They’re saying bruuuuuce..
26th November 2012
This is exactly where a newly single 33 year-old man who spends every waking moment sprinting in pursuit of youth wants to be: surrounded by middle aged men and women dancing like maimed mummies, reanimated by rock. Gone from them are the hard lived days of youth, the very hardships that once fueled a young Springsteen. The race is over. Tonight, the Century Link Center in Omaha brims with Audi car keys and fresh prescriptions of Cialis. True, there are a number of innocents here, but it’s difficult to imagine they came of their own volition. These kids, all of them, were drug here under the false pretenses of their parents’ nostalgia. “Concert” means many things to different generations. For me, it’s a splendid morass. For many brood-lings: a chance to stay up late. For their parents, it’s a celebration of those times once fueled by anthems of suicide machines. At best, this entire affair is no longer about the struggle but of the victory overcoming it. At worst, it is an expensive farce.
It’s low hanging fruit to attack a musician who’s come to represent blue collar misfortune (never more so than now, during a recession) for $75 ticket prices and overpriced beer. Considering that we’re talking about an artist whose wheelhouse has been perseverance for decades now - long before it was a current event - such attacks are laughable. Bruce Springsteen is a road dog, a musician’s musician whose wealth and success seemingly never went to his head. An uncanny understanding of people has forged a catalog of Americana and his ageless ability to excite a crowd is only fully realized in a venue of this size. We’re moments into the show and already he’s singing “Hungry Heart” in a mass of hands and smiles. The eighteen(?) piece E Street Band is heralding the end of heartache behind him. Lights are panning toward the heavens. There’s not a bad seat in the house. Part of the art is the performance and a manipulation of this magnitude is truly impressive.
And it is a manipulation.
This is all a theatrical manipulation of the spirit and your level of enjoyment relies on how willing you are to be washed away by it all. Have you come for the sincere songwriter or the carefully choreographed theatrics? Do you really believe that these signs in the audience, supposed requests from fans, are truly improvisations in the making or are the perfectly synced, elaborate lights slowly tearing a hole in the charade? Is this young girl in the “I Love Bruce” shirt truly such a fan, at the age of (maybe) seven, that she not only knows the words to this ten year-old Boss song, but is also so unwavered by the ocean of people before her that she can belt out a few choruses without the slightest inhibition? (No.)
The theatrics of it all colludes with the recurring subject matter and I’m forced to check my cynicism. It’s easy to forget that I’m categorizing one of America’s original legends in with a general distaste for the rampant plastic patriotism that’s commercialized these days. This is the man who wrote “Born in the U.S.A.” for crying out loud. How dare I accuse the guy who wrote that song as cashing in on patriotism? He took an entire country to task and managed to make a hit single out of it to boot! He is not Toby Keith. Springsteen’s product is not 'MURICA. No, his style has even more appeal to an even greater audience. It plays to the priceless and personal. It’s nostalgia.
Did anyone realize back when “Glory Days” was a fresh single that Springsteen was foreshadowing what his entire career would obsess over? As he’s narrating the first of many Jersey anecdotes between songs, it’s finally apparent to me. Memories are a powerful thing. Folk, rock, country, blues, nearly all genres of music appeal to the past but it’s those special songwriters that permeate the specificity of their own history and use their experiences to elicit a response. Deeper than the theatrics, beyond the choreography and faux improv is Springsteen’s gift to do just that. He has a list longer than your leg of anthems and biographies retelling the tales of fictitious heroes and romantic villains, but his historically sincere “voice of the people” lends credence where there normally would be none.
It dismisses the monetization of patriotism and financial depression.
It makes a shallow arena show credible.
Musicians have their style, hook, etc., and Springsteen’s just happens to be regret and reminiscence. At the end of the day, sincerity doesn't matter. This is a celebration for those who've earned it. None of these people in the audience are looking for an anthem to further them along the road of perseverance. They’re simply looking for their money’s worth and God bless each and every one of their tender, silver heads. For this is the old guard, people who play by the original rules. What these folk know of piracy is that it exists, that is all. They know nothing of torrents, Usenet, or how they work. Only within this niche is an arena deity still possible. The music marketplace, rusted and drafty as it is, conducts business as it always has without the complications of temptation. Free art is thievery in the hearts of these simple folk, nothing more. How fitting that the Boss, opulent, carefree, and the herald of yesteryear, should hold court tonight over a celebration within an industry well beyond its glory days.
