Bruce Springsteen

Aug 16, 2011
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So am I Cruyff.
Were you a verified fan?
Can't wait. Amazing reviews to date
What date?

It was kinda unplanned. Friends of mine had tickets and decided not to go, and he said he had some available, so I snapped them up.

Will be in NYC for Xmas and NY.
 
Cruyff14 any reports from Springsteen on Broadway?

Christmas Eve I decided to give my car a bloody good wash and clean so I put on Live 1975-85 3 CD's. The washing and cleaning was a bit slow as I needed to hear all 3 CD's before I finished. It's still a great listen and I've been playing all 3 CD's but thrashing the first one. * that show at The Roxy 7/7/78 was brilliant as 8 of first 11 is from that show and Thunder Road from there 3 years earlier.
 
Anybody gotta a copy of this or a download of the show from 31st December 1980 and they play thru midnight?? It was released a couple of years ago. It has a 16 minute Rosalita. See info and set list at

32 song main set andother 6 as an encore. Not sure how that didnt crack 4 hours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_Coliseum,_New_York_1980


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Aug 16, 2011
70,780
55,794
Melbourne
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Arsenal
Cruyff14 any reports from Springsteen on Broadway?

Christmas Eve I decided to give my car a bloody good wash and clean so I put on Live 1975-85 3 CD's. The washing and cleaning was a bit slow as I needed to hear all 3 CD's before I finished. It's still a great listen and I've been playing all 3 CD's but thrashing the first one. **** that show at The Roxy 7/7/78 was brilliant as 8 of first 11 is from that show and Thunder Road from there 3 years earlier.
Words can't do it justice.

Whatever I say won't even come close. I'm just glad I've had the opportunity to see it. If you can get a ticket, go.

I've got a bootleg of it I can share if anybody here is interested.
 
In yesterday's Oz sports reporter Will Swanton starts off his story about Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic taking a story from Bruce's book Born to Run paraphrasing some of it and directly quoting other parts for the Growin Up section the Onward and Upward chapter from pages 173 to 175.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...s/news-story/b1b4d3dd32307e7ba0aafa91d5344a40

A young Bruce Springsteen wanted to become a prominent musician. He wanted to do justice to his kick-arse talent and make a million bucks and hear his songs on the radio and yet the wannabe rock stars of the 1970s were not as pampered as, say, the elite Australian tennis players of 2018, and Springsteen knew he had to work until the fingers of his right hand were strong and callused. He decided that while the rest of his guitar-slinging competition settled for the norm, he would go above and beyond the level of accepted performances … because he had to. To cut it down to the most basic equation, he refused to believe that one plus one equalled two. Said who? He came up with his own equation, the one that would define his career.

1 + 1 = 3.

There were no multimillion-dollar endorsement contracts with Yonex and Nike for the twenty-something Springsteen. He had no money, no car, no licence, one dilapidated guitar, one shoe, no pool table because he sold it for $35 on Christmas Eve and a choice to make between being homeless or the embarrassment of sleeping every night on his parents’ couch.

He ached for what sporting performers are given in Australia for the next month. A stage. An audience. A vast level of public interest. TV coverage! Musicians and athletes — to varying degrees, they’re all performers. A court is a stage and a stage is a court. Certain tennis players should be reminded of their blessings: the pay before the play. Not once did Springsteen say, “I don’t want to be here.”

At rock-bottom, he was scavenging for meals in New Jersey when he was told he could make $35 if he made it to New York City for a gig. The complication: the toll for the Lincoln Tunnel was $1. Which was a dollar more than he had. Nor did he have a car. He borrowed one. Having promised himself he would go hammer-and-tong to forge a career, to pounce on every conceivable opportunity, he scrounged up the fare in pennies and drove towards Manhattan. He wrote in his autobiography, Born To Run: “All went well until I hit the Lincoln Tunnel. There in the window of the toll booth stood the famous, ‘No Pennies’ sign. Pennies were all I had. I handed a dollar’s worth, my last dollar. I handed them to the attendant, who said, ‘I can’t take these.’ I said, ‘M’am, that’s all the money I have and I don’t have enough gas to get back home if you force me to turn around.’ I put myself at her mercy. She said, ‘Well, you’re going to sit here while I count every one.’”

And she did. Slowly. Meticulously. Painstakingly. Poker-faced. She counted them all. She told Springsteen he could not go through because one of the pennies, which she was holding between her thumb and forefinger like Exhibit A, was a Canadian penny. Illegal tender. Right there and then, Springsteen thought it was over. His dream. His life. His music. His opportunity. The woman at the toll booth was losing patience. He got out of the car and started searching for it, on hands-and-knees, for one more penny. “I began to carefully go over every inch of the inside of that car while she raised holy hell,” Springsteen wrote. “In 1972 there was no self-respecting car in America without a penny trapped somewhere under its seats. “After some very long minutes of mining, I found one, in the rear back seat between the cushions. I stood up, handed it to her amid what now sounded like a beautiful, profane opera of barking horns and shouting voices from the pissed-off parade that stretched out behind me. All she said was, ‘Go ahead … but don’t come back here with those pennies again!’

“Lesson: in the real world, ninety-nine cents will not get you into New York City. You will need the full dollar.”

Part of Bernie Tomic’s sad demise as a tennis player has come from being financially successful and famous before he’s really earned it. When the moment came last year when he had to scrounge around the back seats, he did not know how to do it. He’d always been paid before he played. Nick Kyrgios? It feels like we’re still at the toll both............
........

Kyrgios is a showman, a one-man-band, a headline act, a legitimate sporting rock star, when he wants to be. This summer, does he want to be? He’s posted social-media messages in his off-season about realising how blessed he is, and how happiness is being who you want to be, not what everyone else expects you to be. Sounds promising. Sounds ominous! Springsteen’s first album was called Greetings from Asbury Park. Kyrgios is at the age and stage where he can make his first majors breakthrough at Melbourne Park, but he will have to pay his dues.

Here comes another Australian Open in which we sit in our toll booths and try to work out if he’s become the full quid.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...s/news-story/b1b4d3dd32307e7ba0aafa91d5344a40
 
Springsteen on Broadway is just magic. Absolute ******* magic. No other words for it. The best show I've ever seen, I think.
How many people does the theatre seat?
Are you allowed to get up out of your seats and dance/move/grove etc?
How close to Bruce is the front seat?
How close to Bruce did you sit from him?
Did he bring anyone else onto the stage?
Does he tell long stories about the song or life in general?
Any back and forth with the audience?
Cost? both legal and scalped ticket.
 
Last edited:
Aug 16, 2011
70,780
55,794
Melbourne
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Arsenal
How many people does the theatre seat?
Are you allowed to get up out of your seats and dance/move/grove etc?
How close to Bruce is the front seat?
How close to Bruce did you sit from him?
Did he bring anyone else onto the stage?
Does he tell long stories about the song or life in general?
Any back and forth with the audience?
Coast? both legal and scalped ticket.
950
Maybe 3m
Maybe 20-30m
Usually it's Patti but she was sick so she didn't appear at my show.
Long stories about life, what made him write the songs.
Not really.
I paid $750. Scalped tix go for over $2000.

Check your inbox, hear it for yourself.
 
950
Maybe 3m
Maybe 20-30m
Usually it's Patti but she was sick so she didn't appear at my show.
Long stories about life, what made him write the songs.
Not really.
I paid $750. Scalped tix go for over $2000.

Check your inbox, hear it for yourself.
Thanks mate for the replies and the link. Much appreciated.
 
Do let us know what you think.
Mate finally got around to listening to it in one hit, and more importantly with decent external speakers attached to my computer. Sounds like a great intimate show. I couldn't work out if any of it he was reading from his book or all "ad lib." From your answers I assume there was a pit and you were in it.

I reckon its a lot like the February 1997 Ghost of Tom Joad tour show I saw in Brisbane. See set list HERE Not as many songs, 23 then vs 15 now and both shows Bruce did talking before most songs. The The Concert Hall in Brisbane has a capacity of 1,800 did 2 shows, the Capitol in Sydney 2,100 did 3 and Palais in Melbourne 2,900 and 3 shows.

I enjoyed the 1997 show, but after talking to mates who saw him a couple times in Sydney, I reckon he repeated 95% of his intro stories and will do the same with this tour. I remember saying to my mates the 1997 show was pretty good but it lacked the punch of the band and it was the first time I had seen Bruce as I missed 1985 tour - was a povo student who couldn't get to Melbourne from Adelaide. Also in Brisbane I was up stairs balcony section and whilst it was still reasonable close it was far enough away to be less interment.

But having seen him a dozen times now with the band post 1997, I can appreciate this solo performance more and there is a bit more punch than I remember and being able to play some songs over again helps. Plus its a better set list than 1997 and that helps as well.

So am I right that there was a pit and you were in it??
 
No pit, all seated theatre, and he used the teleprompter to tell his stories. All the speaking is virtually identical show to show.
Haha you didn't answer my question about dancing/moving so I read your answers out of sequence and that's why I thought you were in the pit. Ok if he's reading from a teleprompter then that's why sometimes it sound like he was reading from his book.

Was in just 3 or 4 guitars, harmonic and a piano that he used? Was Kevin Buell there to catch a guitar?
 
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