Born To Run, 10/9

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.

That said, I need to make this clear: I hate concerts at Giants Stadium. I do not find anything enjoyable about drinking beer and throwing beanbags in the parking lot, do not enjoy music outdoors, do not find it charming to watch a concert standing on a football field, do not want to pee in a portopotty. I am very glad that I did these four shows, but I am also very glad that they are over.

The Giants Stadium shows, beyond the albums, were interesting exercises. They were interesting because once you took setlist stalwarts out of their usual context, Bruce had to find another way to construct the show.

Let’s start with “Wrecking Ball”. I realize that Giants Stadium is an important venue to Bruce, but he’s probably the only person in the building that truly felt sentimental about its demise. Let’s get things straight: this is not a good place for anyone to see a concert, ANY concert. Even people who know how to do a big stadium spectacular – like U2 – it’s still miserable on a lot of levels. This was not the loss of a cherished local venue or historical theater. Even football fans could care less. Musically, the song was interesting, but lyrically, I’m not sure the words merited being put up on the screen. As I said about “American Land” all those months ago, if you have to put the lyrics up in order for the audience to understand the song, maybe you should pick a different one.

Every night started with five songs, two of which were interchangeable, three of which were set: “Wreckin’ Ball,” “Outlaw Pete,” and “Hungry Heart”. I am resigned to the status of “Outlaw Pete” and I would not mind it nearly as much if it wasn’t 9 minutes long. Plus, Bruce has the habit of ‘rewarding’ fans by playing something that lets them sing along after he plays something he believes is ‘challenging’. I love “Hungry Heart” so I don’t mind it, but I’m not sure we needed it every night. Bruce going out in the crowd was fine until everyone figured it out, and then it became uncomfortable and unpleasant as people kicked and pushed and shoved to try to get against the back barrier later in the stand.

The album sets were so incredibly well done. I have no quibble with them (or, at least, have already documented any quibbles). I have written about them extensively so I won’t go into them here. I will note that, surprisingly, hearing the album in order does not have the same impact after you see them a second time. My SO confirmed this about Born To Run (and he is a BTR guy) and I can confirm it about USA. The novelty definitely wears off. I will be irked in the extreme if he takes the easy way out for the MSG shows, unless he’s going to bring out different albums that have not already been played.

Bruce definitely needs to work on the transition out of the album. It is wonderful that he takes a moment to acknowledge the musicians and the moment, but you can’t go from “Jungleland” or “Darkness On The Edge of Town” into “Sunny Day”. The albums are not painful for the audience to listen to; I was struck all nights by how attentive most people were (with the exception of course of morons who felt the need to talk through “Meeting Across The River”/”Jungleland”). “Promised Land” is a better transitory song; “Tougher Than The Rest” on 10/9 was also a smoother segue, not to mention a pleasant surprise.

The request segment kind of veered out of control, I thought, mostly because no one knew where it was going to be, and a lot of people didn’t understand that there would be a clear signal as to when they should hold up their signs. As a result, signs were up every time Bruce walked near the front of the crowd, which meant that cameras were blocked, which meant that the people in, say, section 311 couldn’t see what was going on. (I’ll get to the subject of cameras later.) I personally feel that the request segment needs to move to the encore and just stay there. It gives Bruce the opportunity to create a smooth setlist from the end of the album to the end of the show, without having to revise it by calling audibles (which may or may not be successful) midstream. (It’s one thing if he’s inspired and calling an audible – don’t get me wrong, I don’t ever want that to stop.)

On the whole, I felt the requests chosen were great. “Be True” was a lovely surprise. “Jailhouse Rock” was inspired. “My Love Will Not Let You Down” should come back. Really, some great choices over the five nights. As a note: “Sunny Day” as a request number was an even bigger copout than “For You” is. But, if you pair the requests with whatever feel-good numbers Bruce feels he needs to play in the encore, you get a good mix of interesting songs for diehards and crowdpleasers for the rest of the audience.

Other notes:

• Roy Bittan coming out first every single night with a shit-eating grin on his face, tons of energy. I am glad to see E Street enjoying themselves.
• I loved the book promos for Clarence probably more than most people in the audience did. I filmed them just so I could send the links to several editors and agents. (I hear the book is terrible, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.)
• I did NOT know about the fireworks before I got there on night two, and you know what? I loved it. It was over-the-top, it was excessive, it was so non-Springsteen – but they were cool and they were fun and I’m glad he loosened up enough to let it happen. For the last nights of Giants Stadium, they were perfectly appropriate.
• I felt that the TPL/Last To Die/Long Walk Home segue worked better, and felt fresher, than the TPL->Rising material segue. I understand why he feels he needs to play the Rising material in Jersey, but it is so tired that it needs a rest.
• As much as I hate a stadium show, I have to say that the GA procedure was the most well-run I have seen in a long time. Yes, it took forever to actually get into the stadium, but with the exception of Saturday’s show, where there were already 106 people in line by 8am, the procedure was about as fair as it was going to be, and prevented the usual scam artists from wreaking havoc. The fact that you could still get into the back of the front pit at 7pm was fine with me. It meant that people didn’t need to take days off work just to get a decent vantage point.
• Bring Curt Ramm to play trumpet on BTR absolves a great many sins. Putting a real horn section together for the Thursday night BTR was a once in a lifetime opportunity. However, it makes you think – if Bruce thinks it’s a good idea to take two backup singers on the road for the whole tour, why on earth not pay horn players as well? You’d certainly get more use out of the horns.
• I appreciated that Bruce has finally gotten some stadium-worthy video screens. However, they have a long way to go with the concept of graphics and design and art, and I’ll give you a hint: it’s not putting fans on the video screen, or sending a camera into the pit to film people dancing. We started calling it the “douchebag camera” because that was what people acted like when the camera was on them. U2 does not do that, and I only mention them because IMHO they are the unchallenged masters at how to run a big stadium video setup. And when you don’t put cameras on people, you don’t get strippers flashing.
• “Kitty’s Back” both times it was played were fantastic examples of Bruce figuring out how to take material that a lot of people just do not know, and making it stadium-friendly. It helped that the addition of the second horn made it easy to keep the improv sections tight, which kept the song focused, which meant that people didn’t get bored and start wandering around looking for a soft pretzel. He got 50k people to sing the call-and-response for “Kitty’s Back” without turning it into “Mary’s Place”. And not that I want to start rating things, but the 10/3 performance was the best “Kitty’s Back” I have seen since Danny’s last show.
• I am sad to report that New Jersey Springsteen audiences are still rude and inconsiderate. I have never had so many people talk through a show than in Jersey, and the number of friends and special guests in the NJ crowd just multiplies the inconsiderate factor. More than twice I have had to ask people to please not talk during an important song. I do not care if you work for the band, know the band, or your brother is a roadie – it does not give you the right to talk through the show. If you want to do that, go to the E Street Lounge or the VIP area or the back of the field where you can’t ruin it for someone else.
• “Sandy” for Danny, with Roy on the accordion, and with Charlie not onstage, was a moment we all needed. Or at least it was needed for the people who care about who is in the E Street Band.
• On that note, I am grateful that Max is on hiatus until the end of the tour and I will not have to see Jay Weinberg except on Born To Run. He is simply not up to the task and it seems that Bruce realized this.*
• I do not dislike “Jersey Girl” and I do not think the performances were bad, but I have to say that this was the first time I ever felt like the song was dated. I also do not think we needed it twice, and it was definitely the wrong way to end the last show. Given that we all saw him toss the harmonica back to Kevin before he started it, we know it was supposed to be “Thunder Road,” which, in my humble opinion, would have been the right way to close out the building.
• Instead, my biggest non-musical memory from these shows (taking Bruce diving into the crowd on top of us on 10/9 out of the equation) will be dancing at the back of the field to “Twist and Shout” on night 4. Every night, we started making our way out of the pit during the last break in Rosie – it’s a big field, and if you get caught in the bottleneck leaving the field, you will be there for exponentially longer than you would if you just hustle to the back and wait to see if he plays something else. On Friday, of course, that something was “Twist and Shout”. No one wanted to run all the way back to the pit, so we just stood at the back and danced the twist on the field. I also appreciated getting that vantage point; you could certainly hear just fine back there, and see pretty well, and there was probably something to be said about hanging out in the back of the field with your friends and drinking beer with the E Street Band as your backdrop. I guess this is the attraction of the stadium show, but I still feel that it puts most fans at a disadvantage if you are there to actually watch and listen to the show.

I felt worse walking out of Giants Stadium after the last Rising show than I did walking out on 10/9. Maybe it’s because I know there are still shows ahead; maybe I was just exhausted and ready for the shows to be over with; maybe I am very ready for this tour to be over with. I am interested to see what, if anything, happens in the arenas over the next month and a half.

I have TONS of photos and videos from all four nights in my Flickr feed.
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*I would appreciate it if the Jay Weinberg fanclub would just take it to BTX. I’m not changing your mind, you’re not changing mine, and I’m not debating it on a web site I own and maintain. Thanks.

If you liked The Wrecking Ball Wrap-Up you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

my hometown

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. As I told Peter Buck when I interviewed him for Backstreets during the VFC tour, we both got caught in Giants Stadium traffic (him in the tour bus, me in a car with friends) on our respective ways to R.E.M.’s performance at the Capitol Theater in Passaic in August of 1985. I had negative interest in going to a stadium to hear music I cared about. (I only reneged on this policy years later when I thought the statute of limitations might get invoked at some point.)

But I was with friends who never had the chance to see BITUSA in the stadiums, or for whom BITUSA was their first Bruce Springsteen experience. It was a Saturday night. It had stopped raining. We didn’t hit the lottery but we had grabbed a pretty good spot in the front GA section. I was willing to let go and see what Bruce could manage to do under these circumstances. Maybe the songs would gain some life and freshness in context the same way they did with Darkness.

Confession #2: Believe it or not, I do not own and have never owned Born In The USA on CD. I have multiple copies on vinyl, and I have a couple of mp3′s I bought of key songs. I never bought it on CD and have never felt a need to have it on CD. As someone who had just walked out of college in 1985, I heard these songs, all of it, on overkill. It was on every car radio that drove by (well, that and “Trapped”). You heard it at the beach. You heard it on MTV. People who laughed at you for liking Bruce Springsteen years earlier were suddenly calling you up for advice on how to get tickets to a concert. This is all longhand for me saying that I haven’t listened to BITUSA as an album since I can’t remember when.

I have to tell you, it was all pretty awesome to finally see my first Born In The USA stadium show.

First of all, it is so obvious how well this band is rehearsed. There might be a slipped lyric or a bum note but there is no residual sloppiness or the kind of lackluster performances we saw at one point during the Magic tour. The band is unbelievably sharp and it makes a tremendous difference when they are hitting the songs with continual crispness and attention. Because the band is together, Bruce doesn’t have to lose focus by needing to actively conduct them. They are firing, as they say, on all cylinders.

Second of all, you are hearing the songs without the wedding cake layers of synthesizer, you are hearing them with a better sound system, and you are hearing them being played by a band that has 25 years’ more practice under their belts. I’m not saying that they sucked in the 80′s, I’m just saying that they’re better now. (I for one would have liked the reappearance of certain props from BITUSA. I’m sure they’re sitting in a warehouse somewhere and there are enough children to recruit to help out with these roles.)

Third: I know people who went to those shows back in the day and were absolutely miserable. People were waving flags and yelling and screaming and just NOT LISTENING, and Bruce is trying to do Nebraska sets a million miles away. While there was no shortage of asshole behavior Saturday night (c’mon, this was Giants Stadium on a Saturday night. And while we’re here, can we please GET RID of the audience camera shots? We do not need a camera walking around the GA pit shooting fans dancing. This is not TRL. My friends in the 300s were all, “I’m really glad the screens are there but I don’t need to see people who have better seats than I am, I want to see THE BAND.”), people were very, very into this show. Just as this was the BITUSA stadium show a whole lot of the audience never got to have (judging by the massive presence of bandannas wrapped around heads), it was also the BITUSA stadium show Bruce never got to have. It was less about spectacle and more about the music.

(I realize of course that I am writing this about a show that has fireworks shooting off after the introduction of the E Street Band.)

The songs in order worked their magic again. Decades of memories attached to the song. Things I hadn’t thought about for years. It was easier to be patient as a diehard with most of them when they weren’t jammed into the flow of an otherwise great show.

And then there was “Bobby Jean.”

I wish I could tell you that it was different for me but it was not. People I was with did not feel the same way, so I will admit to being a snob or just never getting behind the sentiment of that song. (Or, more likely, there are emotions and memories attached to it I care to not acknowledge. Some things are not going to be confessed in here.) Bruce broke composure for “I’m On Fire,” which was okay, because we really couldn’t expect for him to try to do it straight as a married father of 3 teenagers in his 60′s. (He did try, but the expressions on the nymphets at his feet – and good for them! – made me crack up.) This was all okay, because it was BITUSA: it was the big stadium record, not the dark moody introspective record. Lights and video screens in certain moments were completely in context precisely because of that. While I have complaints about “Badlands” and I know people had some complaints about moments in Born To Run, you can’t really lodge those same complaints against the BITUSA show.

But then there were the songs that absolutely worked and were total powerhouses – the title track, “I’m Going Down,” “Glory Days,” “Downbound Train” in context was fantastic. “Cover Me” was unbelievable, like it was reinvented. I sang along to “Darlington County” with zero sarcasm, and found myself more touched by the reference to the World Trade Center than I have ever been – I have always, always been glad that he never took it out, but proximity and connection made it stronger than ever. Couldn’t muster it for “Working On The Hightway” but it, too, was a fine performance.

The audience sang their lungs out, from the diehards at the front to the Europeans on either side of us to the people all the way in the back and at the very top. Everyone was standing. Everyone was singing. Everyone had their arms in the air and was ready to be part of this gigantic sing-a-long at Giants Stadium. Bruce was visibly surprised by the strength of the response, and equally visibly touched. When we got to “My Hometown,” he wanted us to sing for ourselves as much as for him, he wanted us to sing along as reward, as a thank you.

And then it finished, and once again, introductions, the band having to go over to Clarence because he was lost in his little Clarence-world, and then it was back to business as usual. Luckily, “Sunny Day” wasn’t the transitory reward song dumped on us, which alone was cause to celebrate. But the performance was definitely the feel-good moment of the summer.

I will write about everything else in the show when the shows are over. But I will say that it was this night that made me decide I needed to see Born To Run live, so I am making another unscheduled journey to Secaucus on Thursday.

If you liked THE LAST STAND, Part 2 : Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Giants Stadium, 10-3-09 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

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.

As Bruce noted when he introduced the album, the songs on Darkness have informed the foundation of the E Street live show for the past 30 years. You have seen “Badlands” at almost every show since 1978 (and the statistic was every show since 1988 until Saturday night. But I get ahead of myself). And yet, there was a sense of deliberation and presence onstage tonight. This was not business as usual.

I had goosebumps as they began. Some of it was undoubtedly anticipation, but I did not expect such a visceral, emotional reaction to the ritual and the ceremony of playing an album from start to finish. At one point I tried to talk myself out of the reaction, worried that I was building something into it that wasn’t there. That was foolish because it was very real and very much there. Yes, I was willing to open up my heart and let it feel anything that was there to be felt, but the air was thick with ghosts and memories – not just mine, everyone else’s. Every thought that was triggered by the juxtaposition of a song. Every recollection, every heartbeat. And that went for Bruce as well.

Darkness was my record. This was my moment. This was my time. This was when I felt like I was an adult entering the world. Born To Run I just missed, I wasn’t old enough. But Darkness arrived in such good time I felt like it was written for me. I was never old enough to appreciate it live. Finally, I got my chance.

At least that’s how it was for me.

This is why it was somewhat disappointing that this auspicious beginning transitioned into the Big Stadium version of “Badlands,” complete with the false ending and houselights on the crowd. As a Darkness diehard, this was not quite how I had hoped it would go. I realize that yearning for dark moody intimacy in Giants Stadium was probably unreasonable, but there were plenty of other songs in this evening where the audience could follow the traditional audience participation routes. The crowd would have just taken their cue from Bruce had he not encouraged it and instead ended the song as it was written and originally performed.

All was forgiven, however, when “Adam Raised A Cain” began, and the power of the album and the sequencing and the mood and tone and intent began to resurface. These songs were put together in this particular order in a painstaking, painful fashion, after a period of – as Bruce put it as he introduced it “bad luck and hard times”. We have heard them singly and we have heard the occasional back to back pairing, but this suite of songs in this order has an undeniable power, even in a cavernous blimp nest like Giants Stadium. I appreciated that the behind-stage video screen kept off for the rest of the album, as the darkened stage also set the tone appropriately.

“Racing In The Street” was as powerful and heartbreaking as you would expect, and the absence of Danny Federici never more painfully felt than in this moment. But just when I thought my heart was going to break, Roy took over with an utterly magnificent outro on the grand piano. It’s not that Roy isn’t incredibly talented, but all I could think in that moment was that he was going above and beyond to fill in the hole left by Danny’s absence. I can’t remember the last time I saw a stadium crowd applaud a piano solo with such fervor.

The usual culprits in unusual spots just sounded amazingly new and fresh. “Candy’s Room” into “Racing” was astonishing. I can’t remember ever specifically wanting to hear “Prove It All Night” but yet, in context, it just felt different, it felt fresh, it didn’t feel like “Oh, yeah, ‘Prove It’”. But “Prove It All Night” after “Streets of Fire” was a remarkably refreshing contrast. “Darkness on the Edge of Town” can sometimes feel forced, can sometimes even feel a tad dry. No one was making a beer run when that song started Friday night. I appreciated that Bruce worked hard to minimize the pauses between songs, that he deliberately kept the mood and the momentum going.

And then, of course, the song we were all waiting for, “Streets of Fire”. I am not trying to sound ungrateful and it is likely that there was no way the performance could have met everyone’s ridiculously high hopes, but it was not as strong as I felt it could have been. The organ intro was not dominant enough, and it seemed to me that without the line of the intro to follow, Bruce was just a little rushed. Once Max came in, however, Bruce regained power and control and, well, it was “Streets of Fire”. He got that soul singer voice up there at the critical moment in the second verse. (Bruce’s voice was just incredible. For this late in the tour AND an outdoor show it is astounding.)

And then “Darkness,” and then it was over. Except that Bruce is calling the band down to the front of the stage, and as a unit – “These are the guys who made the record.” A pause. “And, Phantom Danny Federici.” Applause, from every corner of the stadium it seemed. I can’t tell you how well the album worked in the upper deck, but it felt like the crowd was attentive and the energy did not seem to drop dramatically during the album’s performance. I will confess to have chosen my spot for this evening very carefully, as anyone who thought they needed to yak during “Something In The Night” or “Streets of Fire’ might have found themselves critically injured. Maybe I would be writing something else had I been sitting up in the stands and not standing at the back of the front GA pit.

I saw all of Darkness live. I am happy. I never thought it would happen. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it in the stadium (and almost didn’t go for that reason) and I did.

Three more nights to go. More on the rest of it to come.

If you liked THE LAST STAND, Part 1 : Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Giants Stadium, 10-2-09 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

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.

If you liked file under: things i never thought i’d see you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

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 the Zooropa tour at Wembley Stadium changed my life. I do not exaggerate here. This is not a turn of phrase. It caused me to reflect on my life as it currently stood and make major revisions to it. It wasn’t just a rock and roll moment of the ages (even though I just missed the night they called Salman Rushdie), it was a cosmic wake-up call that absolutelyi changed the course of my life at that point in time. And it was precisely the sheer biggness of it, the colossal level of the set and the show and the presentation, the over-the-top-ness of it that caused it to have the impact that it did.

So I trust U2 to do this stuff right. I trust that they will make it worth my while and that everything about the experience will make sense.

The 360 set is absolutely mindblowing. The physical set is insane. The revolving bridges (one of which kept positioning itself OVER OUR HEADS), the morphing video screen, the lights and the bombast and the immense quantities of fake smoke (much of which was generated right behind our heads). In the inner loop, the stage is disorienting – if you stand close you can only see what’s in front of you and you can’t see the video screen. If you stand further back, you can see more, but you still can’t see what’s going on on the other side of the stage. We got lots of Lord Adam Clayton action (to quote my dear friend, the fabulous scatterolight), but couldn’t see Edge for shit, much less see him play keyboards. You’re having to constantly scan your entire surroundings to find out where the singer is, where the bass player is, where the guitar player is. The only person who doesn’t go walking around is the drummer, and the one time Larry came out (we were joking earlier that we’d love to be a fly on the wall in the production meeting where this his one ‘walk on the catwalk’ appearance each tour is negotiated) he went around so quickly and got back so quickly it was like he wasn’t even there. My response after the show was that they used the loop too much, but then you remember that most of the audience isn’t where you are and the band has to get on the loop – but when they’re out there, they can’t hear each other, they can’t see each other, and the show has the best chance to go off the rails.

Seeing and hearing each other: the palpable, very real, very hysterical affection between the individual band members is so very very obvious. There was much eye-rolling and laughing and what were clearly inside jokes going on. For a bunch of rich guys who live in the South of France, they still very clearly like each other. I don’t know if this stuff is obvious in the last row of the upper deck or if that many people think or care about this. But I do. I am struck by the fact that this is the youngest band nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whose members are all still very much alive. This matters. It all matters.

Not paying close attention to setlists is the way to make sure the show is fresh for you. It astonishes me that I know every word to every song (okay, except for “Your Blue Room,” and only the crazies [used affectionately] know the Passengers album by heart). We had positioned ourselves towards the back of the loop, near the rail – the rail’s edge occupied by the people who had waited in line all day. These were good people. From our pre-show discussions, I can tell you that they were rock and roll people, not just U2 people. These people were there to sing along and lose their shit and throw themselves into the moment. We sang. We pogoed. We raised our arms in the air unironically. A U2 concert is not the place to get all selfconscious and detached. You are ceding control to the Bono, you are going with him and even though there are times you are thinking “what a prat” the deal is that if you go, he will absolutely make it worth your while.

(If this is starting to sound familiar, well, then, it starts to sound familiar. There are reasons I love what I love.)

This is why I found myself unashamedly crying like a little baby when the intro to “Streets” started. I mean, how many fucking times have I heard “When The Streets Have No Name”? There was a period of my life when Joshua Tree was on unilateral ban because it was just played to death all around me, it was on the radio everywhere you turned that summer, the summer when that band stopped being mine and became everyone else’s all of a sudden. But “Where The Streets Have No Name” is that song where – as Bono put it – God can walk through the room. If you listen to it when you are down and out it will pick you up, even if it’s just for the duration of the song. It is the song I would want playing on my ipod if I was running the New York City Marathon at the moment I was crossing the 59th Street bridge. I am giving away all my secrets here. “Streets” can still do that. “Streets” makes you feel like you are whole, like you are home, it is my “Theme from Rocky,” it makes me feel like I can do anything.

And this is why I stand and cry in public in the middle of Giants Stadium.

I do not find this album disappointing. Interestingly, I found the previous two albums disappointing at the time – All That You Can’t Leave Behind especially so – but revisiting them to grab a song or two for the ipod generally means I take the whole albums and plop them on there. This album revealed itself to me sooner, and then kept revealing. The fact that there were two versions of “No Line On The Horizon” indicated that this album was a monster with many heads, and for the band to take a song from the album they are currently still promoting and turn it on its head into a disco smash that wouldn’t have been out of place on Pop – I mean, you know, they don’t have to do that. This band could go out on a standard stage and play the same set every night exactly the way it is on the album and they’d still sell out 80k tickets at Giants Stadium. They don’t do that because they actually seem to give a damn about being interesting and different and pushing the envelope (as much as a ginormous intergalactic rock band can push the envelope), and the fact that they give a damn is probably the other reason I will actively embrace something this large and this popular.

(On the other hand, I am old. I really do not have the strength to play indier-than-thou any more. I like U2. You know? I did my time in the indie rock trenches. Go ahead and judge me, I bet I’m having more fun than you are.)

Sorry. I was trying to talk about what they are doing to “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” on this tour. When it started, I had no idea what it was – it’s that selective ‘I’m reading about the tour but I’m not consuming every setlist because I don’t have patience or time and I can’t go to more than one show so if I just kind of vaguely pay attention I’ll be excited but not jaded” thing that I have kind of fallen into. So I didn’t know they remixed it. I didn’t know that they blew the power ballad bombast out of the song and turned in into something that you could jump around and wave glowsticks to (and plenty of people did). Maybe they do it because it doesn’t matter what they do, the shows are sold out and everybody is going – there were people at the Giants shows that I could not hold a serious conversation about rock and roll with, but yet consider themselves enormous U2 fans (even though they probably couldn’t name more than Bono and maybe Edge). But it’s more work to do it than it is not to do it, so I am still going to give them brownie points.

No one does a big stadium song like U2 does, and they have a dozen or so. “Beautiful Day” isn’t tired, “Elevation” had us all jumping up and down like idiots (even the upper deck at Giants was jumping up and down), even “Sunday Bloody Sunday” had people getting way too excited. They are fun, they are interesting points to stop and see how people are reacting, they are connective tissue. The heart is in the other stuff.

We got a text message as we were getting off the train:

did u hear? Bruce is going to be there yo. Soundchecked.

you wouldn’t fuck with us

She’s the one via u2log tweet

While I walked into the stadium feeling like God’s chosen child after that exchange, while I am sure he was there that night (my quote earlier in the day, “If I was an attention whore, where would I want to spend my 60th birthday?”) we all know of course He didn’t go onstage, but we did get the most brilliant live mashup EVER, “She’s The One” into “Desire” back into “She’s The One”. Or rather, “He’s The One”. Like, holy FUCK. Like, serious happy 60th birthday. Like, thank you Bono & Co. for a moment that felt like it was addressed to me and my other half specifically. (We had the phone open to our editor at Backstreets, who said later all he could hear was static and then very loud and out of tune people singing the choruses. We had arms up, the choreography and all, representing, just like we will later this week.) And when it was all said and done, it was actually okay Bruce didn’t come out onstage after all. Yeah, my head would have exploded and it would have been one thing off the bucket list, but the show was enough as it was. It was their night, not his. (He’ll get his this week.)

And finally, finally. The thing I knew they were doing but hadn’t quite internalized that they were doing it every, every fucking night, a song I’d never seen them do, but looms large in my legend as probably my favorite song from my favorite album:

Oh sugar, don’t you cry
Oh child, wipe the tears from your eyes
You know I need you to be strong
And the day is as dark as the night is long
Feel like trash, you make me feel clean
I’m in the black, can’t see or be seen
Baby baby baby light my way

This is the moment where the rest of the audience, aside from my companions, dissolved around me, the annoying bankers with their blackberries and the earnest idiot way too focused on his camera position and the non-fan girlfriend looking like she was going to burst into tears if one more person bumped into her and the guy from Spain who jumped up and down all night singing into his cellphone – they all disappeared, they all dissolved, it was me and the band and the song and the music, and the 360 thing meant it was coming at you from all angles (or at least it felt like it, before you write in with a technical description of how this isn’t possible), and it was finally hearing my song, this song, this chameleon that takes on different meanings and different emotional resonance and morphs into whatever I needed it to be at any particular time. “Ultraviolet,” live and in person. The whole neon microphone and neon light up jacket was lost on me because once I realized it was “Ultraviolet” not one other thing mattered, AT ALL. It was almost a distraction.

It didn’t even matter that the next song was “With Or WIthout You,” and the people who were filing their nails during “Ultraviole”t acted like THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD was suddenly being played. I will quote my BFF Sharon, whose all time quote is “How can a band that can write a song like ‘Party Girl’ write crap like ‘With Or Without You’” (and Sharon, I did quote you completely and fully and out loud, in Hebrew, Wednesday night, so you were there too), and then “Moment of Surrender” is there so you know it was the end of the show, because my brain and my ears and my heart were still back with “Ultraviolet.”

And then it was done, and all I could think was, why are we only seeing one, and how can we see another, and would it be as good the next time, and even waiting in those horrible lines for that goddamn train, all we would say was, “Stop – remember, ‘Ultraviolet’” and everything would be okay again. And I look at tour itineraries and try to play with frequent flier miles and vow to do it differently when they come back next year, and try to carry some of those fleeting moments of joy and freedom and guitar notes hanging in the air with me on the inside.
–
photoset from the show

If you liked light my way [U2 at Giants Stadium] you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/