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The official Caryn L. Rose line on the Super Bowl performance is this: I do not think it was terrible.

Let’s get this out of the way: It didn’t top Bruce. It didn’t top Prince. It didn’t top U2. But it did make me cry, just a little. I cried because I love/d them. I cried because they are old. I cried because I am old. I cried because the music of my youth is dying. I cried because Roger can’t go onstage shirtless anymore. I cried because John is dead, because I never got to see Keith, because there is no one else like them, no one who comes close to them.

I know I am not objective. I know I am emotional and irrational and have a stormy history with this band. But they were the first band I loved insanely. I do not have to be objective.

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As an upshot of my first visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last weekend, I was invited to submit a guest blog for the RRHOF’s website.

There’s also a news story from me on Backstreets.com, but you’ll have to scroll down to the news from 1/26.

Full posts on the Springsteen exhibit and the rest of the hall in general will be up on the weekend.

When the band broke up, my first thought was “I’ll never get to see Matt Cameron play drums again” and, well, we know how that turned out. But there’s a difference between playing on that stuff and playing Soundgarden music. I snuck through Seattle alleys and darkened under-curfew streets to see Kim Thayil play live with Jello Biafra during the WTO riots. I flew to San Francisco to see Chris Cornell’s first solo gig at the Fillmore. I will believe it when I see it, but there is part of me that is just OVER THE MOON.

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I’ll be featured on the New Year’s Day episode. Considering that Dave and I argued so much he needed to edit afterwards, it should be a good one.

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I could not love Bruce Springsteen more than I do at this very moment.

Lou Reed, Mo Tucker and Doug Yule in conversation with David Fricke, Live at the New York Public Library

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
HSBC Arena, Buffalo, NY
22 November 2009
Greetings From Asbury Park

I am still trying to find the words to talk about Buffalo. I walked out of the venue Sunday night feeling drained yet exhilarated. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls, dying to start processing and analyzing and taking the show apart, the game of connect the dots, the simple act of keeping the feeling of the show alive by talking about it. It was a quiet, solemn walk to the parking lot, a complete contrast to the emotional explosion that happened inside the HSBC Arena. Two days later, I am wistful and nostalgic and ruminative. I am also over-sensitive, exhausted and emotional. Greetings played on the iPod on the way to work has me unexpectedly crying down 7th Avenue.

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My writeup of The River from Sunday night is now up at brucespringsteen.net.

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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Madison Square Garden, 8 November 2009
The River

As I will tirelessly remind everyone, the key to success with the album shows is with how Bruce frames the rest of the show around the album. Saturday night we had a stunning, monumental album performance, with a second half that kept me wondering when it was going to start to get interesting. If I thought I couldn’t forgive him for “Sunny Day” after “Jungleland,” that was nothing compared to enduring “Sunny Day” after “New York City Serenade” on Saturday night (although to tell you the truth I was so stunned that it took me a few minutes to recover and he could have been playing the Mexican Hat Dance - although the Mexican Hat Dance would at least be novel and amusing, unlike - oh, nevermind). I had already gone on record saying that I would be willing to forgive him “Sunny Day” after “Wreck On The Highway,” except that last night he picked up A DIFFERENT GUITAR and was about to play something else completely different, only to call the entire band over for a conference after which they ALL have to switch guitars in order to play - “Sunny Day.”

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