Bruce Springsteen was in Madison, Wisconsin today. I also saw Springsteen in Madison -- almost 24 years ago, when I was a UW freshman, Ronald Reagan was the newly inaugurated President and most of the college students who saw Springsteen today weren't even born yet.
The best moment of that evening was when he sang "Cadillac Ranch", from the then newly released The River, and he got to the line about "Drivin' alone through the Wisconsin night".
Something tells me that that Springsteen concert was a lot more fun than today's was.
UPDATE: My friend Tim, who I went to the 1981 Springsteen concert with, e-mails:
If you recall, we had the worst seats in the house that night. When they got to the encore we said "screw this" and snuck our way down to the stage. Great show. I saw him again last year but it wasn't quite the same.The only other time I went to a Springsteen concert was when Mrs. Shark and I saw him at the Oakland Coliseum in 1999. He was definitely better in 1981. Or maybe I was more impressionable. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 28, 2004 05:43 PM
shark! i'm impressed that you have that ticket stub after all of these years.
Posted by: dinesh on October 29, 2004 09:56 AMi just watched the video of springsteen introducing kerry and then singing "no surrender" from the 'born in the usa' album. that was one of my favorite songs on that album, and the video was rather moving. bruce deliberately stayed out of election politics until this year. he was famous for denying reagan's use of his song 'born in the usa' and suggested that the campaign might want to take a closer listen to the lyrics before using it as a slogan.
the fact that, now, at this juncture bruce gets involved is telling (i think, as a fan of his).
apparently, some students hung out a sign that said something like 'bruce, come up and have a beer' and so he did. the boss and the students had a beer and watched kerry (drone on an on) together.
Posted by: dinesh on October 29, 2004 11:20 AM