This is probably going to be important over the next few days, as I try to get some thoughts together, so I might as well get the awkward confession out of the way early: I'm a Springsteen fan.
A big Springsteen fan.
Now, I know a number of much more dedicated Springsteen fans, fans who make even me say "Whoa – that's hardcore", but I suspect when it comes to the more normal realm, I'm pretty out there myself. I'm the sort of guy who, upon hearing that Springsteen will be coming to the Pacific Northwest, asks not "I wonder if I should go over to Vancouver if he plays there this time" but rather "How many shows will I get to see on this leg of the tour?"
For the record, for the 2008 leg of the Magic Tour, that number is three: Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.
I'll be writing more about the shows in the next couple of days, but I thought I should share a bit of something that happened after I got home this afternoon (after a thousand miles, 6 hours in line-ups, 7.5 hours of concerts and more beer than a mortal man should be drinking in such a limited span of time (and that's not even getting into the gin & juice, a new personal favourite). A little perspective, I think…
…courtesy of my 8 year-old son Xander.
Now, Xander doesn't really get my occasional Springsteen obsession, why every couple of years I disappear for a few nights with some of my oldest friends, travel thousands of miles to not see any of the cities I'm visiting, no museums, no galleries, preferring instead to wait in mobs of hundreds of people outside stinky arenas. That lack of understanding is
certainly forgivable – hell, I don't really understand it myself.
I was just getting us ready to walk to his choir, though, and he was asking me about the last few shows, so I thought it was an opportune time to try to get across the sense of Springsteen in concert, to maybe put my madness in a little perspective for him. So I told him about how my hands were bruised (from too much clapping along), how my feet were tender (from hours spent on a hard arena floor). And then we got to my voice. Or lack thereof.
"And I think I ripped a vocal chord," I said. "Or something else in my throat."
He looked at me, horrified.
I couldn't help smiling.
"How did that happen?" he asked.
"Well, on Saturday night in Seattle, after playing for two hours solid, he came back for the encores."
Xander was nodding. He knows all about encores.
"And he started off by playing a song that nobody was expecting to hear. One of my favourite songs. And the noise in that arena – you should have heard it. It was like a bomb went off, everyone was screaming so loud. I was screaming as loud as I could."
He looked at me like I was insane. Perhaps this whole "explaining it" thing was becoming counterproductive.
"But then…" And I drew it out for dramatic effect. "Without even stopping the first song, he started another song. Now this song, I never thought in a million years he was going to play. I hadn't heard it live in twenty years. So when he started playing it, well, I thought I had been screaming as loud as I could, but apparently not. And that's when I felt
something pop in my throat, and I could taste blood in my mouth…"
"Dad," he interrupted, without a moment's hesitation. "That's because most people only go to ten. Dude, you go to eleven. That's like… one more."
So maybe he gets it a little bit after all.