of trivial Bossiania.  This was my second trip to a Springsteen show, the first having was just about 20 years ago.  Looking around at the audience last night, I was struck by the fact that, while I haven't changed, the rest of the crowd had gotten really. . . old.

Actually, that's not entirely true: The audience members' ages spanned a broad range: Just within my section, there sat a boy who couldn't have been more than 10 (more on him later) and a woman who had to be close to 80.  One of the more amusing signs read, "Bruce: Dance with old people!"

He didn't, though.  (And God knows I tried!  I flashed my chest and everything!  No reaction--well, other than some questioning by security.  We all had a good laugh.)  Quite the opposite, really.  For "Dancing in the Dark," his "Courtney Cox" was a tween, complete with pink, animal-shaped backpack.  And about that ten-year-old: He had come prepared with a sign of his own, reading "Hey, Boss: I've been practicing!"  During "Waiting on a Sunny Day," Bruce walked over to our edge of the stage, saw the sign, and waved the boy up on stage.  He then let the kid sing the chorus--both a capella and with the band--and taught him how to do a rock-star slide across the stage.  Some kids have all the luck.

By now, it's a cliche to point out that Bruce Springsteen is one of (one of?) the greatest live performers in the history of rock and roll.  But cliches are cliches for a reason.  A Springsteen show is less entertainment spectacle than religious revival for the secular-humanist set.  The final set rolled from classic to classic; "Out in the Street" to "Dancin' in the Dark" to "Born to Run" to "Rosalita" to "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out"--the music slamming to a halt after "A change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band."  This was followed by a minutes-long "moment of silence" for the recently departed Clarence Clemons--if a "Moment of Silence" can consist of 15,000 screaming fans applauding maniacally as a video tribute played overhead.

For the last half-hour or so, the Shark Tank in San Jose felt more like a well-lit (and large) high-school gymnasium than a rock-concert venue: Plain unadorned house lights replaced colored gels as fans danced uninhibited, led by the Boss himself.  This 62-year-old man, who had been performing uninterrupted for two and a half hours, possessed more energy than he had at the beginning, more energy perhaps than the entire audience even.  He sang like a revivalist preacher on a mission to save the souls of his gathered flock.

Practically every song in Springsteen's 26-song set featured some element of call-and-response, creating and then amplifying the evening's spiritual component.  In "Lonesome Day," Bruce led the crowd in a chant of "It's all right, it's all right, it's all right"--and for the evening, in the presence of this musical prophet, it was.

How great must it be to be Bruce Springsteen?