The Boss

8/16/08 North Charleston Coliseum

With all the school stuff going on I never did post about the awesome concert we went to on August 16th. I went with Mom, Gerald and Lisa to see "The Boss", as in Bruce Springsteen! I have borrowed some interesting facts from a fellow concert-goer and blogger. I also have no personal pictures because cameras were not allowed and the ones from our cellphone were just so-so.

I will have to admit - I enjoy Bruce Springsteen songs but have never given a second thought about seeing him in concert, that is until he was coming in concert 20 minutes up the road! People travel from very far places to see him and we were not going to miss out! That and my Mom has been a fan of his forever! The Dancing in the Dark video with short haired Courtney Cox was the thing that was all the rage when I was an early teenager; even then I still only kind of liked him.

The Boss was very impressive though. He sounded great and he had a ton of audience interaction. One cool thing he did was take posters from the fans in the pit - each with a song written on it. He would sift through them and choose one, show it to the crowd and then play that song. He even signed one and gave it back to the fan who claimed on the poster that it was her birthday. He earned lots of respect in my book for being so good to his fans who paid lots of $$ to see him live!

He chatted with the fans seated behind the stage (where we were), he pulled up a cute little kid from the audience to sing with him, and he sat on the side of the stage on several occasions while he was singing. All in all, a great concert that we truly enjoyed. The most impressive thing was that he sang for almost 3 1/2 hours straight. No breaks!

It was even a thrill seeing Stevie Van Zandt . You probably know him as Silvio on "The Sopranos", but he is also a member of the "E Street Band". And has been since the 70's. Because I don't know much about Bruce or his E Street Band I didn't know this (also the fact I didn't watch "The Sopranos"!) Clarence Clemons was hands down awesome on the sax.

But the thing that really left me feeling like I had been cheated a bit was the obvious omission of "Born in the USA". Doesn't everyone who goes to see Bruce want to hear this song? Is it not the song that EVERYONE knows? I thought so too.

I Googled it and got a little insight.. In short - this song was not written to be a patriotic song - it was written from the point of view of a Vietnam Veteran returning home having some hardships.

Oh well - I still wanted to hear the 1980's version of Born in the USA - pretending like it was all patriotic in this Olympic summer (Phelps got his 8th gold Saturday night). I had never really listened to the words to know that it was not about us being proud of the fact that we were "Born in the USA".

Who could forget this album cover?