I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. He’s overrated. I want to like him more. I like his story, I like his attitude, I like his subject matter, hell I like him. He’s a charismatic likable guy. But I just don’t like most of his music. Once you get past the best four songs or so there’s a whole lot of blech.
Nevertheless, he a good performer. I saw him live once, and even freezing my buns off from a seat directly behind him and not liking the songs I liked the show. Last years Tom Petty show featured better songs but this was a much better show. Even with each song was worse than the last it was still good entertainment. 10th Avenue Freezeout is a great tune, Born to Run is good, Dreaming (or whatever it’s called) is ok, and Glory Days is wretched. I wish the ref really had given them a penalty and shut the whole song down mid-chord.
My biggest beef with Springsteen live is the guitars. How many guitars do you need? Seriously. Bruce, Steve, Nils, Patti, that’s four. There was a blond girl and another guy – at one point I counted six guitars. It’s ridiculous. It’s even sadder because you can’t hear any of them. Sometimes you hear one, but there’s no way to make out more than that. And that’s on the records, never mind the live mix. What is that point of all those guitars!?
I am always more impressed by the logistics than the music these days. To get at entire working rock act up and running in 5-10 minutes, complete with a light show and fans and TV cameras and everything else is simply incredible.
And for no reason, one of my favorite songs from way back. Funny stuff from Rick Springfield.
