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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Giants Stadium, October 2, 3, 8, 9, 2009

• Number of tickets for Giants shows originally purchased 2:
• Number of tickets ultimately purchased: 4

I was only going to the last night at Giants. Then, that task meant buying two tickets since that date kept changing. Then, of course, Darkness came up, and I couldn’t afford to miss it. Then I had so much fun that I wanted to see Born To Run instead of taking a chance I’d get it somewhere else this fall.

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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Night 3: 3 October, 2009
Born In The USA

It is a time for true confessions.

Confession: when I originally learned I was going to have to sit through Born In The USA twice I was less than thrilled. I deliberately never saw BITUSA in the stadiums; I saw it in the arenas, and had no desire to go to a blimp nest.

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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
10-2-09
Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Willing suspension of disbelief. This has always been my response to people who assert that Bruce is corny or contrived or overly earnest in concert. You have to be willing to let yourself go, be willing to follow him wherever he goes, be willing to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

In this case, it’s presenting entire albums in order before an intimate crowd of 55,000.

In this day of the iPod shuffle, listening to an entire album in order is almost a quaint, antiquated notion. Presenting an entire album in sequence before an intimate crowd of 55,000 seems doomed to failure. And yet, with aplomb, they carried it off.

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We didn’t hit the lottery at Giants tonight, so I suggested we grab the spots dead center against the back rail, which is also where Himself decided to start dragging his attention-whore self out during ‘Hungry Heart’. We weren’t close to the stage but we would get a few minutes of Bruce two feet from us.

Imagine our shock when the song starts, a dozen security guys descend on the area, and we’re informed that “Bruce has decided he wants to crowd surf all the way back to the stage tonight and he’s going in the crowd right where you are, can you handle it?” If you look in the video, you can see his personal security guy not looking very happy about this, at all. I know it’s sideways and backwards and if anyone can fix it I’ll send you the raw AVI.

Bruce crowdsurfing during Hungry Heart from caryn rose on Vimeo.

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U2 360
Giants Stadium
9/23/09

I don’t do stadiums.

I really don’t. If I am in the blimp nest for a rock and roll show, there has to be some kind of exceptional reason - end of band, end of tour, end of something. I sat out Born In The USA when it got to the stadiums. I have skipped other Bruce shows there. I made an exception for the Stones once, and never again.

Of course in the same breath I can tell you that seeing U2 on Zooropa at Wembley Stadium changed my life.

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